2

The shock numbed me; and I read again with so little attention that I had to turn back in the middle. Then a second shock drove the first from my mind.

Eric was dying: yes, I realized that. He was bidding Barbara farewell; and, in my first uncaring glance, I had seen so much that I must now see all. After losing Barbara, he had found little inducement to live; and, though he had once hoped to marry little Ivy Maitland, John Gaymer had returned—almost on the eve of the wedding—to establish again his empire over Ivy’s will. Eric had made his failing lungs an excuse to set her free:

“Two years would have cured me; but I wanted her to choose for herself. And, when she too dropped out of my life, I didn’t try to get well.” . . .

There followed pages of apology, pages of explanation. Eric’s love for Barbara was consuming him; and, as the flame died to a pale flicker, he forgot family, friends and self in desperate prayers for her happiness. Once more the name of Croxton Hall fell like a black shadow across his mind. There was an agonized reference to some rebuff that he had inflicted upon her. Then came the reason for the rebuff.

It was while I was in Ireland that Barbara had gone to the Pentyres. When the party broke up on the first night—Eric’s apology could not have been more damningly circumstantial if he had been indicting her—, she had concealed herself till he came up to bed, then invaded his room, finally begged him to take her, take her away. Her marriage to me was a mistake; I should not want to keep her when I realized my mistake; I loved her enough to forgive her. . . .

I remembered, I now understood her distraught questions whether I should be broken-hearted if I lost her, whether I was prepared to sacrifice life, honour, everything to secure her happiness. . . .

In the heartlessness and abandonment of that moment, I knew, as well as if I had seen her, that Barbara was wholly mad. I recalled the telegram in which she said that she was missing me; I remembered her loving welcome, on my return; I heard again her promise that she was going to make a new start. And then I called up any self-control that remained to keep me from going mad too. The child that lay buried at Crawleigh was not Eric’s. His letter told me that; and, when I found myself believing his letter, I felt that I was still sane. Barbara was innocent of everything but a whole-hearted will and intention to betray me; and Eric had saved her from that. After he had repelled her, she was innocent of everything but calculated hypocrisy, sustained triumphantly for fifteen months. I could never believe her again.

And what then?

A lust for revenge blinded me; and, though I could hardly hold a pen, I addressed an envelope to Barbara and thrust Eric’s letter, without comment, half inside it. Then I thought of him dying in California, by now perhaps dead. I burned the envelope. As it crinkled and scattered, I promised Eric’s letter the same fate; then I hesitated for fear that my lust for magnanimity might prove more deadly than my impulse of revenge. Was my life, also, to be a calculated hypocrisy?

I paced up and down the room till a clock struck midnight. I had lost the post, I realized.

Then I looked at the other letters. The first was from Barbara. If I intended to take a holiday at all this year, would I not come down to Crawleigh? Thanks to this Irish trouble—how remote it all seemed!—I had refused all my shooting invitations; but now that the McSwiney chapter was closed . . .

I knew, unreasoningly, that I could not meet Barbara. Whatever happened to us later, I must have time to think. I telephoned to O’Rane and asked him to accompany me on a motoring tour. I believe I told him—I, of all people!—that he seemed overwrought.

“No holidays for me, old man,” he answered with regret.

“I doubt if you’ll find it a holiday,” I said. “I want to discover what the great public’s thinking about.” . . .

“I wish I could manage it . . .”

And then my self-control left me:

“Raney, you must!,” I said. “I’m going through the worst time of my life, something more awful than I thought could ever happen to me. If you knew . . .”

“You can lend me some pyjamas, I suppose?,” he interrupted in a changed voice. “I’ll have my gear sent round in the morning. I’m sorry, George. To the best of my poor ability, you know I’ll see you through to the grave and beyond.”