Simon the Jester Part 42

"Not till June."

"Oh, yes, you would. I should have seen about that--a ridiculously long engagement. Anyhow, it was only your illness that broke it off. You were told you were going to die. You did the only honourable and sensible thing--both of you. Now you're in splendid health again--"

"Stop, stop!" I interrupted. "You seem to be entirely oblivious of the circ.u.mstances--"

"I'm oblivious of no circ.u.mstances. Neither is Eleanor. And if she still cares for you she won't care twopence for the circ.u.mstances. I know I wouldn't."

And to cut off my reply she clapped the receiver of the telephone to her ear and called up Eleanor, with whom she proceeded to arrange a date for the interview. Presently she screwed her head round.

"She says she can come at four this afternoon. Will that suit you?"

"Perfectly," said I.

When she replaced the receiver I stepped behind her and put my hands on her shoulders.

"'The mother of mischief,'" I quoted, "'is no bigger than a midge's wing,' and the grandmother is the match-making microbe that lurks in every woman's system."

She caught one of my hands and looked up into my face.

"You're not cross with me, Simon?"

Her tone was that of the old Agatha. I laughed, remembering the policeman's salute of the previous night, and noted this recovery of my ascendancy as another indication of the general improvement in the att.i.tude of London.

"Of course not, Tom t.i.t," said I, calling her by her nursery name. "But I absolutely forbid your thinking of playing Fairy G.o.dmother."

"You can forbid my playing," she laughed, "and I can obey you. But you can't prevent my thinking. Thought is free."

"Sometimes, my dear," I retorted, "it is better chained up."

With this rebuke I left her. No doubt, she considered a renewal of my engagement with Eleanor Faversham a romantic solution of difficulties.

I could only regard it as preposterous, and as I walked back to Victoria Street I convinced myself that Eleanor's frank offer of friendship proved that such an idea never entered her head. I took vehement pains to convince myself Spring had come; like the year, I had awakened from my lethargy. I viewed life through new eyes; I felt it with a new heart.

Such vehement pains I was not capable of taking yesterday.

"It has never entered her head!" I declared conclusively.

And yet, as we sat together a few hours later in Agatha's little room a doubt began to creep into the corners of my mind. In her strong way she had brushed away the scandal that hung around my name. She did not believe a word of it. I told her of my loss of fortune. My lunacy rather raised than lowered me in her esteem. How then was I personally different from the man she had engaged herself to marry six months before? I remembered our parting. I remembered her letters. Her presence here was proof of her unchanging regard. But was it something more? Was there a hope throbbing beneath that calm sweet surface to which I did not respond? For it often happens that the more direct a woman is, the more in her feminine heart is she elusive.

Clean-built, clean-hearted, clean-eyed, of that clean complexion which suggests the open air, Eleanor impressed you with a sense of bodily and mental wholesomeness. Her taste in dress ran in the direction of plain tailor-made gowns (I am told, by the way, that these can be fairly expensive), and shrank instinctively from the frills and fripperies to which daughters of Eve are notoriously addicted. She spoke in a clear voice which some called hard, though I never found it so; she carried herself proudly. Chaste in thought, frank in deed, she was a perfect specimen of the highly bred, purely English type of woman who, looking at facts squarely in the face, accepts them as facts and does not allow her imagination to dally in any atmosphere wherein they may be invested.

To this type a vow is irrefragable. Loyalty is inherent in her like her blood. She never changes. What feminine inconsistencies she had at fifteen she retains at five-and-twenty, and preserves to add to the charms of her old age. She is the exemplary wife, the great-hearted mother of children. She has sent her sons in thousands to fight her country's battles overseas. Those things which lie in the outer temper of her soul she gives lavishly. That which is hidden in her inner shrine has to be wrested from her by the one hand she loves. Was mine that hand?

It will be perceived that I was beginning to take life seriously.

Eleanor must have also perceived something of the sort; for during our talk she said irrelevantly:

"You've changed!"

"In what way?" I asked.

"I don't know. You're not the same as you were. I seem to know you better in some ways, and yet I seem to know you less. Why is it?"

I said, "No one can go through the Valley of the Grotesque as I have done without suffering some change."

"I don't see why you should call it 'the Valley of the Grotesque.'"

I smiled at her instinctive rejection of the fanciful.

"Don't you? Call it the Valley of the Shadow, if you like. But don't you think the attendant circ.u.mstances were rather mediaeval, gargoyley, Orcagnesque? Don't you think the whole pa.s.sage lacked the dignity which one a.s.sociates with the Valley of the Shadow of Death?"

"You mean the murder?" she said with a faint shiver.

"That," said I, "might be termed the central feature. Just look at things as they happened. I am condemned to death. I try to face it like a man and a gentleman. I make my arrangements. I give up what I can call mine no longer. I think I will devote the rest of my days to performing such acts of helpfulness and charity as would be impossible for a sound man with a long life before him to undertake. I do it in a half-jesting spirit, refusing to take death seriously. I pledge myself to an act of helpfulness which I regard at first as merely an incident in my career of beneficence. I am gradually caught in the tangle of a drama which at times develops into sheer burlesque, and before I can realise what is going to happen, it turns into ghastly tragedy. I am overwhelmed in grotesque disaster--it is the only word. Instead of creating happiness all around me, I have played havoc with human lives. I stand on the brink and look back and see that it is all one gigantic devil-jest at my expense. I thank G.o.d I am going to die. I do die--for practical purposes. I come back to life and--here I am. Can I be quite the same person I was a year ago?"

She reflected for a few moments. Then she said:

"No. You can't be--quite the same. A man of your nature would either have his satirical view of life hardened into bitter cynicism or he would be softened by suffering and face things with new and n.o.bler ideals. He would either still regard life as a jest--but instead of its being an odd, merry jest it would be a grim, meaningless, hideous one; or he would see that it wasn't a jest at all, but a full, wonderful, big reality. I've expressed myself badly, but you see what I mean."

"And what do you think has happened?" I asked.

"I think you have changed for the better."

I smiled inwardly. It sounded rather dull. I said with a smile:

"You never liked my cap and bells, Eleanor."

"No!" she replied emphatically. "What's the use of mockery? See where it led you."

I rose, half-laughing at her earnestness, half-ashamed of myself, and took a couple of turns across the room.

"You're right," I cried. "It led me to perdition. You might make an allegory out of my career and ent.i.tle it 'The Mocker's Progress.'" I paused for a second or two, and then said suddenly, "Why did you from the first refuse to believe what everybody else does--before I had the chance of looking you in the eyes?"

She averted her face. "You forget that I had had the chance of searching deep beneath the mocker."

I cannot, in reverence to her, set down what she said she found there. I stood humbled and rebuked, as a man must do when the best in him is laid out before his sight by a good woman.

A maidservant brought in tea, set the table, and departed, Eleanor drew off her gloves and my glance fell on her right hand.

"It's good of you to wear my ring to-day," I said.

"To-day?" she echoed, with the tiniest touch of injury in her voice. "Do you think I put it on to just please you to-day?"

"It would have been gracious of you to do so," said I.

"It wouldn't," she declared. "It would have been mawkish and sentimental. When we parted I told you to do what you liked with the ring. Do you remember? You put it on this finger"--she waved her right hand--"and there it has stayed ever since."

I caught the hand and touched it lightly with my lips. She coloured faintly.

"Two lumps of sugar and no milk, I think that's right?" She handed me the tea-cup.

"It's like you not to have forgotten."