The Torch and Other Tales

by Eden Phillpotts

I'd about spent my hour and was turning back to the house half a mile below when Jenny herself came along, well knowing where I was; and so I wasted no words, but prepared to strike while the thought of her set uppermost in my mind. She spoke first, however, and much surprised me. 'Twas her way of breaking into the matter did so, and she well knew that what she had to tell would let the cat out of the bag.

"William," she said, "I couldn't bear for you to hear the thing what's happened except from me, and I want for you to be merciful to all concerned."

She was excited and her hair waving in the autumn wind so brown as the falling leaves. Her eyes were wild also, and her mouth down-drawn, and a good bit of misery looked out of her face.

"I'm known for a merciful man where mercy may be called for, my lovely dear," I said to her. "Us'll walk up and down my path once more since you've come. I've long known there was a lot on your mind and went so far as to ask your father what it might be; but he only said 'twas your conscience up against you leaving him."

"'Tis my conscience all right," she answered, "but not like that—a long sight more crueller than that. Tom Bond has gone to see father this afternoon and—oh, William, I wish I was dead!"

I kept my nerve, for that was the only hope in her present frame of mind.

"'Tis a very ill-convenient thing for my future wife to wish she was dead," I told her; "and why for has Tom gone to see your father? Mr. Owlet ain't the sort of man to find a gay young spark like Tom much to his taste."

"You must listen," she said, "and God forgive me for saying what I'm going to say, but I can't live a lie no more, William, and Tom can't live a lie no more. He loves me and I love him. I thought I loved you, and do love you most sure and true and never better than now; but I don't love you like I love him."

Then she poured it all out—how they'd found their real selves in each other and so on—and I couldn't make up my mind on the instant whether she spoke true, or whether she only thought she did. Being a proud sort of man, I very well knew that there'd be no great fuss and splutter on my side in any case, nor yet no silly attempts to keep her if her heart was gone; but she appeared so excited and so properly frantic and so torn in half between what she felt for Tom Bond and what she felt for me, that I perceived how I must go steady and larn a lot more about the facts before I stood down. There was my self-respect, of course, but there was also my deep affection for the girl. What did amaze me was that I'd never seen the thing unfolding under my eyes, and that none of the staff had called my attention to it. But none had—man or woman—and when, afterwards, I asked one or two of the elder ones if they'd marked any improprieties I ought to know about, all said they had not. So that was another feather in Tom Bond's cap in a manner of speaking, for he'd made amazing sure of his ground and got himself safe planted in Jenny's affections without giving one sign, even to my eyes, that he was up to any wickedness.

I knew he was clever, but shouldn't have thought anybody could be so clever as that with the woman of my choice. And I knew, only too well, that Jenny must have been amazing clever also. I calmed her down and showed no spark of anger and didn't say a hard word against Bond; but that night, after dinner, I bade him come in my pantry and tell me what he'd been doing. Because a lot turned in my mind on the way he was going to state the case, and I weren't in no yielding mood to him. Words flowed from the man, like feathers off a goose, and under his regrets and shame, and all the rest of it, was a sort of a hidden note of triumph, which I didn't like at all, because it showed he was contemptuous of me at heart and knew he'd got the whip-hand.