Bye-Ways Part 27

"Well, then, now, if you understand me--tell me--"

Sergius broke off suddenly.

"This champagne is awfully good," he said, filling his gla.s.s again.

"What were you going to say?" Anthony asked.

"I don't know--nothing."

Anthony tried to conceal his disappointment. Sergius had seemed to be on the verge of over-leaping the barrier which lay between them. Once that barrier was overleapt, or broken down, Anthony felt that the mission he had imposed upon himself would stand a chance of being accomplished, that his gnawing anxiety would be laid to rest. But once more Sergius diffused around him a strange and cold atmosphere of violent and knowing reserve. He went away from the table and sat down close to the fire.

From there he threw over his shoulder the remark:--

"No man or woman ever understands another--really."

III

Anthony did not reply for a moment and Sergius continued:--

"You, for instance, could never guess what I should do in certain circ.u.mstances."

"Such as--"

"Oh, in a thousand things."

"I should have a shrewd idea."

"No."

Anthony didn't contradict him, but got up from the dinner-table and joined him by the fire, gla.s.s in hand.

"I might not let you know how much I guessed, how much I knew."

Sergius laughed.

"Oh, ignorance always surrounds itself with mystery," he said.

"Knowledge need not go naked."

Again the eyes of the two friends met in the firelight, and over the face of Sergius there ran a new expression. There was an awakening of wonder in it, but no uneasiness. Anxiety was far away from him that night. When pa.s.sion has gripped a man, pa.s.sion strong enough, resolute enough, to over-ride all the prejudices of civilisation, all the promptings of the coward within us, whose voice, whining, we name prudence, the semi-comprehension, the criticism of another man cannot move him. Sergius wondered for an instant whether Anthony suspected against what his heart was beating. That was all.

While he wondered, the clock chimed the half hour after nine. He heard it.

"I shall have to go very soon," he said.

"You can't. Just listen to the rain."

"Rain! What's that got to do with it?"

Sergius spoke with a sudden unutterable contempt.

"Ring for another bottle of champagne," Anthony replied. "This one is empty."

"Well--for a parson and a teetotaller, I must say!"

Sergius rang the bell. A second bottle was opened. The servant went out of the room. As he closed the door, the wind sighed harshly against the window panes, driving the rain before it.

"Rough at sea to-night," Anthony said.

The remark was an obvious one; but, as spoken, it sounded oddly furtive, and full of hidden meaning. Sergius evidently found it so, for he said:

"Why, whom d'you know that's going to sea to-night?"

Anthony was startled by the quick question, and replied almost nervously:--

"n.o.body in particular--why should I?"

"I don't know why, but I think you do."

"People one knows cross the channel every night almost."

"Of course," Sergius said indifferently.

He glanced towards the clock and again mechanically his hand went up, for a second, to his left breast. Anthony leaned forward in his chair quickly, and broke into speech. He had seen the stare at the clock-face, the gesture.

"It's strange," he said, "how people go out of our lives, how friends go, and enemies!"

"Enemies!"

"Yes. I sometimes wonder which exit is the sadder. When a friend goes--with him goes, perhaps for ever, the chance of saying 'I am your friend.' When an enemy goes--"

"Well, what then?"

"With him goes, perhaps for ever, too, the chance of saying, 'I am not your enemy.'"

"Pshaw! Parson's talk, Anthony."

"No, Sergius, other men forgive besides parsons; and other men, and parsons too, pa.s.s by their chances of forgiving."

"You're a whole Englishman, I'm only half an Englishman. There's something untamed in my blood, and I say--d.a.m.n forgiveness!"

"And yet you've forgiven."

"Whom?"

"Olga Mayne."

The face of Sergius did not change at the sound of this name, unless, perhaps, to a more fixed calm, a more still and pale coldness.