Mammon and Co Part 43

"The things I have done all my life," said Kit.

"Yes, the things you have done all your life."

Kit sat silent, and the gentleness of her face to this straight speech was touching. At last she looked up.

"And will you help me?" she asked. "Oh, Lily! I have been down into h.e.l.l. And I didn't believe in it till I went there. But so it is--an outer darkness."

She said it quite simply and earnestly, without bitterness, or the egotism which want of reticence so often carries with it. Round them early summer was bright with a thousand blossoms and melodies; the mellow jangle of church bells was in the air; the time of the singing-bird had come.

"But I can't feel--I am numb. I don't know where to go, or where I am going," she went on, her voice rising. "I only know that I don't want to go back to the life I have hitherto led; but there is nothing else. The great truths--G.o.d, religion, goodness--which mean so much, so everything to you, are nothing to me. I feel no real desire to be good, and yet I want to be not wicked. One suffers for being wicked. I can get no higher than that."

"Stick to that, dear Kit," said Lily. "I can tell you no more. Only I know--I know that, if one goes on doing the thing one believes to be best, even quite blindly, the time comes that one's eyes are slowly opened. Out of the darkness comes day. One sees from where one has come.

Then one look, and on again."

"But for ever, till the end of one's life?" asked Kit.

"Till the end of one's life. And the effort to behave decently has a great reward, which is decent behaviour."

"And Jack--what am I to say to Jack?"

"All you feel."

"Jack will think it so queer," said Kit.

"You did not see Jack when you were at your worst that afternoon. Oh, Kit! it is an awful thing to see the helpless anguish of a man. He will not have forgotten that."

"Jack in anguish?" asked Kit.

"Yes; just remember that it was so. Here's Toby. I thought he was at church. What a heathen my husband is!"

Toby strolled up, with his pipe in his mouth.

"I meant to go to church," he said; "but eventually I decided to take--to take my spiritual consolation at home."

"I, too, Toby," said Kit.

CHAPTER X

TOBY DRAWS THE MORAL

Toby was sitting in the smoking-room of the Bachelors' Club some weeks later on a hot evening in July. The window was open, and the hum of London came booming in soft and large. It was nearly midnight, and the tide of carriages had set westward from the theatres, and was flowing fast. The pavements were full, the roadway was roaring, the season was gathered up for its final effort. Now and then the door opened, and a man in evening dress would lounge in, ring for a whisky-and-soda, and turn listlessly over the leaves of an evening paper, or exchange a few remarks with a friend. As often as the door opened Toby looked up, as if expecting someone.

It had already struck midnight half an hour ago when Jack entered. He looked worried and tired, and by the light of a match for his cigarette, which he lit as he crossed the room to where Toby was sitting, the lines round his eyes, noticed and kindly commiserated a few months before by Ted Comber, seemed deeper and more harshly cut. He threw himself into a chair by Toby.

"Drink?" asked the other.

"No, thanks."

Toby was silent a moment.

"I'm devilish sorry for you, Jack," he said at length. "But I see by the paper that it is all over."

"Yes; they finished with me this afternoon. Alington will have another week of it. Jove! Toby, for all his sleekness and hymn-singing, he is an iron fellow! He's got some fresh scheme on hand, and he's going about it with all his old quiet energy, and asked me to join him; but I told him I'd had enough of directorships. But there's a strong man for you! He is knocked flat, he picks himself up and goes straight on."

He picked up the paper, and turned to the money-market.

"And here's the cruel part of it all," he said, "for both of us: Carmel is up to four pounds again. If they had only given him another month, he would have been as rich as ever, instead of having to declare bankruptcy; and I--well, I should have had a pound or two more. Lord! on what small things life depends!"

Toby was silent.

"About the Park Lane house," he said, after a pause. "I talked it over with Lily, and if you'll let us have it at that price, we shall be delighted to take it. We only have our present house on a yearly lease, which expires in July."

"You're a good fellow, Toby."

"Oh, that's all rot!" said Toby. "Lily and I both want your house. It isn't as if we were doing you a kindness--it isn't really, Jack. But it's such rough luck on you having to turn out. Of course, you and Kit will always come there whenever you like."

Jack lit another cigarette, flicking the end of the old one out of the window.

"I think I will have a drink, Toby," he said; "my throat is as dry as dust answering so many pertinent and impertinent questions, as to what I received as director, and what I made over Carmel East and West. They let me off nothing, and the Radical papers will be beautiful for the next week or two. They'll be enough to make one turn Radical."

"Poor old Jack! Whisky? Whisky-and-soda, waiter--two. Well, it's all over."

"Ted Comber was in court to-day," continued Jack, "all curled, and dyed, and brushed, and manicured. He watched me all the time, Toby. Upon my word, I think that was the worst part of the whole show."

Toby showed his teeth for a moment.

"I've made it up with him, I'm sorry to say," he remarked. "Lily insisted on it. We shook hands, and I was afraid he was going to kiss me."

"By the way, how is Lily?"

"Happy as a queen when I left her this morning, and the boy, oh! Jack, a beauty. He was shouting fit to knock the house down: you could have heard him in Goring. I left early, but Kit got up and breakfasted with me. Knowing how she hates getting up early, I put that down at its proper value. But she didn't attend to me much: she has no thoughts except for Lily and the boy."

"Kit has behaved like a real trump all through this," said Jack. "Never a word or a look of reproach to me. She's just been cheery, and simple, and splendid. You know, Toby, she is utterly changed since--since that time before Easter. We had a long talk the day after you and Lily left us there two months ago. I was never so surprised in my life."

"At what?"

"At what she said, and at what I said--perhaps most of what I said. She told me she was going to try not to be such a brute. And, upon my soul, I thought it was an excellent plan. I said I would try too."

Toby laughed.

"There's your whisky," he said. "Hang it all! I haven't got any money.

You'll have to pay for it yourself, Jack--and mine, too. So you and Kit made a bargain?"

Jack glanced round the room, which had emptied of all its well-dressed, weary occupants. He and Toby were alone.