"I say, old fellow, you must not excite yourself like this! You will be seriously ill if you don't look out," d.i.c.k answered, remonstratingly.

"It's no use working yourself up into a fever."

"I am not working myself up; unfortunately that has been done for me,"

I answered, with a short laugh. "Well, d.i.c.k, I am sick of everything, disgusted with everything! It's the same old story perpetually repeated. All that one fixes one's eyes on in the distance turns into dust as one approaches it. For the last year I have thought of this meeting this evening, and now it has come, what is it?"

"You are taking me by surprise to-night, Victor! I remember you in the regiment as so deuced calm."

"I'm never calm!" I returned. "Exteriorly, yes, of course, for one's own convenience and self-respect, to outsiders, one is always calm; but the exterior is not the reality. I am not one of those things naturally which I command myself into being: existence to me is nothing but a close-fitting, strangling, self-restraint. It drags upon me like a prisoner's gangrening fetter, and I'm getting tired of it. I think I'll slip it off altogether!"

I talked straight out of the distraction of my own thoughts, the pain in my head was acute, stunning my brain, and my vision seemed all wrong, as when one has been drinking. I was conscious of d.i.c.k looking at me anxiously, as he said--

"That's all nonsense! You are quite out of your senses this evening!

You wouldn't throw up your life now, when you are just on the point of success, surely?"

"If I can't force our marriage, it's likely to come to that, I think,"

I muttered. "I am totally at a loss. I know nothing. I can conjecture nothing. I have not seen her nor heard from her this past year; and now she will say nothing. I pressed her as much, I think, as a fellow decently could. If she had spoken clearly and definitely it would have been different. Whatever statement a woman made to me of any painful facts; or if she came to me with any confession of folly, or change of feeling, or misfortune, or whatever it was, no matter what, I should enter into it and understand her. But Lucia to-night treated me like a stranger, fenced with me like an enemy. I have no clue as to what to think and what to believe. Simply, I see that she is no longer keen on the matter, and there is a large possibility of my not having her at all. By G.o.d! if it is so"--

I broke off into silence. After all, there is no use in talk; and the knives twisted backwards and forwards in my head helped to stop speech.

We walked on in silence. The streets were very quiet here; we had left the Grants' late, and now it was getting towards morning. We verged directly towards Knightsbridge; for some time our steps were the only sound. Then, after a pause, d.i.c.k said quietly--

"I think, Victor, you are going on a wrong tack altogether. You don't make enough allowance for the fact that she is a girl, and has not seen you for a year, remember. It is all very well for you to talk of to-the-point confessions and plain statements, but practically, if a girl were to talk as frankly as you would like, I am afraid the idea of modesty would rather come to grief."

"Oh! modesty," I said impatiently, "be--Modesty! It's all very well as a pretty, becoming, every-day fashion, but it should be laid aside in the serious matters of life. It is an artificiality; admirable, useful, excellent as a daily conventional rule, but it should yield when there is a great natural question at issue. Modesty! a fict.i.tious, artificial, inculcated shame to intrude itself between two people considering gravely the vital matter of their love, their union, their future life! It's preposterous!"

"It very often does so," remarked d.i.c.k. "I am not saying whether it should or it shouldn't."

"No," I answered more calmly; "and I entirely see what you mean, and I think you are perfectly right there. Lucia is steeped in fashion, soaked through with the prejudice and bringing up of her own rank. And I suppose I do like it and expect it, certainly, as a general rule; only, when the thing on hand is very important, and a society woman fences with you behind a screen of elegant, delicate language, you feel sometimes you would prefer the intelligible candour of a kitchen maid."

d.i.c.k laughed.

"I doubt the charm of the latter individual, Vic! You must have a little more patience with this girl, and the confidence will come by degrees, if you don't lose your self-command with her; but I'd advise you to be careful. The way in which you have been talking to me now gives an impression of--well, almost brutality, that I didn't think was in you."

I laughed contemptuously.

"Oh, you needn't be afraid of the word; I know there is a lot of it in me. It's just that knowledge that enables me to keep it under. I know if I had not kept myself, for the sake of the work, out of it, that I should have led a brutish existence. However, you needn't think that I am going to frighten Lucia. I have had such a deuce of a lot of practice in patience and restraint, and all those fine things, that I am quite sure of myself when I am with her. But as to gaining her confidence, that is impossible before the ceremony, I believe. She has been brought up in that monstrous idea, like the rest of our fashionable girls, that the man into whose possession she is to give herself utterly with the ceremony, up to the last moment before it, is to be treated with the most absolute reserve. The contrast is too ludicrous--driven to the point of exaggeration to which they drive it.

In Lucia's eyes an unusual, an unfashionable word, no matter how great the necessity for it, is a crime. I believe she would walk to the block rather than let a word pa.s.s her lips in my hearing an hour before our marriage that in twenty-four hours afterwards might be a common phrase between us. You may call it modesty and charming, if you like. All I can say is, there are limits to its charm."

The approach of morning was distinct now. A grey light hung in a faint misty veil over the Green Park and top of Piccadilly. As it fell from the cloudy, neutral-tinted sky, it showed one solitary figure, a woman with a trailing skirt and battered hat, pa.s.sing Hyde Park corner.

In the waste of deserted street and roadway, glimmering in the dull, grey light, that one dishevelled black figure reminded one of the remnant of some wrecked vessel, drifting at dawn along a sullen coast.

She drifted somewhat faster up to us as we came to the corner and touched d.i.c.k, who was next to the road, on the arm. He shook her hand off without speaking.

"Have you any money with you, d.i.c.k?" I asked.

"Yes; but I am not going to give any to her," he answered.

I would have given the woman some, but I had none. I had left it behind when I changed my clothes for dinner. She heard d.i.c.k's answer to me plainly, and it exasperated her. All the natural, florid, unstudied eloquence of the lower orders was at her command, and well-turned periods of perfect abuse and neat incisive remarks upon our characters, our persons and attributes generally, rippled in a smooth, unbroken stream from her lips as she followed us. Just at that moment there was not a policeman nor any other being within sight.

We walked on, and the woman's curses and imprecations upon us filled the grey silence of the street. At last a porter on his way to work pa.s.sed us, and she transferred her attentions and oratory to him. d.i.c.k glanced at me and laughed.

"Well, there was an extensive vocabulary, Victor! How would some of those words sound in your fiancee's mouth?"

I laughed too.

"You always were good at a sophistical sneer, but vile language has nothing to do with what I was talking about."

"No; of course not. It does strike one as curious, doesn't it," he added after a minute, "that a creature like that and the girl we have been with this evening can belong to the same s.e.x."

"Well, I don't know," I answered; "I know there is the sort of idea that it is funny, but somehow it does not strike me more with reference to woman than to ourselves. I mean it does not seem more incongruous than that a man like yourself and an offal sweeper belong to the same s.e.x."

"No; perhaps not. One of those houses is yours, isn't it?" d.i.c.k said.

"Yes; number 2," I answered, as we went up to the door.

"They seem to have turned the light out."

I opened the door and d.i.c.k went in. I followed, and when the door was shut behind us the hall was in nether darkness. We found our way to the foot of the stairs, where an undefined heap barred our way. Not knowing what it was I kicked it, and d.i.c.k exclaimed,--

"Take care! I think that's your man," and a groan confirmed the statement.

"Hullo, Walters! I am very sorry. I had no idea it was you. I hope I haven't hurt you!" I said as the servant got on his feet. "Why do you turn the lights out? However, it's just as well you are here. Bring me upstairs the soda, champagne, and the new lot of cigars. I suppose there is the lamp in my room?"

"Yes, sir."

"You won't care to turn out again, d.i.c.k, to-night, will you?" I said as we went upstairs. "There's an awfully comfortable sofa in my room, quite as good as a bed. Will you accept that?"

"Oh yes; I always find I can go to sleep anywhere. Do you remember, when we were camping out at Shikarpur, those nights on the shaky-legged native benches?"

"Rather! That was when I never bothered about anything. I have never slept so well since."

We went into my room. Two lamps were burning here, and the thick blinds shut out all signs of the dreary dawning light. Walters followed us in a few seconds and set a tray of gla.s.ses and bottles on the table. I flung off my overcoat and sat down in an arm-chair, pressing the palms of my hands hard on my forehead in the vain effort to deaden the tearing pain.

"Try some of those cigars," I said, after a minute, "they are not bad, and take whatever you like to drink," and I got up and filled my gla.s.s at the same time.

"I think that brandy is the worst thing for your head," remarked d.i.c.k, looking dubiously at the gla.s.s.

"But I am so confoundedly thirsty!"

"Take the soda without the brandy, then. Really, I would advise you not to touch that spirit to-night."

"Oh, I don't much care! let it be the soda;" and I filled another tumbler with the latter and drank it. "But what is your own opinion about this business with Lucia," I asked, when d.i.c.k had stretched himself on the sofa and started his cigar. "What puzzles me so is the great change in her--a change apparently in the whole tenour of her feelings. You can't think how wide the difference is between her now and a year ago. I told you that she came over to Paris to see me, didn't I?"

d.i.c.k nodded.

"That was only twelve months back, and she was simply--well, she was evidently very much in love then. You know what I mean, and she made no effort to conceal it. She urged our marriage; and then, when we decided it was impossible, she would have liked me to go any reasonable lengths in demonstration of my love for her, and so on. I made a mistake there, perhaps, but I thought it unwise. We hardly knew where we were as it was. She seemed utterly weak, and I felt she might say things in those moments she would be fearfully cut up to remember afterwards. It seemed dishonourable in my shackled, circ.u.mscribed position to lead her any farther on. That was my idea--perhaps it was mistaken--I don't know.

Anyway we shook hands merely. Then, at that time, she invited a kiss in every way short of demanding it. Now, to-night I kissed her hand, not a very extraordinary nor embarra.s.sing action, and yet I thought she was going to faint as a result. It moved some very strong sensation, repulsion or disgust, or something, and I want to know what."

"You see, Vic," d.i.c.k said, after a minute or two of silence, laying down the cigar and driving his elbow into the sofa cushion, and leaning his head on his hand. He looked past me absently towards the fender, and spoke as a person does whose opinion has long since been formed.