Part 15

"But if a God had prophesied so I couldn't have believed him. All the terrors and bogeys he had called up, they faded to nothing before the sudden, active hope that he and I might be allowed to love, anywhere, what matter where.... Oh, there was no romance about it! There's seldom a moment, an ice-clear moment, when a man or woman can put one passion against the whole world, and then forget even that the world is there in contrast. That was my moment, a splendid devouring one, and never to come again. Crime, swindling?... dim silly words, beside my lust for him. I wanted him, he was my man. And I told him that no police in this world would beat my devilish cunning--and he suddenly let go of me, and roared with laughter, as though he would die unless he could laugh.

"'You're splendid, Iris' he said, still laughing. 'You would change a respectable swindler into such an awful criminal that no police in this world would dare try to arrest him.' And then he came very humbly to me, and said that until a few weeks ago he had not dreamt I had a heart, but now he had found even more, that it was a flag of loyalty. But he added suddenly:

"'I must tell Antony that, to make him realise what he has made me lose.' He seemed so queerly to bring his mind back to Antony, for all his 'not mattering' any more. And I showed my impatience, begging him to forget the wretched man.

"'I do,' he said, 'but he comes back every now and then. You see, the fool was so obsessed about me that he quite forgot what part you had in my life. And so he has hurt me much more than he ever dreamed he could hurt me. I must make him understand that....'

"Curiously enough, or not, I hadn't now any wild passion of resentment against Antony. Roger's way of explaining him seemed to have coloured my view of him; something of that 'inevitability' I suppose, somehow made me think of him more as an evil circumstance than as an evil man. But I did not want to see him that night, in fact my head was aching so that I was fit only for bed; and when I asked Roger if he intended to let him stay on, he shrugged his shoulders and said:

"'We will be leaving him behind us soon enough.'

"I suppose it's true that no one is ever made to suffer more than he or she can bear--but self-pity is a goading kind of master, isn't it? And those long evening hours in my bedroom that night were terrible, fighting with a splitting head and heart, and being so beaten and bruised by both that I began to feel mean and whipped, like an offender punished for some offence. But, my God, what and against whom!... Until, after a long century, I heard Roger enter his room. And I crept in after him....

"I made a fuss on the telephone about your having to come to see me the next afternoon, you remember? I insisted that you must, whether you had work to do or not, for I couldn't bear to face that long empty afternoon alone until Roger came back from the City.

"But the day had begun almost happily, for I had woken up with Roger's voice in my mind, a voice pressed so closely to me: promising me that he wouldn't give up and let things go, saying that he had learnt an old lesson about fatality, how there was no fatality but that of a man's choosing. The trouble had been that he hadn't known what to choose until too late.... And he had promised that if the worst came we would go away as far as love and the sea could take us, 'and that is ever so far westwards past Cleopatra's Needle.' And he had said: 'They will probably let me get clean away. There's some one who will let me know, anyway....' He said these things to comfort me, but the worst fear of all was the sudden one that the mind behind those dark mocking eyes might persuade him to--poor dear, I kept him long at his promising that he would not do anything against himself. Though it was not really difficult to believe him, for Roger always made so very few promises simply because he never broke one.

"He and Antony, whom I didn't see, had left earlier than usual for the City: to clear up many last things, he said. And the day grew heavier with every minute, until I simply had to have you come and help me wait, or go mad. How sweet you were to me that afternoon, Ronnie, and how much excuse you had to be impatient. But I couldn't give you a glimpse of what it was all about, how could I? For Roger had made me promise not to tell even you a word.... It must have been wretched for you, to sit about and be made nervous by my nerves, and to feel the heaviness of the trouble in the air without knowing anything of what it was all about. And those endless games of _picquet_ we played, and your resigned expression when I kept on forgetting whose was the _major_ hand!... Until at last we heard them come in, and I insisted on your staying for dinner, very cruelly, for it was so obvious that you would much rather not; but I wanted you to stay, you were mine and Roger's friend, and you might help. Just a vague idea that you might help, I didn't know how or what about....

"When they came in I saw that Roger was glad you had been with me and were staying to dinner. Maybe he thought you might make things go easier, for it looked to be a rather difficult dinner, just Antony, he and I. And Antony looked so glum and silent, like a tired red boy, so that I wondered if Roger had cleared things up with him too. But the dinner wasn't difficult, not difficult enough, was it?" ...

* * * * *

To tell the plain truth I found myself thoroughly enjoying it--a pleasant contrast to my last dinner there, when I had so resented the brothers' coldness. And, anyway, I'm afraid I was too busy recovering from my rather jumpy few hours with Iris, who communicated a mood as you or I would a piece of news, to notice much besides the fact that though Antony was more silent than usual, we three men had at a step got back to our old easy friendship.

It was close on ten o'clock when Howard came in to tell his master that he was wanted on the telephone,--which was in the adjoining room, the library, opened to the one we were in through a folding door. Roger looked a little surprised, I thought, but got up quickly; and at a glance from him, a sort of lifted-eyebrow glance, Antony followed, leaving the door slightly ajar behind them.

From where we sat at the table we could only hear but not see Roger at the telephone, which was on the writing table just within the library door. But it seemed to be a very short call, for we only heard him say the few bare words: "Yes--right you are! Of course, yes.... Thanks very much, Carter"; and then click down the receiver. Then an unforgettable voice, strangled with laughter and venom:

"I told you days ago to burn those concession papers, and you swore you already had--and now Carter tells me that the police have just been to the office, as we knew they must, and found every blessed one of 'em in the top drawer of my desk--which was _unlocked_. O Antony! O you poor husk of a man, you graveyard of a broker--what a lot of pleasure you've had from me, haven't you? And all I can think of as a nice little epitaph for you is _Dolor ira_--but what could be fairer than that, Antony?" ...

A wild rush took me to the door, even as the house shrieked with Roger's "grief and anger." I stood dazed as I burst it wide--to see through the smoke a huge figure facing me from the corner by the window, swaying idiotically to and fro with the eyes of a thrashed child--and at the table beside me Roger, his head fallen sideways against the over-turned telephone and the smoke from the thing in his hand hanging dreadfully about him. I didn't look at the weight I suddenly felt against my shoulder, I just put out my arm to hold Iris, for I was staring at Antony. He had not seemed to see us until this moment--and now his eyes were trying to tell Iris something, they were livid with what he was trying to tell her--his eyes were accusing her!

"He didn't, I tell you," he shouted at her. "He didn't break his promise. He wanted to kill me, you see, but--he...."

His tongue fumbled with his lips for words--which never came, for with a wild backward wave of his arm as though to wipe three figures for ever from his mind, he swung round and strode heavily out through the open window. And whether or not Sir Antony, under a less conspicuous name, died in some obscure corner of the war that befell a few months later I have never heard for quite certain, and now never will. But Iris and I have sometimes preferred to think that he has met the only death that could at all have satisfied the tortured vanity of the helpless braggart.

THE END

Transcriber's Note.

Variable spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently repaired.

Corrections.

The first line indicates the original, the second the correction.

p. 46:

'Helas! Je sais un chant d'amour, 'Hélas! Je sais un chant d'amour,

p. 92:

Thursday as ever is, Howward! Thursday as ever is, Howard!

p. 184:

rather appal one rather appall one

p. 243:

the world is agen him the world is against him

p. 287:

"'That oil,' he explained hurridly "'That oil,' he explained hurriedly