He was never humble. It was not a confession. It was not even an explanation, but only a story—a very lame story indeed—which gained nothing by the telling. And he was not the hero of it.
And all came about as wise old Sir John Meredith had predicted. It is not our business to record what Jocelyn said. Women—the best of them—have some things in their hearts which can only be said once to one person. Men cannot write them down; printers cannot print them.
The lame story was told to the end, and at the end it was accepted. When Sir John's name was mentioned—when the interview in the library of the great London house was briefly touched upon—Jack saw the flutter of a small lace pocket-handkerchief, and at no other time. The slate was wiped clean, and it almost seemed that Jocelyn preferred it thus with the scratches upon it where the writing had been.
Maurice Gordon did not come back in an hour. It was nearly ten o'clock before they heard his footstep on the gravel. By that time Jocelyn had heard the whole story. She had asked one or two questions which somehow cast a different light upon the narrative, and she had listened to the answers with a grave, judicial little smile—the smile of a judge whose verdict was pre-ordained, whose knowledge had nothing to gain from evidence.
Because she loved him she took his story and twisted it and turned it to a shape of her own liking. Those items which he had considered important she passed over as trifles; the trifles she magnified into the corner-stones upon which the edifice was built. She set the lame story upon its legs and it stood upright. She believed what he had never told; and much that he related she chose to discredit—because she loved him. She perceived motives where he assured her there were none; she recognised the force of circumstances where he took the blame to himself—because she loved him. She maintained that the past was good, that he could not have acted differently, that she would not have had it otherwise—because she loved him.
And who shall say that she was wrong?
Jack went out to meet Maurice Gordon when they heard his footsteps, and as they walked back to the house he told him. Gordon was quite honest about it.
“I hoped,” he said, “when I ran against you in the wood, that that was why you had come back. Nothing could have given me greater happiness. Hang it, I AM glad, old chap!”
They sat far into the night arranging their lives. Jack was nervously anxious to get back to England. He could not rid his mind of the picture he had seen as he left his father's presence to go and take his passage to Africa—the picture of an old man sitting in a stiff-backed chair before a dying fire. Moreover, he was afraid of Africa; the Irritability of Africa had laid its hand upon him almost as soon as he had set his foot upon its shore. He was afraid of the climate for Jocelyn; he was afraid of it for himself. The happiness that comes late must be firmly held to; nothing must be forgotten to secure it, or else it may slip between the fingers at the last moment.
Those who have snatched happiness late in life can tell of a thousand details carefully attended to—a whole existence laid out in preparation for it, of health fostered, small pleasures relinquished, days carefully spent.