The last days—the week of Jenny's hard-won respite—passed for us at Breysgate like the interval between the firing of a fuse and the explosion. How would it go? Clear away obstacles and open the adit to profitable working? Or blow all the mine to ruins, and engulf the engineer in the débris? Nerves were on trial and severely tried. Chat was in flutters beyond description. I do not suppose that I myself was a cheerful companion. Jenny was steel, but the steel was red-hot.
At last—the last day! Jenny's week of respite drew to its end. Be sure I had counted! But if I had not, Octon himself came, most welcomely, to announce it. With a mighty relief I heard him say, as he threw himself into my arm-chair at the Old Priory, "I've just dropped in to say good-by, Austin. I'm off to-morrow."
"Off? Where to?" I had sooner have asked "For how long?" His reply answered both questions.
"Right out of this hole—for good." He smiled. "So, for once, I chanced meeting Lady Aspenick again in the park." He took up the poker and began to dig and prod my coals: all through our talk he held the poker, now digging and prodding, now using it to emphasize his words with a point or a wave. "I'm done with here, Austin. I've played a game that I never thought I should play again—and I've come to feel as if I'd never played it before. I've played it with all the odds against me, and I've made a good fight."
"Yes, too good," I said.
"Aye, aye! But I've lost. So I'm off." He lay back in the big chair—the same one in which Lacey had stretched his graceful, lithe young body—and looked up at me where I stood on the rug. "There's not much more to say, is there? I thought I'd say that much to you because you're a good fellow."
"And you're not," I retorted angrily—(Remember our nerves!) "Have you no care for what you love?"
"Am I so much the worse man of the two?" he asked.
"What's that got to do with it? Well, thank God you're going to-morrow!"
"Everybody always thanks God when I go, and I generally thank Him myself—but not to-day, perhaps." His next prod at the coals in the grate was a vicious one. "I suppose that some day there'll be a general feeling that I must be wiped out—an instinctive revolt against my existence, Austin. This neighborhood has felt the thing already. Some day it will be felt where stronger measures than cutting are in fashion. Then I shall be killed. Perhaps I shall kill, too, but they'll get me in the end, depend upon it!" Suddenly he smiled in a tender reflective way. "That was what poor little Madge was always so afraid of. Well, I had a good deal to try my temper while she was with me." He looked up at me, smiling now in mockery. "Don't be shocked, my excellent Austin. I'm talking about my wife."