Uncanny Tales Part 17

"I know what you have come about. I knew you must come. You could not help yourself. But, Philip, it will save you pain--I don't mind for myself; nothing can matter now--if you will at once take my word for it that nothing you can say will do the least shadow of good. No, don't shake hands with me. I would rather you didn't."

And he put his right arm behind his back and stood there, leaning against the mantelpiece, facing his friend.

Philip looked up at him grimly.

"No," he said, "I've given my word to--to these poor dear people, and I'll stick to it. You've got to make up your mind to a cross-examination, Lingard."

But through or below the grimness was a terrible pity. Philip's heart was very tender for the man whose inexplicable conduct was yet filling him with indignation past words. Arthur was so changed--the last week or two had done the work of years--all the youthfulness, the almost boyish brightness, which had been one of his charms, was gone, dead. He was pale with a strange indescribable pallor, that told of days, and worse still, of nights of agony; the lines of his face were hardened; the lips spoke of unalterable determination. Only once had Philip seen him look thus, and then it was but in expression--the likeness and the contrast struck him curiously. The other time it had been resolution temporarily hardening a youthful face; now--what did it remind him of? A monk who had gone through a life-time of spiritual struggle alone, unaided by human sympathy? A martyr--no, there was no enthusiasm. It was all dull, dead anguish of unalterable resolve.

There was silence for a moment. Keir was choking down an uncomfortable something in his throat, and bracing himself to the inquisitorial torture before him to perform.

"Well," said Arthur, at last.

And Philip looked up at him again.

How queer his eyes were--they used to be so deeply blue. Daisy had often laughed at his changeable eyes, as she called them--blue in the daytime, almost black at night, but always l.u.s.trous and liquid. Now, they were gla.s.sy, almost filmy. What was it? A sudden thought struck Philip.

"Arthur!" he exclaimed, "Arthur, old fellow, are you going blind? Is that the mystery? If it is that, good Lord, how little you know her, if you think that----"

Arthur's pale lips grew visibly paler. He had been unprepared for attack in this direction, and for the moment he quailed before it.

"No," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "it is not that. Would to G.o.d it were!"

But almost instantly he had mastered himself, and from that moment throughout the interview not even the mention of Daisy's name had power to stir him.

And Philip, annoyed with his own impulsiveness, stiffened again.

"You are determined not to reveal your secret," he began, "but I want to come to an understanding with you on one point. If I guess it, if I put my finger on it, will you give me the satisfaction of owning that I have done so."

Lingard hesitated.

"Yes," he said, "I will do so on one condition--your word of honour, your oath, never to tell it to any human being."

"Not to--her--Daisy?"

"Least of all."

Philip groaned. This did not look very promising for the meeting with Daisy, which at the bottom of his heart he believed in as his last--his trump card.

Still, he had gained something.

"Then, my first question seems, in the face of that, almost a mockery. I was going to ask you," and he half gasped--"it is nothing--nothing about her that is at the root of all this misery? No fancy," again the gasp, "that--that she doesn't care for you, or love you enough? No nonsense about your not being suited to each other, or that you couldn't make a girl of her sensitive, high-strung nature happy?"

"No," said Arthur, and the word seemed to ring through the room. "No, I know she loves me as I love her. Oh, no, not quite like that, I trust,"

and his voice was firm through all the tragedy of the last sentence.

"And I believe I could have made her very happy. Leave her name out of it now, Phil, once for all. It has nothing to do personally with the woman who is, and always will be, to me my perfect ideal of sweetness and excellence and truth and beauty."

"Then it has to do with yourself," murmured Keir. "Come, the radius is narrowing. I flew out at poor Trevannion when he suggested it, but all the same, it's nothing in your past you're ashamed of that's come to light, is it? The best fellows in the world make fools of themselves sometimes, you know. Don't mind my asking."

"I don't mind," said Arthur wearily, "but it's no use. No, it's nothing like that. I have done nothing I am ashamed of. I am not secretly married, nor have I committed forgery," with a very ghastly attempt at a smile.

"Then," said Philip, "is it something about your family. Have you found out that there's a strain of insanity in the Lingards perhaps? People exaggerate that kind of thing now-a-days. There's a touch of it in us all, I take it."

"No," said Arthur, again "my family's all right. I've no very near relations except my sister, but you know her, and you know all about us.

We're not adventurers in any sense of the word."

"Far from it," agreed Philip warmly. Then for a moment or two he relapsed into silence. "Does your sister--does Lady West know about--about this mysterious affair?" he asked abruptly, after some pondering.

"Nothing whatever. I, of course, was bound by every consideration not to tell her--to tell no one anything till it was understood by--the Trevannions. And I had no reason for consulting her or--any friend,"

Arthur replied.

He spoke jerkily and with effort, as if he were putting force on himself to endure what yet he was convinced was absolutely useless torture.

But his words gave Keir a new opening, which he was quick to seize.

"That's just it," he exclaimed eagerly. "That's just where it strikes me you've gone wrong. You should have consulted some one--not myself, not your sister even; I don't say whom, but some one sensible and trustworthy. I believe your mind has got warped. You've been thinking over this trouble, whatever it is, till you can't see it rightly. You've exaggerated it out of all proportion, and you shouldn't trust your own morbid judgment."

Lingard did not answer. He stood motionless, his eyes fixed upon the ground. For an instant a wild hope dashed through Philip that at last he had made some impression. But as Arthur slowly raised his dim, worn eyes, and looked him in the face, it faded again, even before the young man spoke.

"To satisfy you, I will tell you this much. I have consulted one person--a man whom you would allow was trustworthy and wise and good.

From him I have hidden nothing whatever, and he agrees with me that I have no choice--that duty points unmistakably to the course I am pursuing."

Again a flash of suggestion struck his hearer.

"One person--a man," he repeated. "Arthur, is it some priest? Have they been converting or perverting you, my boy? Are you going over to Rome, fancying yourself called to be a Trappist, or a--those fellows at the Grande Chartreuse, you remember?"

For the second time during the interview, Arthur smiled, and his smile was a trifle less ghastly this time.

"No, again," he said. "You're quite on a wrong tack. I have not the slightest inclination that way. I--I wish I had. No, my adviser is no priest. But he's one of the best of men, all the same, and one of the wisest."

"You won't tell me who he is?"

"I cannot."

"And"--Philip was reluctant to try his last hope, and felt conscious that he would do it clumsily--"Arthur," he burst out, "you will see her--Daisy--once more? She has a right to it. You are putting enough upon her without refusing this one request of hers."

He stood up as he spoke. He himself had grown strangely pale, and seeing this, as he glanced at him, Lingard's own face became ashen.

He shook his head.

"Good G.o.d!" he said, "I think this might have been spared me. No, I will not see her again. The only thing I can do for her is to refuse this last request. Tell her so, Philip--tell her what I say. And now leave me. Don't shake hands with me. I don't wish it, and I daresay you don't.

If--if we never meet again, you and I--and who knows?--if this is our goodbye, thank you, old fellow, thank you for all you have tried to do.

Perhaps I know the cost of it to you better than you imagine. Good-bye, Phil!"

Keir turned towards the door. But he looked back ere he reached it.

Arthur was standing as he had been--motionless.

"You're not thinking of killing yourself, are you?" he said quietly.