Then in a flash it dawned upon Macneillie that Ralph had made away with the paper because it contained bad news.
“The boy couldn’t stand seeing me come upon it suddenly,” he thought to himself. “He wanted me to breakfast first. No one but Ralph would have thought of that! It is the worst news. I must be ready to bear it.”
He stood by the window looking out at the great expanse of sea with its blue surface crisply ruffled by the fresh wind. Away to the left the graceful outline of the chain pier seemed to speak of old fashioned Brighton, and it took him back to a time at least seventeen years ago in the very earliest days of his betrothal to Christine. How vividly the very tiniest details of the past came back to him. It had been in the days of aestheticism and high art colouring, a style which had suited Christine to perfection. He could remember, too, how at one of the little old-fashioned stalls he had bought her a dirk-shaped Scotch shawl brooch with a cairngorm stone in it; they had been far too poor in those days to dream of diamonds.
“She was only a child of seventeen,” he thought to himself, “younger than Evereld Ewart; and I was not perhaps so very much older than that young fellow over the way. Yes, I was though—it is Ralph! How slowly he is walking. I believe the boy cares for me, he hates to be the bearer of ill news.”
Ralph’s usually cheerful face was curiously over-cast; he put down the papers, muttered something about “going to Brill’s for a swim,” and made for the door.
“Rehearsal at eleven, don’t forget,” said Macneillie, taking up the London paper with a steady hand.
He was glad to be alone, and in the midst of his grievous pain he felt grateful to Ralph for that little touch of considerateness which had spared him to some extent,—that strategem which had deferred his evil day. For as he had said his suspense had been largely mixed with hope, he had tried to face the other alternative but his very sense of justice had inclined him to be hopeful. It surely could not be that after these long years of suffering there should be no release? Max Hereford’s words had chilled him for the time, but spite of them the hope had predominated. Now hope lay dead,—remorselessly slain by this unequal English law, which as a Scotsman seemed to him so extraordinary so intolerably unfair.
When a law is manifestly unjust,—when it flatly contradicts the foundation truth of Christianity that in Christ all are equal, that there is neither bond nor free, male nor female—there comes to every one of strong passions the temptation to break the law. It is such a hard thing to wait patiently for the slow tedious process of reform, that the headstrong and the impetuous and the self-indulgent, and all who have not learnt a stern self-control, will often take the law into their own hands and defy the world. Macneillie reaped now the benefit of long years of self-repression and suffering. He saw very clearly that it is only justifiable to break the law of the land when it interferes with a higher duty; that to break even a bad law because it interfered with one’s cherished desire could never be right; that to admit such a course to be right must sap the very foundations of society.
He saw it all plainly enough, yet, being human, could not at once shake himself free from the haunting consciousness that it lay in his power to choose present happiness, that in such a case the world would quickly condone the offence, and—greatest temptation of all—that he might shield Christine from the difficulties and dangers that were but too likely to assail one in her position.
Fortunately he had but little spare time on his hands, it was already a quarter to eleven and the mere habit of rigorous punctuality came to his help.