“I do love her,” Alistair interrupted fiercely. “I thought you understood. I only want now to know what I can do for her sake. If I were a Catholic, I would go into a monastery, so as to leave her free. That is the last word of Christianity for a man like me. The last word of science is the lethal chamber.”
Sir Bernard had an inspiration.
“Why don’t you go back to Molly Finucane?”
Alistair fell back in his chair as if he had received a blow. He woke out of his dream. Sir Bernard was right, and his mother had been wrong. He had no business to unite his wrecked career with such a life as Hero Vanbrugh’s. Molly Finucane was the true match for him. She was a scapegoat like himself. The figure of the poor little painted creature had haunted his memory even during these last days of courtship, and he had never felt quite satisfied that he had acted honourably in leaving her.
He rose to his feet.
“Yes,” he said, “I can do that. That will set Hero free. Good-bye, Sir Bernard. I am going back to London to marry Molly Finucane.”
CHAPTER XIX
POETS’ CORNER
The September sun was shining on Beers Cooperage, shining as brightly on the dingy London yard as on the glittering emerald seas of France.
The inhabitants of the Cooperage were rejoicing in the light and warmth. The cripple had brought out a rocking-chair, with its cane seat patched up with string, and was swinging himself with half-shut eyes in front of the little row of flowers which assiduous watering had kept alive during the summer drouth. A new canary in the mended cage of its predecessor chirruped gaily from the open window of one of the tiny row of cottages; the window of another revealed a trophy of travel, a box bearing on its lid a photograph of Southend Pier, framed in polished mussel-shells, which its owner, with an altruism not often found in the denizens of lordlier neighbourhoods, had disposed so that its beauty could be enjoyed by the passer-by at the expense of the inmates of the house themselves.
Over the whole of the Cooperage there was an atmosphere of freshness and content. The little gates and palings on the window-sills were newly painted in artistic green and white. Many of them now revealed their inner utility by guarding pots of musk or mignonette, with here and there a bright red geranium. The pavement of the yard was clean beyond its former wont, and the refuse heap that had once marked the abode of Mike Finigan had disappeared.