CHAPTER XVIII.

DAMON AND PYTHIAS: A MODERN INSTANCE.

"WEST KENSINGTON.

"DEAR MR. TOWNSEND,--Will you come and dine with me one evening next week? I am always free.

"I want to ask your advice on a small personal concern. You know the world so much better than I do.

"Truly yours,

"HELEN CARRUTH."

The next morning, when I woke from dreams of poker, this was the first letter which I opened. It was nicely written, in a small, round hand, as clear as copperplate--somehow it did not strike me as being the writing of a woman who did not know the world. Mrs. Carruth seemed friendly. With a background of intentions, as usual? What was the "small personal concern?" An excuse?--only that and nothing more? I wondered.

I had to go down to Cockington by the afternoon train--to Dora, and to Haselton Jardine. I should probably stay there till Tuesday or Wednesday--it depended. I might make it Thursday with Mrs. Carruth--if anything turned up at the last moment I could always send an excuse. Something about the woman attracted me. A _tête-à-tête_ might prove amusing. There and then I scribbled an acceptance--appointing Thursday.

I was conscious of the possession of a head--the adventures of the night had left the flavour of brandy behind. We had made up accounts before we parted. There had been diversions! I had a nice little pocketful of money. Pendarvon owed me seventeen thousand odd, Archie owed him over four thousand, and me over thirty-five thousand. As I surveyed Archie's heap of IOU's I felt that I had better make early inquiries into the prices current of waste paper. Pendarvon's seventeen thousand I would get within the week, or mention it.

No need to trouble myself about Pendarvon. While I still was fingering his paper, Burton brought me an envelope on which I recognised his handwriting.

"Mr. Pendarvon's servant waits for an answer, sir?"

The envelope contained a cheque and note.

"ARLINGTON STREET.

"_Friday_.

"DEAR TOWNSEND,--Enclosed find a cheque for £17,450. Short reckonings make long friends. Please give IOU's to bearer.

"Yours,

"C. P."

I packed up his IOU in an envelope, with a word of thanks, and handed them to Burton. Pendarvon was the sort of man one liked to play with--when one won. He might not prove so pleasant an opponent when one lost, and owed one's losings, and was pressed for cash. Asking for no grace, he gave none. Archie would have to find that four thousand in a week.

Poor dear old Archie!

What was I to do? I had as much chance of getting thirty-five thousand pounds out of him as out of the first beggar I might meet in the street. Well, I could afford to be magnanimous. I was like unto him that expecteth nothing. I might let him off--if his beggarly, but proud, Scotch blood would suffer it. It might be worth my while to put him under an obligation.

He came in just as I had finished dressing--looking as if he had been spending the time since I had seen him last in trying to find that five and thirty thousand pounds. His eyes were bloodshot. His face was white and drawn. He was a vivid illustration of the night it must have been. Vouchsafing no greeting, sitting down without a word, leaning on the handle of his stick, he stared at nothing with his bloodshot eyes.

I opened the ball.

"Are you coming down with me to Torquay by the three o'clock?" Silence. "I suppose you haven't forgotten your engagement with Jardine?"

"I can't keep it. For a sufficient reason."

"What's that? Feel seedy? The run down will do you good. You'll feel as fit as a fiddler by the time you get to Cockington."

"That's not the reason."

"What is it then? I suppose you're not going to throw them over--they'll want your gun."

"The reason I'm not going is because I have not sufficient money with which to pay the fare."

I stared. I had not supposed the thing was so bad as that. Yet it was characteristic. In one of his moods he was just the man to play for his boots, and not miss them till he wanted to put them on.

"I suppose you're joking."

By way of reply he relinquished his stick, stood up, and solemnly turned out his pockets one by one. He held some coins out towards me in his hand.

"Six-and-ninepence. That represents my cash in hand. Of course, there is always the pawnshop."

"Stuff. You can always borrow."

"I am glad to hear it. From whom? Give me the gentleman's name. He is not known to me, I'll swear. I must be unknown to him, or he would never lend."

"Can't you do anything on a bit of stiff?"

"I repeat--give me the gentleman's name."

"If it comes to that, I'll lend you a hundred or so to go on with myself, as you very well know."

"I owe you five and thirty thousand pounds already."

"Look here, Archie, I don't want to make myself disagreeable, as you believe, but when you like you can be about as much of an idiot as they make them. Your proceedings last night would have been more appropriate at a symposium in the county asylum. As to what you say you owe me, we'll postpone the settling day, with your permission, to when your ship comes home."

"The arrangement was that all paper was to be taken up within a week."

"Rubbish. You and I know what those sort of arrangements are worth."

"Are you suggesting that I'm a thief?"

"I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm asserting that you're a fool."

"Reggie!"

"Archie?"

He glared at me so that, for a moment, I thought that he was going to give further proof of the truth of my words upon the spot. But he changed his mind. He dropped on to a chair with a sort of gasp.

"What you say is correct enough. I have no right to cavil. I thank you for the word." He sat silent. Then he added, "But it's not only you I owe, I owe Pendarvon."

"If you take my advice, you'll pay Pendarvon."

"It's not advice I want; it's money. I owe the man, in round numbers, four thousand five hundred pounds. I don't know where to turn to raise four hundred."

"My dear Archie, you must excuse my saying, that's your affair. You would punt--although he gave you warning. The man lost heavily himself. This morning he's sent me round a cheque to settle."

"He has, has he? He is an honest man. My God! what it is to have money!"

"That's nonsense. If you were made of money you would not be justified in playing as you played last night."

"That's right. Give it me. I deserve it all. I wonder what my father will think when he finds out, once more, what sort of son I am."

"He'll think of the days of his own youth. When they are confronted with similar revelations, all our fathers do."

"I doubt it. I don't think my father was ever such as I am. Certainly, he never bound himself to commit murder within a month. I suppose that you have not forgotten that the Honour of the Club is in my keeping."

I had not. I had very clearly understood that it was that fact which had caused him to make the spectacle of himself which he had done. I stood contemplating the fire, twisting Mrs. Carruth's note between my fingers. He repeated his own words bitterly--"The Honour of the Club."

"It's a pretty club."

"My faith it is!"

"Your only bantling."

"Don't say that. It's Pendarvon's. You know it is. It's the biggest part of the debt I owe him. When I think of it, I feel like killing him."

"Why don't you?"

"It's against the rules. You stood by the rules, and so will I."

"Who are you going to kill?"

"For one thing, I shall kill my father. It will be as good as his death-blow when he hears of the sort of thing I am."

"That sort of murder won't come within the scope of the definition. If it did, possibly seven men out of ten would be entitled to the diploma of the club. Archie, I'll make you a proposition. I'll give you the money to pay Pendarvon, and I'll cry quits for what you owe me, if you'll agree, since you must kill some one, to kill any person I may nominate."

"Reggie!--what devil's game are you up to now?"

"At present, none. At this moment I have not the faintest reason to wish myself rid of any living creature. But before the end of the month the situation may be altered. Is it a deal?"

He hesitated; rose, and began to walk about the room. I watched him as he did so. I noticed how he clasped and unclasped his hands. He turned to me.

"I agree."

I sat down, then and there, and wrote him an open cheque for five thousand pounds.

"The balance will enable you to rub along for a time. If you take my tip, you'll let Pendarvon have his coin at once--before leaving town."

He took the cheque. Scanning the figures, he began to fold it up with nervous fingers. A smile--of a kind--wrinkled his lips.

"What things we may become! If ever there was blood money, this is it. And I'm a Beaupré. And do you know, Townsend, that for ever so long I've been dreaming dreams." He looked up at me, with a sudden flashing of his eyes. "Dreams of Dora Jardine."

I turned again to the fire--smiling in my turn.

"You told me so before."

"But I never told you what sort of dreams I had been dreaming. I never told you how she fills all my veins till, in all the world, I see nothing, think of nothing else, but her. I never told you how she is with me by day and by night, sleeping and waking; that, wherever I am, and whatever I do, I am always repeating to myself her name. I never told you that the dreams which I have dreamed of her have driven me mad. I never told you that."

"With all due respect to you, I should hardly have believed you if you had."

"Why? Because I am the thing I am? There's the pity of it! I have been so conscious of my unworthiness, so conscious that I never could be worthy, that, constrained by some madness which I verily believe is in my blood, I have become more unworthy still." He came closer to me. His voice dropped to a sort of breathless whisper. "And yet, Reggie, do you know, I believe that, in spite of all, she cares for me."

"I think not."

He became, all at once, almost ferocious.

"You think not! What right have you to think? How can you tell what grounds I may have for my belief?"

I turned to him. I had purposely kept my back towards him while he had been indulging in his hysterical ravings. Now I was surprised and amused to see what a change his hysterics had produced. His cheeks were flushed. His eyes were flaming. He seemed to have increased in stature. He seemed to have lost all traces of the hang-dog air with which he had entered the room.

"I ought, Archie, to have stopped you. If I remember rightly I did stop you on a previous occasion. I have, I assure you, good cause for thinking that your belief is an erroneous one; that cause is, that I have reason to believe that she cares for me."

"For you--Reggie!"

"I will be frank with you. With her father's express approval I am going down to Cockington to-day in the character of Miss Jardine's suitor."

"You!--My God!"

"Very shortly I hope to receive your congratulations on the confessedly undeserved good fortune which has dowered me with such a wife."

"But"--the man was trembling so that he could scarcely speak--"you're--you're a murderer."

"I am as you will shortly be. Let us hope that my man is not listening to these plain truths. What then?"

He began fumbling in his waistcoat pocket.

"I won't have your money. You can't buy me body and soul--no, not altogether. She shall know what manner of man you are."

He threw my cheque from him on to the floor.

"I see. Having led me into crime, you are going to tell of me. Is that sort of conduct in accordance with the Beaupré code of honour? Are you sure that you are not proposing to play Judas merely because I have conquered where you have failed?"

"No! No! I won't tell! I won't tell! You know I won't! But--that you should be going to marry Dora Jardine!"

He sank in a heap on to a chair, looking once more as pitiable an object as one would care to see.

"Come, Archie, pull yourself together. Have a drink, and play the man. Pick up the cheque, run down with me to Cockington, and wish me luck upon the road. Surely your own experience has taught you that love's transferable. So long as one has an object it does not much matter what it is, or whether it's in the singular or plural. Between ourselves, I believe that Miss Whortleberry, the American millionairess, is with the Jardines. You marry her--and her millions--I promise you I won't tell."

My words did not seem to brighten him up to any considerable extent. He sat staring with wide open eyes, almost like a man who had been stricken with paralysis.