“For what guarantee have I now,” he cried, “that everyone else whom I trusted will not behave to me like that? You, mother, you, what plans and plots may you not have got against me? It is all very well to say that you cannot, that you are my friend. But what is my experience of friends? They are those who know one best, and can thus stab most deeply. God defend me from my friends—I would sooner shake hands with my enemies. Ah! I forgive them, for I might know that they were enemies; but, fool that I was, I never guessed that my friends were but enemies who sat at my table. They ate my food—I wish it had choked them; they drank my wine again and again—I wish I had poisoned it. For they have poisoned me, they have made my life impossible. Ah, don’t say I shall get over it! That is silly. How can I get over it? For if I could, I should not say these things to you. I should be silent, I hope, and trust to what is called the healing hand of Time. But there are certain things Time never heals. One of them is the infidelity of those whom one thought were friends.”
He was speaking quickly now, the bile of bitterness overflowed.
“Friends!” he said. “Madge and Evelyn and I were friends. But they two have done this accursed thing. And if I have another friend in this world, I shall now expect him to believe the chance word of any lying tongue. Apart from you, I have one friend left, and if Tom Merivale told me to-morrow that I had cheated at cards, and that in consequence he declined the pleasure of my further acquaintance, I should not be surprised. I believe nothing good of my friends, and I believe less harm of my enemies! They, anyhow, can hurt me less. I have had but four friends in my life, and yet even with four, fool that I was, I counted myself rich in them. Two have gone, and there are just two people in this world whom I hate. Till yesterday there were none.”
Mrs. Home laid her hand timidly on his arm.
“Philip, dear Philip,” she said, “is there any good in saying these things? Does it help in any way what has happened, or does it help you?”
“No, it does no good,” said he. “I don’t want to do any good. I just choose to say what I am saying, and what I say, I assure you, is no exaggeration of what I feel—it does not even do justice to what I feel. One thing I have misstated, or it was but a mood of the moment. I said I was broken; I am nothing of the sort. I never did a better day’s work than to-day. But I don’t want to say these things again, and I have no intention of doing so. I beg you also never to refer to them. But I choose just this once to say what my feeling towards them is. I tried, indeed I tried my best, to forgive them, but I can’t. I can no more now conceive forgiving them than a blind man can conceive the colour of that rose. I loved them both, and in proportion as my love for them was strong, so is my hate for them.”
He paused a moment.
“That is all,” he said. “I wanted you to know that, and to be under no misconception as to what I felt. Let us never talk of either of them again. I have already given all necessary orders in London, and all I have to do here is to send back all wedding presents. I will do that to-night.”
He looked at her a moment as she stood there with hands that trembled and eyes that were dim, pitying him to the bottom of her kind, loving soul, but imploring him, so he felt, not to be like this. And the pity reached and touched him, though the entreaty did not.
“Poor mother,” he said. “I am sorry for you, indeed I am that. We have not kissed yet, or shaken hands.”