The Phantom Lover Part 5

"And when I come back----" he said again. "Tell her that when I come back many things may be all right again ... tell her that, will you?"

"I'll tell her," said Micky stolidly.

The guard was blowing his whistle now, doors were being shut.

Micky roused himself and looked at his friend.

"Are you--er--are you going to write to her?" he asked constrainedly.

Ashton coloured.

"No--it's better not--far better let the thing drop till I come back.

I've explained it all in my letter--she'll understand. It's no use writing--don't you think it's better not----"

Micky hunched his shoulders.

"It's your affair," he said laconically.

"Yes, well, I shan't write--I'll send you my address as soon as I know where I'm staying, and you can let me know what she said and how she takes it.... Oh, confound it!"

A porter had come along and slammed the door; the train was slowly moving; Micky was vaguely glad that there had been no time in which to shake hands. A moment, and he was walking away alone down the platform.

His hands were deep thrust in the pockets of his coat; he took no notice of anything; he walked on and out of the station.

Well, this had been an eventful New Year's Eve with a vengeance; he glanced up at the clock in the dome behind him--only a quarter to twelve now, and yet so much had been crowded into the past four hours.

Since the moment when the Delands rang up to cancel his engagement to dine he seemed to have stepped out of the old world into a new. He wondered what Esther Shepstone was doing in the very horrid boarding-house of which she had told him--if she was thinking of Ashton.

What a cad the man was, what a cad!--he was amazed that he had not discovered it before--to clear off and leave a girl like this, without a word of farewell except the letter. He wondered if he meant to deliver it and admit that he knew Ashton, or if he meant just to stick a stamp on and post it to her.

He realised that there was nothing very much to be proud of in an admission that he knew Ashton, and yet they had been friends for years.

It was striking twelve when he got home; he stood for a moment on the doorstep, looking up at the starry sky.

Several clocks were chiming midnight in the distance; he listened with a queer sense of fatalism.

This was the strangest New Year's Eve he had ever spent in his life.

At this hour last year he had been dancing the old year out, and to-night, had things gone as he had thought, he would have been somewhere with Marie Deland--he might even have proposed to her by this time. He smiled faintly, remembering that the intention had really been somewhere in the background of his mind; but that, too, had faded out now to give place to other, more important, factors.

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve! He counted the strokes mechanically; there was a breathless pause, then the clash of bells.

Some irrepressibles in a block of flats near by raised a cheer; the front door of a house opposite was open, and Micky caught a glimpse of a crowded hall and black-coated men and girls in pretty frocks.

He felt strangely removed from all the noise and laughter; after a moment he turned and went up to his room.

The fire had been carefully made up and his slippers and dressing-gown put to warm. Micky looked at them with a sort of disgust; it was sickening for a healthy grown man to be so pampered; he kicked the slippers into a corner and tossed the dressing-gown on to the couch.

He wondered what sort of a room Esther Shepstone had in the very horrid boarding-house--what odd corner the thin black cat curled into to sleep.

He took Ashton's letter from his pocket and stuck it up against the clock on the mantelshelf.

"Miss Esther Shepstone...."

It was fate, that's what it was! He wondered if she would ever have lived to get that letter had fate not thrown her across his path that night.

She had been desperate--at the end of her tether, and all for the sake of that cad Ashton.

He turned his back on the letter and lit a cigarette, but he let it go out almost at once, and turned back again to stare once more at the name scrawled on the envelope.

What had Ashton written to her? It worried him because he did not know. Ashton had had other love-affairs--not quite such serious ones, perhaps, but still serious enough--and Micky knew that when he had wearied of them he had set about getting free of them by the shortest route, caring little if it were also a brutal one. He thought of the despair he had seen in Esther's face that evening; he dreaded that there might be something in Ashton's farewell letter that would plunge her back more deeply into her misery.

Out in the night the bells were still ringing joyously.

It was New Year's morning, and perhaps, if he sent that letter ... He stood quite still for a moment, staring at it; then suddenly he threw his cigarette into the fire and s.n.a.t.c.hed the letter down from the shelf.

He tore it open impulsively and drew out the enclosure. He unfolded it and began to read. The silence of the room was unbroken save for the little crisp sound as Micky turned the paper; then the letter fluttered to the rug at his feet and lay there, half-curled up, as if it were ashamed of the words it bore and wished to hide them.

Micky raised his eyes and looked at his reflection in the gla.s.s above the mantelshelf. The pallor of his face surprised him, and the look of pa.s.sionate anger in his eyes.

He was a man of the world. He was no better and no worse than many of the men whom he knew and called his friends, but this letter, in its brutal callousness, seemed to shame his very manhood.

He had liked Ashton, had been his constant companion for months, but he had never suspected him of being capable of this.

He supposed he ought to be ashamed of having opened the letter, but he was not ashamed; he was glad that he had been able to spare the girl this last and hardest blow of all--the knowledge that the man whom she loved and trusted was unworthy.

Presently he picked the letter up from the rug. He picked it up with the tips of his fingers, as if it were something repulsive to him, and threw it down on the table.

The first few words stared up at him as it lay there.

"DEAR LALLIE,--By the time you get this letter I shall be out of England, and I hope you won't make things worse for me than they already are by trying to find out where I have gone or by writing to my people and making a scene. The worst of these little flirtations is that they always have to end, as this must, and you must have known it."...

Micky drew in his breath hard; not an hour ago in this very room Ashton had made out how cut-up he was at the turn his affairs had taken, and yet all the time he had written this letter.

He flicked over a page and read on:--

"... I shall never forget you and the good times we've had together. I should try and get back at Eldred's, if I were you.

It's a good thing we didn't get married as matters have turned out, or the fat would have been in the fire with a vengeance. As it is, I shall have all my work cut out to put the mater in a good temper again. I am sending you some money by Mickey Mellowes; he's a friend of mine and as rich as Croesus, and as selfish as the devil. If he offers to take you out, let him, by all means. It wouldn't be a bad thing if he took a fancy to you; he doesn't care a hang for any one but himself. If only I'd got half his money ...

but what's the use of talking about it? Anyway, this is good-bye; I shan't write again. Be a sensible girl, and try to see things from my point of view. It would only have meant ruin for both of us if I'd stuck to you. Good-bye; I send you my love for the last time.

RAYMOND ASHTON."

And this from the man whom she loved; the man who had pretended to love her!

Micky dragged forward a chair with his foot and sat down straddlewise.

He leaned an elbow on the chair-back and ran his fingers through his hair with a sort of bewilderment.

"He's as rich as Croesus and as selfish as the devil...."

And this from Ashton, his friend--the man whom he had helped out of sc.r.a.pes scores of times; the man to whom he had lent money without the least hope of its ever being returned; Micky felt as if he had a blow in the face.