A POINT OF ETHICS
He leaned forward across the flower-decked dinner-table and raised his glass.
“To many happy anniversaries, darling!”
The pretty woman he addressed raised her glass also. Gowned in a simple evening robe whose discreet décolletage revealed shoulders still youthfully rounded, she was the incarnation of that delicate refinement which lifts beauty into charm with one deft touch. The single dark rose at her breast was its present symbol. It was also, indubitably, the deliberate symbol of something more. The large, emotional eyes which smiled upon him were radiant with happiness.
“Many anniversaries, Jack!” she echoed, shaking her head slowly in emphasis, her gaze in his. “All as happy as this—all of us together!”
Both turned, as with a common thought, to the demure little five-year-old girl who watched them with grave eyes from her place at the dinner-table. She smiled at their smiles, confidently.
“I’m as fond of her as you are, Evelyn,” he said, with evident sincerity. “Never fear! I couldn’t love her more if she were my own daughter.”
“You couldn’t be kinder to her, Jack,” said the young woman, in affectionate agreement. “Oh, my dear, we are very fortunate, both of us, Dorothy and I! Without you!” she sighed. “A whole year! A whole year of perfect happiness! I thought I was happy before—but I did not know what happiness was—until it began a year ago to-day!”
He smiled.
“Nor I, Evelyn. Looking back, it seems that I only began to live on the day I married you.” He glanced around him. “A year ago!—You were right, dear, to have our little dinner here to-night, and not at River Lawn. You were right to keep this place going—it reminds us both of our starting-point.” His tone warmed with affection. “But then, you are always right!”
She beamed with gratitude.
“I wanted to keep it because it was my home—it was what I brought to you. You gave me our home at River Lawn, Jack—and you know how I love it. But this—this is where you came to me, and it’s all sacred to me. I couldn’t bear to change a thing in it. Besides,” she added, smilingly lifting her argument out of sentimentality, “it is really an economy, isn’t it? With your work we must have a city home as well. Why change this flat for another which would perhaps be less convenient, and which we should have to refurnish?”
“Quite,” he agreed. “I gave into you about it long ago. But I didn’t like it at first, I’ll admit.”
“You are too big a man, Jack, dear, to be jealous of the past. And I am sure Harry would not mind, if he could know.” Her eyes looked past him, dreamily reminiscent. “Poor old Harry!” she said, after a little silence.
“I should like to have met him,” he said, conversationally, getting on with his fish. “He must have been a good chap.”
“Oh, he was! I wish I could have got some news of him—of how he was killed. No one in the regiment seemed to know anything. It is dreadful to go out like that—no one knowing how!” She shuddered. Then, with an instinctive movement to break the spell of unwanted memories, she pressed the bell for the maid to clear the course from the table.
The conversation resumed on the everyday matters of his profession. She thoroughly identified herself with her husband’s interests and discussed them, as was her wont, with intelligent sympathy. She was one of those women who stimulate all the latent potentialities of their men. He—it was obvious from the clear-cut features—was both resolute and clever; a man who would go far. Already Satterthwaite was a name in the Courts for which clients would pay big fees.
They were discussing the important case of the day when suddenly she looked round, startled.
“Jack! Someone has come in—or gone out. I heard the hall door slam!”
“Imagination, my dear,” he replied, smiling sceptically. “The maids are busy—they would not go out. We should have heard the bell if there were a visitor. No one has a key except ourselves——”
The words were scarcely uttered when the door behind them opened. The child, who sat facing it, stared in amazement for a second, and then slipped off her chair and ran toward the intruder with a wild shout of joy.
“Daddie!”
Mr. and Mrs. Satterthwaite sprang up from their seats, turned to see a youngish man, clad in an ill-fitting lounge suit, standing in the doorway. The young woman clutched at the back of her chair, her eyes wide in terror.
“Harry!” She breathed the cry almost voicelessly in her stupefaction. “Harry’s ghost!”
Satterthwaite snatched back the child, who had recoiled from the flaming anger in the stranger’s face.
“What does this mean?” asked the intruder, fiercely, ignoring the little one. “Evelyn!” The summons was uttered with outraged but confident authority.
She shrank back, covering her face.
“No!” She spoke as to herself. “No!—It can’t be! He’s dead—he’s dead!”
Satterthwaite intervened, his jaw setting hard, the level tone of his voice evidently sternly controlled.
“May I ask who you are?” he enquired, coldly.
The stranger faced him. Anger met anger in their eyes.
“Certainly. I am Harry Tremaine. And perhaps you will be good enough to tell me who the devil you are—and what you are doing with my wife in my flat?” The man’s voice trembled with fury. His face worked with passion. He took a step toward the young woman.
She drew quickly away from him, sheltered herself behind her companion, whence she stared at him with fascinated eyes.
“My name is Satterthwaite—and I am dining with my wife!”
“Your—wife——!” He repeated the words slowly as though scarcely crediting such audacious impudence of assertion. Then he laughed in harsh mockery. “Don’t talk nonsense!” He looked down at the child at Satterthwaite’s side. “Dorothy!—come here!”
Satterthwaite restrained the child’s movement of obedience with a firm grip. “Excuse me,” he said quietly, “I think the youngster is better absent from this discussion.” He led the bewildered little girl to the door, opened it, and called for the nurse. “Put Miss Dorothy to bed!” he ordered. “And then all of you go out for the evening. Go to the movies. Here!” He held out a note. “Have a good time—and get out at once! Mrs. Satterthwaite and I want to be alone in the flat this evening.”
He closed the door and returned to the others. The stranger, dominated for the moment by his quiet, masterful manner, had made no movement to interfere, stood, as he had left him, by the doorway. But his eyes were fixed still wrathfully upon the young woman who stared back at him, fascinated, clutching at the table for support. Her lips were ashen, parted in a soundless terror.
Satterthwaite turned to her.
“Do you know this man, Evelyn?”
She made an effort, answered.
“It—it is Harry—or his ghost!”
The stranger laughed in bitter scorn.
“What foolery!—Don’t pretend I died since yesterday!”
Amazement came into both their faces.
“Since yesterday?” they repeated in one bewildered echo.
The stranger frowned.
“What is there strange about that?” he asked, irritably, impressed, nevertheless, by their evidently genuine astonishment.
“Where—where were you yesterday, Harry?” asked the young woman unsteadily, as though scarcely daring to probe some awful mystery.
He laughed shortly in impatience.
“Why, of course——” he began in confident tones. He stopped, a baffled look suddenly in his eyes. “Of course——” he began again, less confidently. Then he gave it up. “I—I can’t remember—it’s funny!—I can’t remember where I was yesterday——” He bit his lower lip, looked around him slowly with bent and puzzled brows, plainly uneasy at this unexpected forgetfulness. “But of course I must have been here!” He put an end to his embarrassment by dogmatic assertion.
Satterthwaite contemplated him for a moment with eyes that searched him to the depths.
“H’m!” he said, meditatively. “There’s something extraordinary about this!—Won’t you sit down, Mr. Tremaine?” He pointed to a chair. “Let us discuss this matter amicably—it’s not so simple as you think, and hostility won’t help us.”
Tremaine hesitated a moment, a flicker of angry revolt in his eyes. But there was a note in Satterthwaite’s quiet tones which more than invited compliance, and he seated himself in the chair with a shrug of the shoulders which justified him in himself.
“This is my flat—and my wife,” he said, “anyway!” The assertion sounded curiously weak.
The young woman watched him speechlessly.
Satterthwaite caressed his chin with that little gesture which was habitual to him when commencing the cross-examination of a witness. He began in the suave, deliberate tones familiar to the Courts.
“What is the last thing you can remember, Mr. Tremaine?” he asked.
Tremaine stared at him.
“I—I think——” he began, hesitatingly, almost automatically responsive to Satterthwaite’s seductive voice. Then he stopped, the baffled look again in his eyes. “What the devil has it got to do with you?” he demanded, in exasperation.
Satterthwaite was unruffled.
“It has a great deal to do with me, Mr. Tremaine,” he said, “and with all of us here. So please try to answer my questions.”
Tremaine’s eyes blazed at him.
“What right have you to question me?—What are you doing here at all, that’s what I want to know?”
Satterthwaite soothed him with a gesture.
“We’re coming to that presently. Answer my questions now—and afterward you can put any questions to me that you like. Now—try and remember!”
Tremaine relapsed sullenly. It was evident that he was secretly conscious of the inferiority in which his absence of memory placed him. His eyes sought the young woman as though to elicit some key-point of remembrance, came back empty.
“Well?” he said, with suspicious ill-humour.
Satterthwaite was courtesy itself.
“Now, think! Carry your mind back! You were in the Army, weren’t you?”
“Of course!”
“You remember that—perfectly?”
“Yes—of course I do!” His tone was impatient.
“Good! You remember being in France?”
“I should think so!”
“In what part of France were you last?”
“In the Argonne.”
“Right! Now—when did you leave France?”
Tremaine hesitated, bit his lip. The eyes went blank again.
“I—I can’t remember.”
“Do you remember leaving France at all?—Do you remember the voyage?”
There was a silence whilst Tremaine evidently made an effort of memory.
“No,” he said, at last, “I cannot remember it.”
“Ah!—Now, what is the last thing you can remember in France? You were in the trenches, I suppose?”
“No—we had left the trenches behind us. We were fighting in the forest—I can remember that—a sort of ravine with splintered trees—we were attacking——” A new note of interest came into his voice, a satisfaction at recovering these memories. “By George, yes! Of course, there was a terrific attack on—we were going for the Kriemhild Line. What happened——?” He hesitated. “I was running forward—the Boche was shelling like mad——” He seemed to be visualizing a scene, his face screwed up, his eyes narrowed, his lower lip between his teeth. “I saw a whole bunch go down—and then——” He stopped.
“And then?”
“A sheet of flame. I—I can’t remember anything more. I—I must have been hit, I suppose——”
“I see. Now, can you remember what you were wearing just then?”
“I was in shirt and breeches. My tunic had been torn off the day before—breaking through the undergrowth. I remember that perfectly.”
Satterthwaite nodded.
“And your identity disc?”
“I’d lost that the day before also—I remember thinking I should have to get a new one.”
Satterthwaite smiled.
“We’re coming to it,” he said, encouragingly. “Now—just before you came into this flat, where were you?”
“In a street-car. I got off at the corner in the usual way, and let myself in with my key.”
“You had that key in France, I suppose?”
“Yes, I had it with a few others on a ring in my breeches-pocket. I kept it for the day I should come back.”
“Quite. Now—before you got into that street-car, where were you? Where had you been?”
Tremaine hesitated again.
“I can’t for the life of me remember!—I—I sort of woke up in that street-car, as if I had been to sleep on my way home. I remember looking out and thinking to myself—of course, that’s where I am—nearly home. It seemed quite natural.”
Obviously, the man himself was puzzled. There was a short silence, and then Satterthwaite spoke again.
“And you remember nothing of what you did between the day you attacked the Kriemhild Line—and finding yourself in the street-car?”
Tremaine frowned in a desperate effort to collect his thoughts.
“No,” he said at last. “It’s an extraordinary thing but my mind seems a complete blank!”
“Can you remember the date of that attack upon the Kriemhild Line—the day you saw that sheet of flame go up?”
“October tenth,” came the reply without hesitation.
“What year?”
“1918, of course.”
Satterthwaite smiled.
“Do you know what year this is?”
The other stared at him, a sudden fear in his eyes.
“Not 1919?” he cried. “Don’t say I’ve lost a year?”
“1920!”
“Good God!” He jumped up, gripped in a panic that drove the blood out of his face, and switched round to his wife. “Evelyn! Where have I been? Haven’t I been here all this time?”
She took a deep breath.
“I see you to-day for the first time since you sailed in April, 1918, Harry,” she said, steadily.
He stood swaying on his feet, hand pressed to his brow, through a long moment of realization. No one spoke. Then he dropped his hand, turned to his wife again.
“And you?—When——?” he indicated Satterthwaite with a helpless gesture, “when did this happen?”
She met his eyes bravely.
“I married—Jack—a year ago to-day!” she answered. The effort of her speech was obvious.
“But you couldn’t!” he exclaimed. “It’s bigamy!”
Satterthwaite went without a word to the escritoire standing in a corner of the room and took out a paper. He came back with it, handed it silently to Tremaine. It was an official War Department notification.
Tremaine stared at it.
“My God!” he muttered, appalled.
“You are dead, my friend!” said Satterthwaite, grimly. “Killed in action, October 10th, 1918.”
Again there was a long silence. Tremaine sank heavily into a chair, stared straight in front of him. An expression of combativeness came slowly into his face, his jaw set. At last he uttered an aggressive grunt.
“Well, I’m not!” he said. “I’m very much alive. So that’s that! Whatever has happened, I’ve come back! This is my flat—and my wife and child. And you can clear out just as soon as you like!” His eyes flamed hostility as they met Satterthwaite’s. “Quit!”
His wife sprang forward.
“Harry!” she cried, imploring she scarcely knew what.
He turned to her.
“I’ll talk to you presently,” he said, in a voice of smouldering resentment. “I’m not blaming you—but I guess you might have waited a bit. We’ll square this out by ourselves when he’s gone.”
Satterthwaite smiled, and his smile was by no means acquiescent.
“I guess you’ll have to wait for that, Mr. Tremaine,” he said, in even tones that had an edge to them. “I’m not going just yet.”
Tremaine glared up at him.
“What?” he cried, incredulously.
“I’m not going,” repeated Satterthwaite. “You don’t realize the situation, my friend. This woman has been living with me for a year as my wife. I do not propose to make her name a public scandal. Officially, you are dead. Well—remain dead!”
Tremaine laughed mockingly.
“And leave you my wife, my child—all this!” He waved his hand round the flat. “Thank you!”
Satterthwaite shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll buy your property of you at your own valuation. Your will has been proved. The amount of your estate, plus interest, shall be refunded to you. I’ll give you, in addition, any reasonable amount as compensation. You are the victim of circumstances, my friend—but, as a straight man, there’s only one thing for you to do. You can’t ruin this woman’s life!”
Both men, following their thought, turned to glance at her. She stood tense, deathly pale, looking from one to the other, evidently in an atrocious dilemma, unable to utter a word.
Tremaine swung round again to his rival, sneered scornfully.
“What kind of fool do you take me for? Do you expect me to give up my wife and child, my home—give up my whole existence and pretend to be someone else—just to oblige you? You must be mad!—I’ve come back and here I am—come to stay,” he ended, doggedly, “to pick up my life again!”
There was a shade of sympathy in Satterthwaite’s eyes as he contemplated him.
“But can’t you see that it’s impossible to pick it up again where you left off?” he said. “Can’t you see that as Harry Tremaine you can never be happy again? You can’t get away from what has happened—it will always be there, haunting you—and you’ll be reminded of it—pointed at. The other women will make your wife’s life a hell in the thousand little subtle ways they have. And besides, what have you been doing for the past two years? You’ve been living somewhere—as somebody. That existence will always be waiting in the background—ready to spring out on you—and you can’t guard against it, for you don’t even know what it was!”
The young woman bent forward.
“Can’t you remember, Harry?—Can’t you think where you’ve been—what you’ve been doing?” she asked, anxiously. “Oh!” she added, with a little despairing gesture, “I only want to do what is right—what is best for all of us!”
Tremaine shook his head.
“I haven’t the remotest idea of where I was at lunchtime to-day!” he said. “I may have come straight out of hospital, for all I know.”
Satterthwaite nodded, humouring him.
“You may—of course,” he said. “But it’s highly improbable. Two years is a long time to stay in hospital. Almost certainly you have been living somewhere, in new relationships. Be reasonable, my friend. Can’t you see that the only thing is to sell out to me—and clear off, go right away—start a fresh life?”
Tremaine revolted.
“I’m damned if I do!” he replied. “Right is right—you can’t get away from it. I’m Harry Tremaine—and I’ve come back to my wife and child—to my own existence—and I’ve got a right to them!” He rose from his chair. “Enough of this talk! I’m master of this flat—and I give you just time enough to pack up your traps. Get a move on!” His voice quivered with an anger he instinctively accentuated as a protection against the other man’s arguments. “I want to be alone with my wife! Get out!” He moved forward menacingly.
Satterthwaite did not stir.
“I think not,” he said, steadily. “Not like that.”
Tremaine’s anger flamed up in him.
“Get out!—or I’ll throw you out!”
Satterthwaite smiled.
“If you wish to fight for her——?” he said, grimly inviting.
With a savage snarl, Tremaine tore off his coat.
His wife sprang forward in terrified appeal.
“Harry!”
He flung her off brutally.
“Stand out of this!” he said. “This is a man’s fight! I’ll deal with you afterward!”
An atmosphere of primitive passion filled the room. She cowered away, watching the rivals with fascinated eyes, like a squaw for whom two braves unsheath their knives. Both were big, powerful men. Satterthwaite made no movement while Tremaine flung aside his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeves—but his eyes were warily alert and his fists clenched massively at the end of the arms held loosely ready for sudden action.
With a savage bellow of maddened hatred, Tremaine rushed at him blindly. Satterthwaite’s right arm jerked up to guard—and like lightning his left fist shot out from the shoulder, crashed full between his adversary’s eyes. Tremaine went over backward, arms in the air, his head striking the table with an impact that shattered glass and crockery, rolled over to the floor. He lay motionless.
His wife had darted to his side, bent over him.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried, looking up to the victor. “You haven’t killed him?”
Satterthwaite bent over him also.
“No,” he said. “Get some water!”
She took the jug from the table and Satterthwaite splashed his face. Tremaine drew a difficult breath, opened his eyes, looked up and around him, dazed.
“Where am I?” he asked, feebly.
“You’re all right,” said Satterthwaite, bathing away the blood which trickled down his nose. “Don’t worry.”
Still half-stunned, the stricken man made an abortive, ill-coördinated effort to rise.
“Here, let me help you,” said Satterthwaite. “Get into this chair.” He lifted him up, supported him to a big armchair by the fireplace, deposited him in it.
“Thanks,” said Tremaine, feebly, “—extremely good of you.” He looked around him with vacant eyes. “Where am I? What happened?—I—I was in a street-car——”
Satterthwaite shot a swift glance of intelligence to the young woman who was, after all, his wife as well. She drew near, her breath held at a sudden possibility, her eyes searching the face of this man who but a moment before had so uncompromisingly claimed her. Had he——?
“Don’t worry about anything now,” said Satterthwaite, kindly. “You’ll feel better in a moment.”
His erstwhile adversary smiled up vacantly into his face.
“I’m better now,” he said, passing his hand gropingly across his brow. Then, as he removed it, he stared stupidly at the blood upon his fingers. “What happened?” he asked, weakly. “How did I get here? I was in a street-car—was there an accident?—I remember the street-car——”
“You’ll remember all about it presently,” Satterthwaite assured him, watching him narrowly with critical eyes.
“I suppose you brought me here,” he continued in his dazed voice. “Very kind of you—I’m much obliged.” He looked round, perceived the young woman with the water-jug in her hand, and smiled feebly. “Your wife, I presume?—I’m very sorry, madam,” he added, politely, “to put you to so much inconvenience.”
She stared at him for a moment as though suspecting his sincerity, and then turned away her head, a wild expression in the eyes that sought Satterthwaite’s face. He signalled back discretion.
“Here’s your coat,” he said, holding it out. “Let me help you on with it.”
Tremaine gazed at it, obviously puzzled, and then glanced down to his rolled-back shirt-sleeves.
“Was there a row, then?” he asked, mystified. “A fight?”
“There was a little trouble,” conceded Satterthwaite.
“And you took me out of it, I suppose?” he said, with genuine gratitude. “I am exceedingly obliged to you, sir—going to this bother for a complete stranger.”
“Not at all—not at all,” said Satterthwaite, easily. “Here, let me help you.”
The assistance was accepted. Tremaine rose shakily to his feet, stood docilely while Satterthwaite guided his arms into the sleeves of his coat. There was a curiously subtle difference in his expression; quite another, a gentler, more courteous personality looked out of those features which were Tremaine’s with a placid smile such as Mrs. Tremaine had never seen. Close though his head was to Satterthwaite’s, he evinced not the slightest sign of recognition.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “I’ll get along now.”
“Where do you live?” asked Satterthwaite, with a veiled glance at the young woman.
She held her breath, on this opening threshold of the mystery of the past two years.
“At the Newport Hotel,” he replied. He took a few steps and then stopped, his hand pressed to his brow. He turned to Satterthwaite. “I wonder whether you would mind my sitting here a little longer, sir?” he asked, apologetically. “I still feel somewhat faint and dizzy.”
“By all means,” replied Satterthwaite. “You are quite welcome to stay until you are recovered.”
The young woman marvelled at the quiet self-control of his voice. She felt as though she must shriek to break a nightmare.
“You are very kind,” he said. “I am afraid my wife will be anxious about me——”
His wife! The young woman choked back a cry. His wife! Then——
“Is it too much to ask if you would telephone to her, sir?” he continued. “She would come and fetch me.”
“Certainly I will,” replied Satterthwaite, his face an impassive mask.
“My name is Durham—Room 363 at the hotel.”
“Right. Come and sit down in here.” He led the way into the adjoining drawing-room. “Make yourself comfortable whilst I ring through to Mrs. Durham.”
He hospitably settled his guest in the most luxurious chair of the elegantly furnished room, and then went out, closing the door after him.
His wife was awaiting him outside. Her face was white. Her eyes, preternaturally large, implored him. She clasped her hands tensely against her breast.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried, her voice nevertheless held too low to be overheard. “We can’t let him go like that! It is Harry—after all!”
He moved forward, and she followed him to the telephone.
“It is Harry all right,” he agreed. “It’s clear enough what has happened. He was shell-shocked. The hospital authorities found nothing on him by which to identify him. No one happened to recognize him. When he recovered consciousness he thought he was someone else—was, in fact, someone else. There are half-a-dozen cases on record, to my knowledge—cases that have nothing to do with the war. Dissociation of personality is the technical term of it. He just ceases to be Tremaine—and becomes Durham, with all its implications.”
“But, Jack!” she expostulated. “We know he’s not Durham!”
He shrugged his shoulders as he lifted up the telephone receiver.
“What good will it do to proclaim our knowledge?” he asked. “It insists merely on double bigamy—smash-up all round!”
“Then——?” she clutched at him. “You’re going to——?”
He turned to answer the challenge of the telephone operator, gave a number.
“Hallo!—The Newport Hotel—Will you ask Mrs. Durham to come to the telephone, please?—She’s staying at Room 363—right!—I’ll hold on!”
“Jack! Jack!” His wife implored him. “It’s not right—it can’t be right!—We must tell her!”
His attention was claimed by the telephone.
“Hallo!—Is that Mrs. Durham?—My name’s Satterthwaite, no, you won’t recognize it.—Your husband has met with a slight accident—nothing serious—he’s here and he wants to know if you’ll come round and fetch him as he feels rather shaky—yes——” he gave the address, “—yes—ground-floor flat. Very good. We’ll expect you.”
He put up the receiver, turned to his wife with a grim smile.
“Now we shall see what Harry’s other choice is like,” he said.
She was not to be diverted.
“But, Jack—you’ll tell her?—You must tell her!” she implored.
He looked her full in the eyes. His voice was grave.
“Evelyn! Are you tired of our life together? Do you prefer him to me?”
She turned away her head with a hopeless gesture.
“Oh, don’t ask me! Don’t tempt me!—I don’t want to think of myself—I only want to do what is right! And how can it be right to—to let him go away like a stranger from all that was his!”
He laid his hands upon her shoulders, forced her gaze to meet his again.
“And is it right, Evelyn, to break your life, to break my life, to break this woman’s life—to put Harry himself into an impossible position—out of a quixotic regard for pure ethics?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” she said, shaking her head in mental anguish. “I only know that he’s Harry—and that we’re disowning him——”
“But he does not know that he is Harry Tremaine—he’s quite content to be Durham!”
“And if he wakes up again and remembers?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Wait till it happens. We can only deal with the actual situation. At the present time he’s quite happily Durham!—Now, dear,” he smiled affection, “trust me! Leave it all to me—just keep quiet!” He kissed her on the brow. “It will all work out.”
She turned away, shuddering.
“He was my husband,” she said, drearily.
“He was!—And your husband was killed in action on October 10th, 1918. The man in the drawing-room is a complete stranger by the name of Durham.—Now, let us go in to him.”
She resigned herself, with one last protest.
“I don’t like it, Jack! I won’t promise! Right is right!”
“In this case it is wrong! Come!”
He led her back to the drawing-room. Their visitor rose politely from his chair.
“Don’t get up,” said Satterthwaite. “Your wife is coming along.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “It is very good of you to take so much trouble. I shall be quite all right when my wife arrives to take charge of me.” He smiled in half-serious self-depreciation.
The three of them sat down. The Durham personality was amiably loquacious. The young woman watched him speechlessly, noting, with an icy chill at her heart, a hundred little familiarities of gesture as he sat in that old familiar chair all unconscious of any previous presence in it.
“I’m very muddled still,” he confided. “I can’t remember anything since being in that street-car. The row, whatever it was, is a complete blank to me—I can’t imagine even how I got into this street. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“Very,” agreed Satterthwaite, coolly.
“It’s not the first time I’ve had a lapse of memory like this,” he went on. “A shock does it. I went through the war—and—would you believe it?—I woke up one day in hospital utterly unable to remember anything about myself except that my name was Durham! I couldn’t remember where I came from—nor whether I had any relatives—couldn’t remember anything except just my name. And—this is the strange part of it—I never have remembered. They discharged me from hospital—shell-shock it was—and I just started life afresh.” He smiled confidently at the young woman. “I sometimes wonder whether I was married before, madam—but I hope not. I couldn’t part with the wife I’ve got. I married her eighteen months ago and she’s everything to me. I don’t think there’s another woman like her in the world! And she feels the same about me. That’s the right sort of married life, isn’t it?”
He waited for her agreement. Her tongue seemed to be sticking to the roof of her dry mouth. She could only nod, speechlessly, and try to smile. Something seemed to be crying out in her: “Harry! Harry!” Another part of her consciousness prayed desperately for guidance. Should she—could she—ought she to speak—to break this pathetic little idyll he sketched for her?
She looked curiously at his clothes. They were cheap and ill-fitting—frayed at the trouser-ends. So different from the spruce Harry she had known!
As though something of her thought had communicated itself to him, he clapped his hand suddenly to his breast-pocket, fished out a wallet, glanced into it, put it back.
“Whew!” he breathed in deep relief. “I had a nasty turn—thought perhaps I had lost that in the row. It contains all I own in the world!” He smiled. “It’s all right, though!” He glanced around him appreciatively. “But it wouldn’t buy the things you’ve got in this room, all the same. I admire your taste, if you’ll pardon my saying so, madam. I’m glad my wife is coming round—I’ll show her the sort of drawing-room we’re going to have some day, when we’ve made good!”
His cheerful smile was heart-breaking. She felt as though she must jump up and run across to him, shrieking that it was his—all his! That he and she had bought it all together, every bit of it. And yet she could not stir—could only stare at him in a fascination that was dumb.
Satterthwaite sat apparently unmoved, but his jaw was set hard.
“Perhaps you’ll come in for a legacy some day,” he said, casually.
His wife glanced at him, reading his thought. Of course, Jack would not do anything mean, would compensate him somehow! She was suddenly very grateful to him. The idea of a future anonymous restitution lightened her conscience a little.
“It’s not likely!” said their visitor, indifferently. “We have neither of us any relatives—my wife and I. And I don’t care so long as I’ve got her. When we get some youngsters we shall be the happiest family going!” He smiled—and she thought of Dorothy, peacefully asleep in the other room. She shut out the picture with an effort.
The door-bell rang, and, with an enormous relief, she sprang up to answer it. Anything to put an end to this torture! For one moment, in the hall, she hesitated.
“Help me! help me, O God, to do what is right!” she prayed in dumb agony. And the question came up inexorably before her, vast, overpowering, not to be solved. Right!—what was right?
She opened the door.
An insignificant-looking little woman of the lower middle-class stood on the threshold, nervously agitated, her eyes wild with alarm.
“My husband?” she asked, breathlessly. “Mr. Durham?”
“He’s here,” replied Mrs. Satterthwaite, coldly. “This way.”
She led her to the drawing-room and Harry Tremaine’s two wives entered together, the one beautiful, refined, exquisitely dressed—the other commonplace, dowdy, the cheaply attired product of a cheap city suburb, good-hearted vulgarity in every line of her. Mrs. Satterthwaite looked from the man who had been her husband to the woman who was now his wife—and her heart turned suddenly to stone.
“Here is Mr. Durham,” she said. With something of a shock, Satterthwaite admired her consummate ease of manner.
The little woman had rushed forward to her husband.
“Oh, Ed, Ed!” she cried, ignoring Satterthwaite, who stood up politely. “What is the matter?—You’re not hurt?—Not badly?”
“I’m all right, dear,” he said, embracing her. “I’ll tell you all about it presently. These kind people took me in and looked after me.”
She turned to them.
“Oh, thank you so much!” she said, effusively. “It is good of you!—And I don’t know what would have happened if anything serious had gone wrong with Ed to-night!—You see, we’re sailing for Buenos Ayres to-morrow! And he’s got such a good post—an agency—and if anything had prevented his going——”
“Never mind that, my dear,” said Durham, cutting short her loquacity. “These kind people do not want to go into our private affairs. Come along. I’ve inconvenienced them enough already.” He held out his hand to Mrs. Satterthwaite. “Good-bye, madam—and many thanks.”
She looked him in the eyes as she took his hand. They were the eyes of a stranger.
“Good-bye, Mr. Durham,” she said, and turned away.
Satterthwaite escorted the couple to the door.
“Your hat is here,” he said, as he took it off the clothes-peg where Tremaine had hung it. “Good-bye.—Good-bye, Mr. Durham.—What boat do you sail by to-morrow?” The enquiry was in the most casual tone of courteous interest.
“The Manhattan.”
“Pleasant voyage—and good luck to you both!” he said, cheerfully, and closed the door. He stood for a moment listening to their happy voices as they went out of the building and then turned to find his wife standing by his side.
“Jack!” she cried, and her eyes searched his face as if to read acknowledged partnership in a crime. “He’s gone?”
He nodded, smiling at her.
“Gone, right enough—and he’ll get his legacy. I can trace him quite easily now we know the name of his boat. That gives us a clear conscience.”
“Does it, Jack?—Does it?—Oh, I wish I could be sure!—Durham is not the man Tremaine was!”
“He’s a happier man than Tremaine would be, anyway! Think of their delight when they get that legacy!” He led her back into the dining-room, where the remains of their anniversary feast were yet upon the table. “And, dear!” he looked into her eyes, “we are happier people than we should have been had Durham not replaced Tremaine!”
She shook her head, still doubtful.
“But if he remembers?” she queried.
“He goes a long way off, into a new environment. The chances are against his remembering at all. If he does,” he shrugged his shoulders, “he will probably himself put it down as a hallucination from which his devoted little wife will nurse him back. Don’t worry, my dear. We did the right thing.”
“If only I could be sure!” she said, with a sigh.
* * * * * *
The next morning Dorothy woke up to see her mother bending over her bed.
“Where’s Dada, Mummy?” she asked.
“Dada?” said Mrs. Satterthwaite, as though she did not understand.
“Yes,” said the child. “Dada—Dada who came back last night!”
Her mother shook her head, smilingly.
“You dreamed it, dear,” she said. “Dada was killed in the war.”