Bye-Ways Part 29

"You have heard of something about him?"

"No."

"You have seen him, then; I say, you have seen him?"

Anthony hesitated. He pushed the champagne bottle over towards Sergius.

It had been placed on a little table near the fireplace.

"No; I don't want to drink. Why on earth don't you answer me, Anthony?"

"I have always felt that Vernon was a coward. His conduct to you shows it. He was--or seemed--your friend. He saw you deeply in love with this--with Olga. He chose to ruin her after he knew of your love. Who but a coward could act in such a way?"

An expression of dark impatience came into the eyes of Sergius.

"You are confusing treachery and cowardice, and you are doing it untruthfully. You have seen Vernon."

Anthony thought for a moment, and then said:

"Yes, I have."

"By chance, of course. Why did you speak to him?"

"I thought I would."

Sergius was obviously disturbed and surprised. The deeply emotional, yet rigid calm in which he had been enveloped all the evening was broken at last. A slight excitement, a distinct surface irritation, woke in him.

Anthony felt an odd sense of relief as he observed it. For the constraint of Sergius had begun to weigh upon him like a heavy burden and to move him to an indefinable dread.

"I wonder you didn't cut him," Sergius said. "You're my friend. And he's--he's--"

"He's done you a deadly injury. I know that. I am your friend, Serge; I would do anything for you."

"Yet you speak to that--devil."

"I spoke to him because I'm your friend."

Sergius sat down again, with a heavy look, the look of a man who has been thrashed, and means to return every blow with curious interest.

"You parsons are a riddle to me," he said in a low and dull voice. "You and your charity and your loving-kindness, and your turning the cheek to the smiter and all the rest of it. And as to your way of showing friendship--"

His voice died away in something that was almost a growl, and he stared at the carpet. Between it and his eyes once more the mist seemed rising stealthily. It began to curl upwards softly about him. As he watched it, he heard Anthony say:--

"Sergius, you don't understand how well I understand you."

The big hand of the clock had left the half-hour after ten behind him.

Anthony breathed more freely. At last he could be more explicit, more unreserved. He thought of a train rushing through the night, devouring the s.p.a.ces of land that lie between London and the sea that speaks, moaning, to the South of England. He saw a ship glide out from the dreary docks. Her lights gleamed. He heard the bell struck and the harsh cry of the sailors, and then the dim sigh of a coward who had escaped what he had merited. Then he heard Sergius laugh.

"That again, Anthony!"

"Yes. I didn't meet Vernon by chance at all."

"What? You wrote to him, you fixed a meeting?"

"I went to Phillimore Place, to his house."

Sergius said nothing. Strange furrows ploughed themselves in his young face, which was growing dusky white. He remained in the att.i.tude of one devoted entirely to listening.

"You hear, Sergius?"

"Go on--when?"

"To-day. I decided to go after I met you yesterday night--and after I had seen that woman die--unprepared."

"What could she have to do with it?"

"Much. Everything almost."

Anthony got up now, almost sprang up from his chair. His face was glowing and working with emotion. There was a choking sensation in his throat.

"You don't know what it is," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "to a man with--with strong religious belief to see a human being's soul go out to blackness, to punishment--perhaps to punishment that will never end. It's abominable. It's unbearable. That woman will haunt me. Her despair will be with me always. I could not add to that horror."

His eyes once more sought the clock. Seeing the hour, he turned, with a kind of liberating relief, to Sergius.

"I couldn't add to it," he exclaimed, almost fiercely, "so I went to Vernon."

"Why?"

"Sergius--to warn him."

There was a dead silence. Even the rain was hushed against the window.

Then Sergius said, in a voice that was cold as the sound of falling water in winter:--

"I don't understand."

"Because you won't understand how I have learnt to know you, Sergius, to understand you, to read your soul."

"Mine too?"

"Yes; I've felt this awful blow that's come upon you--the loss of Olga, her ruin--as if I myself were you. We haven't said much about it till yesterday. Then, from the way you spoke, from the way you looked, from what you said, even what you wouldn't say, I guessed all that was in your heart."

"You guessed all that?"

Sergius was looking directly at Anthony and leaning against the mantelpiece, along which he stretched one arm. His fingers closed and unclosed, with a mechanical and rhythmical movement, round a china figure. The motion looked as if it were made in obedience to some fiercely monotonous music.

"Yes, more--I knew it."

Sergius nodded.

"I see," he said.