“She was quite frank with me. She told me that if she married me it would not be for myself but for what I could give her, and she wouldn’t do it. She said it wasn’t fair. I’m not blaming her—she was straight all through—but it’s not very encouraging to one’s personal estimate, is it? You see, I’ve not exactly had a surfeit of love. Nobody wanted me as a child, and if you’re not loved as a child, you find it hard to believe that anybody can love you afterwards. But we were good friends, and we were in sympathy. I had begun to think she might care, in spite of my background, even though she had taken Stanley——” He pulled himself up sharply, and then went on again—“You know, of course, I suppose? It can’t be a secret from you. There’s only one woman——” and poor Callander echoed the words under his breath, looking out at the calling spring day.
Why had she been at such definite pains to keep Christian in the dark? he wondered, his mind revolving ceaselessly round the same point. What held her back from all she needed most? Not fear of Mrs. Lyndesay or of County tongues, he was sure of that; nor, indeed, any shirking of the future. What had held her? And at that moment Christian quite unconsciously gave him his answer.
“She said I did not love her,” he continued from the leather arm-chair into which he had dropped rather wearily, in spite of his boasted strength. He might almost have been speaking to himself, and Callander kept his back turned, guessing that nothing but the dependence of recent illness would have led him to unveil his mind so frankly.
“Perhaps if you’re not loved, you don’t learn to love—no, that’s a rotten way of looking at it! It’s a poor sort of creature that can’t persuade a woman that he wants her. Yet I cared, and I couldn’t do it. Or perhaps I didn’t care enough—then.”
Callander made no answer, for he heard steps along the hall. He saw now what had happened; why Deb, who would have sold her soul for Crump, had yet flung it aside. The decision had evidently been final—Christian would not approach her again, nor would she ever attempt to bring him back. The way was clear for himself, if he chose to take it. He, at least, would have no difficulty in persuading a woman that he loved her! The older, harder, stronger man shrugged his shoulders mentally, and then reminded himself that Christian had scarcely had a chance, since Deb had wilfully misled him. Yet in this, as in all similar cases, it was up to each man to look to himself. He had only to keep his mouth shut, and Christian would never know what he knew—what Deb’s face had told him under the lantern on the old bridge. They were best apart, too, these fated Lyndesays, with their fanatical harbouring of terrible tradition and drear belief. It would be folly for them to marry, he told himself, and was instantly reproached by the memory of Christian’s frank eyes and the bright freshness of Deb’s presence. Well, well—granted, however grudgingly—should a man yet be forced to cut his own throat—to send another hot-footed to the woman he loved? Need a steward serve his master beyond the limits of good business faith? Only a fool would do it, or an idealist like Roger Lyndesay, in whom feudal loyalty was little less than monomania. He had no forbears urging sacrifice, no passionate creed to draw his will; nothing but his own ethical standard and the tender filament of a woman’s happiness.
His unseeing eyes rested on the clean world outside, as he listened vaguely to the stammering agitation of a voice behind him, and Christian’s quiet, encouraging replies.
After all, it was not a question either of Christian or of himself, but of Deb. Curious that he should have taken so long to compass that—he who had sneered and shrugged at his master’s slackness in loving! He had looked at it from the man’s point of view; suddenly he saw it from the woman’s. At least both she and Christian must have their chance. It was an ironic fate that had thrust the bestowal of it into his hands—he had a sudden wild impulse to laugh aloud and beat at the heavy glass before him. It was too much to ask—a thousand times too much; yet the very passion that had created the situation clamoured to him to comply. With characteristic abruptness and decision he yielded, accepting, and turned his attention to the scene in progress.
Just inside the door Gaskarth stood, cap in hand, sponsor, it seemed, for the dogged, miserable figure by the library table. Harker had had a bad time since the wild March night that had ended so disastrously for Crump. The still figure of his adversary had sobered his intoxication of hate, and in spite of the threatening faces round him he had insisted upon stopping for the doctor’s verdict. The latter’s shaken head had roused the crowd to a frenzy from which Harker had had a very narrow escape, but Gaskarth had got him safely out at last, shoved him on his own bicycle and sent him home.
“Not because I care a foot of lead piping what happens to you,” he informed him frankly, “but because I don’t want Crump Wrestling Academy figuring in the police-news. You couldn’t see you were heaving him at that d—d pillar, and you felled him right enough, though more by good luck than good management, I’ll swear. I don’t like your game, and I mean to keep wide of you, but I’ll not have you lynched on Crump ground. He wouldn’t have liked it. Me and Lakin’ Lyndesay—we fight fair!”
This was bad enough, but his reception at home was worse.