From One Generation to Another Part 27

Arthur was silent; he looked very small and frail, almost childlike, in his silk-faced evening coat. Spoilt boy was writ large all over his person. "Arthur," said Mrs. Agar, "you are keeping something from me."

He shook his feeble head feebly.

"You are, I know you are. What is it?"

This was the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once--years before--she had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic pa.s.sion which had as suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circ.u.mstances could such a love have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does fail in this respect, her failure is more complete, more miserable than the failure of men, inconstant as they are.

Her affection for Arthur, coupled with that suspicion which always goes with a cheap cunning, had put her on the right scent.

"Tell me," she said, "I insist on knowing."

Still he held his peace, with the obstinate silence of the weak.

"Well, then," she cried, "don't ask me to help you to win Dora, that is all!"

There was a pause; in the silence of the great house the wind moaned softly. It always moaned in the drawing-room, whether in calm or storm, from some undiscovered draught in the high ventilated ceiling.

"I sometimes think," said Arthur at length, in an awestruck voice, "that Jem may not be dead."

"Not dead! Arthur, how can you be so stupid?"

She was not at all awestruck. Her denser, more sordid nature was proof against the silence or the humming wind. The greed of gain has power to kill superst.i.tion.

His face puzzled her. Suddenly he cast himself back and hid his face in his hands.

"Oh!" he muttered, "I can't do it, I can't do it!"

In an instant his mother was standing over him.

"Arthur," she hissed, "you _know_ something?"

"Yes," he confessed in a whisper at length.

"Jem is not dead?" she hissed again. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e.

"He was not killed in the disaster," admitted Arthur. In his heart he was still clinging to the other hope subtly held out by Seymour Michael--the hope that in his simple intrepidity Jem had gone to his death.

"Then where is he--where is he, Arthur? Tell me quickly!"

Mrs. Agar was white and breathless. It was as if she had bartered her soul, and after payment, had been tricked out of her share of the bargain. She trembled with a fear which seemed to fill her world and extend to the other world to come.

"He escaped from that action," said Arthur, who, now that the truth was out, grew voluble like a child making a confession, "by being sent on in front with a few men. They escaped notice, while the larger body was attacked and ma.s.sacred."

"Who told you this?"

"I do not know. I cannot tell you his name."

"Arthur!" exclaimed Mrs. Agar nervously, "are you going mad? Do you know what you are saying?"

In reply he gave a little laugh like a sob.

"Oh yes," he replied, "it is all right. I know what I am saying, though sometimes I scarcely believe it myself. If it was a hundred years ago one might believe it easily enough, but now it seems unreal."

"Then where is Jem? Was he taken prisoner? Those men are savages, aren't they? They kill--people when they take them prisoners."

"No, he was not taken prisoner," said Arthur. Sometimes he lost patience in a snappy, feminine way with his mother.

"Oh! tell me, tell me, Arthur dear! You are killing me!"

"I will, if you will let me. It appears that Jem had made himself a name out there for knowing the country and the people, which is useful to the Government, because Russia and England both want the country, or something like that; I don't quite understand it."

"Oh, never mind! Go on!" interrupted Mrs. Agar, with characteristic impatience.

"And at any rate the men on the other side--the Russians or some one, I don't know who--were in the habit of watching Jem so as to prevent his going up into this unexplored country. Well, when the report of his death was put in the newspapers it was left uncontradicted, so that these men should think he was dead, and not be on the look-out for him. Do you understand?"

Mrs. Agar had raised her head, with listening, attentive eyes. It seemed as if a voice had come to her across the years from the distant past. A voice telling an old story, which had never been forgotten, but merely laid aside in the memory among those things that never are forgotten.

Finding Arthur's troubled gaze upon her, she seemed to recollect herself with a little gesture of her hand to her breast as if breathing were difficult.

"That does not sound like a thing Jem would do," she said, with one of those flashes of shrewd observation which sometimes come to inconsequent people, and make it difficult for those around them to be sure how much they see and how much pa.s.ses un.o.bserved.

"It was not Jem, it was this other man."

"Which other man?" Mrs. Agar gave a little gasp, as if she had found something she feared to find.

"The man who told me--he was Jem's superior officer."

"When did he tell you--where?"

"He came to see me at Cambridge, and brought those things of Jem's,"

replied Arthur. So far from feeling guilty at thus revealing all that he had promised to keep secret, he was now beginning to experience some pangs of conscience at the recollection of a concealment which, by a supreme effort, had been made to extend to four months.

There was a sly gleam in Mrs. Agar's eyes. A close observer knowing her well could have seen the cunning written on her face, for it was cheap and obvious.

"Oh!" she said indifferently, "and what sort of man was he?"

Arthur pondered with a deliberation that almost maddened her.

"Oh!" he replied at length, "a small man, dark, with a sunburnt face; a Jew, I should think. He was rather well dressed--in the military style, of course."

"Yes," muttered Mrs. Agar. "Yes."

There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Agar reflected, as deeply, perhaps, as she had ever reflected in her life.

Then she discovered something for herself which had of necessity been pointed out to her son--a subtle divergence of character.

"But," she said, "of course Jem may never come back from this expedition.

It _must_ be very dangerous."