"Well, yes, they do——"
He resembled then nothing so much as a balloon from which the air has suddenly been withdrawn. He sat down.
"My God," he said, suddenly dropping his head between his great red hands. "It's true then."
It was at that moment that I saw the catastrophe that was upon us. I saw what Bomb would be without his tales: he would be dull, ordinary, colourless—nothing. The salient thing, the life, the salt, the savour would be withdrawn from him. And not only Bomb, but all of us—myself, Peter, young Gale, Alice Galleon, even Maradick. I saw, by my own experience, how we should suffer. I saw slipping away from under my very nose the whole of that magical world that Bomb had created; and above all, that magical London, the fairy palaces, the streets paved with gold, the walls of amethyst; the dark, shuttered windows opened for an instant to betray the gleaming, anxious eyes; the bearded foreigner conveying his sacred charge through the traffic of Trafalgar Square; the secrets and mysteries of the Bond Street jewellers.... I saw all that and more. But, after all, that was not the heart of the matter. We could get on without our entertainment; even Peter had been brought to life again whether Bomb went on with him or no. The tragedy was in Bomb's own soul; Helen Cather was slaying him as surely as though she stuck a dagger into his heart. And she did not know it—She did not know that she was probably marrying him for that very energy of imagination that she was bent upon destroying. Only, months after she had married him, she would discover, with a heavy and lifeless Bomb upon her hands, what it was that she had done.
"Look here, Jones," I said. "Don't take it too seriously. Miss Cather didn't know what she was saying. Don't you promise her anything. She'll forget——"
"Don't promise her!" He looked up at me wildly. "I have promised her! Of course I have—Don't I love her? Didn't I love her the first moment that I saw her? I'm never going to tell anyone about anything again."
Well, all my worst anticipations were at once fulfilled. You may think that this story is about a very small affair, but I ask you to take some friend of yours and be aware that he is in process, before your eyes, of dying from some slow poison skilfully administered by someone. You may not in the beginning have cared very greatly for the man, but the poignancy of the drama is such that before long you are drawn into the very heart of it; it is like a familiar nightmare; you are held there paralysed, longing to rush in and prevent the murder and unable to move.
In no time at all I had developed quite an affection for Jones, so pathetic a figure was he.
Beneath the stern gaze of his beloved Helen ("not quite of Troy," as someone said of her) he became a commonplace, dull, negligible creature, duller, save for the pathos of his position, than human. Very quickly we lost any sense of chagrin or disappointment at our own penalties in the absorption of "longing to do something for Bomb." Again and again we discussed the affair. Bomb's soul must be saved; but how? Before our eyes a tragedy was developing. In another month they would be married; Helen Cather would marry the greatest bore in Europe, and about six months after marriage would discover that she had done so.
Bomb was already miserable, sitting there silent and morose, his tongue-tied, adoring Helen, but saying nothing to her lest he should be accused of "romancing."