“It’s impossible that you should, sir,” said the Colonel firmly, though courteously: “and when you have heard me out, you yourself will be the first to admit as much. Where was I? Ah, I remember. Well, George Langhorn left me in the condition which I have attempted to describe, and with the understanding which I have mentioned. How, precisely, he carried out that understanding, I am, of course, unable to say, as his interview with Miss Welford was naturally a private one, and he never volunteered any detailed account of it, while it would have been absolute cruelty to press him on the subject; for if his state of mind was lamentable when he left me, it was as nothing to the dismay and horror which held possession of him on his return some two hours later. He rushed into my room really like a man distraught—I am in the habit of measuring my words, and I don’t use that one unadvisedly—plumped himself down on my sofa, and ejaculated: ‘Merciful heavens, she owns half the Sky-high!’ ”
At this climax—for such his manner obviously indicated it to be—the Colonel looked round on us in sombre triumph. We were all gravely attentive (except the new member, who still smiled), and the Colonel continued, well satisfied with the effect which he had produced.
“There’s fate for you, if you like!” he exclaimed, with uplifted forefinger. “There’s the impossibility of evading destiny or escaping from a foreordained environment! Out of all the girls in the world, George had fixed his affections on that particular one; he had gone straight to her, as it were; and, for my part, I can’t doubt that the very thing he hated, and she hated too, had, all the same, served in some mysterious way to bring them together. And there was the situation! Not only was George, as a man, forbidden the escape which he had prayed for, but Stretchley’s was brought into contact with the ‘Sky-high Tailoring Company’! No doubt you are all familiar with its advertisements—chubby boys in sailor suits, square-legged little girls in velveteen, dress-suits at thirty-seven and sixpence! I need not enlarge on the subject; it’s distasteful. It is enough to say that any connection between Stretchley’s and the Sky-high was to George’s mind almost unthinkable. Observe, then, the curious and distressing psychological situation. As a man, he hated Stretchley’s; as Stretchley’s, he loathed and despised the Sky-high. His love—his most unfortunate love—was in conflict at once with his personal feelings and with his professional pride. And what of her? When he grew calmer, George entered on that subject with some fulness. She had suffered, exactly as he had, from the obsession of the family business, in the shadow of which she had been bred, to a half-share in which she had succeeded on her father’s death. In early days, before fortune came, she had even been dressed from the stock! Like George, she had looked to marriage for a complete change of life and associations. It was not to be. And, more than that, she was acutely conscious of what George must feel. Her training and the family atmosphere had not failed to teach her that. She knew only too well how Stretchley’s would feel towards the Sky-high. And George was Stretchley’s, and she was the Sky-high! One sometimes reads of mésalliances in the papers or meets them among one’s acquaintance. Never have I met one like this. The very fact of the occupation being in essence the same intensified the discrepancy and the contrast. Which, gentlemen, would surprise and, I may say, shock you more—that a duke should marry oil or soap, or that a really first-class purveyor should take his bride from a fried fish shop? No man of perception can hesitate. It is within the bounds of the same occupation that the greatest contrasts, the greatest distance, the greatest gulfs of feeling are to be found. I value an otherwise painful experience because it exhibited that philosophic truth in so vivid and striking a manner. You would sooner ask the Commander-in-Chief to lend a hand with a wheelbarrow than propose to him to take command of a corporal’s guard. Your chef would no doubt put on the coals to oblige a lady, but not to oblige a thousand ladies would he wash the dishes!”
“I daresay that’s all true,” I made bold to observe, “but, nevertheless, your pair of lovers seem to me rather ridiculous.”
“Exactly, sir,” said the Colonel—and I was relieved that he took my interruption so well. “They would seem to you ridiculous. Probably the chef seems ridiculous too? A man of another profession can’t have the feeling in its full intensity. It seems ridiculous! But think—doesn’t that very fact increase the tragedy? To suffer from a feeling deep and painful, and to be aware that it is in the eyes of the world at large ridiculous—can you imagine anything more distressing?”
“Your story illustrates more than one great truth, I perceive, Colonel.”
“If it did not, sir, I should never have troubled you with it,” he answered with lofty courtesy.
“And what happened? Did love triumph over all?”
“I hesitate to describe the issue in those terms,” said he, with a slight frown. “They are conventional—designedly, no doubt—and I don’t think that they fit this particular case. George and Miss Welford were, beyond question, deeply attached to one another, and they got married in due course—nor am I aware that the marriage has turned out otherwise than well in the ordinary sense. Mrs Langhorn is a very charming woman. But was it a triumph of love? I look deeper, gentlemen. In my view love was but an instrument in the hands of Fate. The triumph was the triumph of Fate, and I am persuaded that, when they went to the altar, resignation to destiny was the most prominent feeling in the minds of both of them. That is why I said at the beginning that the story was rather a sad one. The very night before the wedding I found George poring over the Sky-high’s illustrated catalogue! What does that fact carry to your minds?”
“It looks bad,” I admitted, with a sigh.