“Nothing. I said it all this morning. She doesn't love me any more—she would have passed me by without speaking had I not called to her. She'll be married to Willits before I come back—if I ever do come back. But leaving Kate is easier than leaving you. You have stuck to me all the way through, and Kate—well—perhaps she hasn't understood—perhaps her father has been talking to her—I don't know. Anyhow, it's all over. If I had had any doubts about it before, this morning's talk settled it. The sea is the best place for me. I can support myself anyway for a while until I can help you.”
Yes! the boy was right, St. George had said to himself. It was all over between them. Kate's reason had triumphed at last. She, perhaps, was not to blame. Her experiences had been trying and she was still confronted by influences bitterly opposed to Harry, and largely in favor of Willits, for, weak specimen as Prim was, he was still her father, and in so important a step as her marriage, must naturally exercise authority. As for his own influence, that, he realized, had come to an end at their last interview: the whole thing, he must admit, was disappointing—cruelly so—the keenest disappointment of his life.
Many a night since he bid Harry good-by had he sat alone by that same fire, his dogs his only companions, the boy's words ringing in his ears: “Leaving Kate is easier than leaving you!” Had it been the other way and he the exile, it would have been nearer the truth, he often thought, for nothing in his whole life had left so great a void in his heart as the loss of the boy he loved. Not that he was ever completely disheartened; that was not his nature; there was always daylight ahead—the day when Harry would come back and their old life begin again. With this in store for him he had led his life as best he could, visiting his friends in the country, entertaining in a simple, inexpensive way, hunting at Wesley, where he and Peggy Coston would exchange confidences and funny stories; dining out; fishing in the early spring; getting poorer and poorer in pocket, and yet never complaining, his philosophy being that it would be brighter in the morning, and it always was—to him.
And yet if the truth be told his own situation had not improved—in fact, it had grown steadily worse. Only one payment of interest had been made on the mortgage and the owner was already threatening foreclosure proceedings. Pawson's intervention alone had staved off the fatal climax by promising the holder to keep the loan alive by the collection of some old debts—borrowed money and the like—due St. George for years and which his good nature had allowed to run on indefinitely until some of them were practically outlawed. Indeed it was only through resources like this, in all of which Pawson helped, and with the collecting of some small ground rents, that kept Todd and Jemima in their places and the larder comfortably filled. As to the bank—there was still hope that some small percentage would be paid the depositors, it being the general opinion that the directors were personally liable because of the irregularities which the smash had uncovered—but this would take months, if not years, to work out.
His greatest comfort was in the wanderer's letters. These he would watch for with the eagerness of a girl hungry for news of her distant lover. For the first few months these came by every possible mail, most of them directed to himself; others to his mother, Mrs. Rutter driving in from Moorlands to compare notes with St. George. Then, as the boy made his way further into the interior the intervals were greater—sometimes a month passed without news of him.
“We are short-handed,” he wrote St. George, “owing to fever on the voyage out on the Ranger, and though I am supercargo and sit at the captain's table, I have to turn to and work like any of the others—fine exercise, but my hands are cracked and blistered and full of tar. I'll have to wear gloves the next time I dine with you.”
Not a word of this to his mother—no such hardships for her tender ears:
“Tell me about Kate, mother”—this from Rio—“how she looks; what she says; does she ever mention my name? My love to Alec. Is Matthew still caring for Spitfire, or has my father sold her?” Then followed the line: “Give my father my respectful regards; I would send my love, but he no longer cares for it.”
The dear lady did not deliver the message. Indeed Harry's departure had so widened the breach between the colonel and herself that they practically occupied different parts of the house as far removed from each other as possible. She had denounced him first to his face for the boy's self-imposed exile, and again behind his back to her intimates. Nor did her resolve waver even when the colonel was thrown from his horse and so badly hurt that his eyesight was greatly impaired. “It is a judgment on you,” she had said, drawing her frail body up to its full height. “You will now learn what other people suffer,” and would have kept on upstairs to her own room had not her heart softened at his helplessness—a new role for the colonel.
He had made no answer at the time: he never answered her back. She was too frail to be angry with, and then she was right about his being the cause of her suffering—the first cause of it, at least. He had not yet arrived at the point where he censured himself for all that had happened. In fact since Harry's sudden exit, made without a word to anybody at Moorlands except his mother and Alec, who went to town on a hurry message,—a slight which cut him to the quick—he had steadily laid the blame on everybody else connected with the affair;—generally on St. George for his interference in his peace-making programme at the club and his refusal, when ruined financially, to send the boy back to him in an humble and contrite spirit. Neither had he recovered from the wrath he had felt when, having sent John Gorsuch to ascertain from St. George the amount of money he had paid out for his son, Temple had politely sent Gorsuch, in charge of Todd, downstairs to Pawson, who in turn, after listening to Todd's whispered message, had with equal politeness shown Gorsuch the door, the colonel's signed check—the amount unfilled—still in Gorsuch's pocket.