The Swindler and Other Stories Part 43

"I am not thinking of myself," she told him, with vehemence. "Of course, it would make everything right for me, so long as Jim knew. But I must think of you, too. I must----"

"You needn't," Cheveril said gently; "you needn't. I have asked to be allowed to stand by you, to have the great privilege of calling myself your friend in need. I am romantic enough to like to see a love affair go the right way. It is for my pleasure, if you care to regard it from that point of view." He paused, and into his eyes there came a queer, watchful expression--the look of a man who hazards much, yet holds himself in check. Then he smiled at her with baffling humour.

"Don't refuse me my opportunity, Miss Harford," he said. "I know I am eccentric, but I a.s.sure you I can be a staunch friend to those I like."

Evelyn had risen, and as he ended he also got to his feet. He knew that she was studying him with all her woman's keenness of perception. But the game was in his hands, and he realised it. He was no longer afraid of the issue.

"You offer me this out of friends.h.i.+p?" she said at last.

He watched her fingers nervously playing with a bracelet on her wrist.

"Exactly," he said.

Her eyes met his resolutely.

"Mr. Cheveril," she said (and though she spoke quietly, it was with an effort), "I want you, please, to answer just one question. You have been shown all the cards; but there must--there shall be--fair play, in spite of it."

Her voice rang a little. The bracelet suddenly slipped from her hand and fell to the floor. Cheveril stooped and picked it up. He held it as he made reply.

"Yes," he said, "I like fair play, too."

"Then you will tell me the truth?" she said, holding out her hand for her property. "I want to know if--if you were really going to ask me to marry you before this happened?"

He looked at her with raised eyebrows. Then he took the extended hand.

"Of course I was!" he said simply. She drew back a little, but Cheveril showed no discomfiture. "You see, I'm getting on in life," he said, in a patriarchal tone. "No doubt it was rank presumption on my part to imagine myself in any way suited to you; but I thought it would be nice to have a young wife to look after me. And you know the proverb about 'an old man's darling.' I believe I rather counted on that."

Again he looked quizzical; but the girl was not satisfied.

"That's ridiculous!" she said. "You talk as if you were fifty years older than you are. It may be funny, but it isn't strictly honest."

Cheveril laughed.

"I know what you mean," he said. "But really I'm not being funny. And I am telling you the simple truth when I say that all sentimental nonsense was knocked out of me long ago, when the girl I cared for ran away with a good-looking beast in the Army. Also, I am quite honest when I a.s.sure you that I would rather be your trusted friend and accomplice than your rejected suitor. By Jove, I seem to be asking a good deal of you!"

"No, don't laugh," she said quickly, almost as if something in his careless speech had pained her. "We must look at the matter from every stand-point before--before we take any action. Suppose you really did want to marry some one? Suppose you fell in love again? What then?"

"What then?" said Cheveril. And, though he was obligingly serious, she felt that somehow, somewhere, he was tricking her. "I should have to ask you to release me in that event. But I don't think it's very likely that will happen. I'm not so impressionable as I was."

She looked at him doubtfully. Obviously he was not in love with her, yet she was uneasy. She had a curious sense of loss, of disappointment, which even Jim's departure had not created in her.

"I don't feel that I am doing right," she said finally.

"I am quite unscrupulous," said Cheveril lightly. "Moreover, there is no harm to any one in the transaction. Your life is your own. No one else has the right to order it for you. It seems to me that in this matter you need to consider yourself alone."

"And you," she said, in a troubled tone.

He surprised her an instant later by thrusting a friendly hand through her arm.

"Come!" he said, smiling down at her. "Let us go and announce the good news!"

And so she yielded to him, and went.

The news of Evelyn Harford's engagement to Lester Cheveril was no great surprise to any one. It leaked out through private sources, it being understood that no public announcement was to be made till the marriage should be imminent. And as Cheveril had departed in his yacht to the Pacific very shortly after his proposal, there seemed small likelihood of the union taking place that year.

Meanwhile, her long battle over, Evelyn prepared herself to enjoy her hard-earned peace. Her father no longer poured hurricanes of wrath upon her for her obduracy. Her mother's bitter reproaches had wholly ceased.

The home atmosphere had become suddenly calm and sunny. The eldest daughter of the house had done her obvious duty, and the family was no longer shaken and upset by internal tumult.

But the peace was only on the surface so far as Evelyn was concerned.

Privately, she was less at peace than she had ever been, and that not on her own account or on Jim Willowby's. Every letter she received from the man who had taken her part against himself stirred afresh in her a keen self-reproach and sense of shame. He wrote to her from every port he touched, brief, friendly epistles that she might have shown to all the world, but which she locked away secretly, and read only in solitude.

Her letters to him were even briefer, and she never guessed how Cheveril cherished those scanty favours.

So through all that summer they kept up the farce. In the autumn Evelyn went to pay a round of visits at various country-houses, and it was while staying from home that a letter from Jim Willowby reached her.

He wrote in apparently excellent spirits. He had had an extraordinary piece of luck, he said, and had been offered a very good post in Burmah.

If she would consent to go out to him, they could be married at once.

That letter Evelyn read during a solitary ramble over a wide Yorks.h.i.+re moor, and when she looked up from the boy's signature her expression was hunted, even tragic.

Jim had carefully considered ways and means. The thing she had longed for was within her grasp. All she had ever asked for herself was flung to her without stint.

But--what had happened to her? she wondered vaguely--she realised it all fully, completely, yet with no thrill of gladness. Something subtly potent seemed wound about her heart, holding her back; something that was stronger far than the thought of Jim was calling to her, crying aloud across the barren deserts of her soul. And in that moment she knew that her marriage with Jim had become a final impossibility, and that it was imperative upon her to write at once and tell him so.

She walked miles that day, and returned at length utterly wearied in body and mind. She was facing the hardest problem of her life.

Not till after midnight was her letter to Jim finished, and even then she could not rest. Had she utterly ruined the boy's life? she wondered, as she sealed and directed her crude, piteous appeal for freedom.

When the morning light came grey through her window she was still poring above a blank sheet of notepaper.

This eventually carried but one sentence, addressed to the friend who had stood by her in trouble; and later in the day she sent it by cable to the other side of the world. The message ran: "Please cancel engagement.--Evelyn." His answering cable was brought to her at the dinner-table. Two words only--"Delighted.--Lester."

Out of a mist of floating uncertainty she saw her host bend towards her.

"All well, I trust?" he said kindly.

And she made a desperate effort to control her weakness and reply naturally.

"Oh, quite, quite," she said. "It is exactly what I expected."

Nevertheless, she was trembling from head to foot, as if she had been dealt a stunning blow.

Had she altogether expected so prompt and obliging a reply?

Some weeks later, on an afternoon of bleak, early spring, Evelyn wandered alone on the sh.o.r.e where she had bidden Jim Willowby farewell.

It was raining, and the sea was grey and desolate. The tide was coming in with a fierce roaring that seemed to fill the whole world.