"But suppose we both succeed?" asked the Captain.
"That would be more awkward than ever," I admitted.
"And if neither succeed?" asked Lord Arthur at some length.
"I should say neither succeeds," I remarked severely. "Neither takes a singular verb."
"Pardon me," said Lord Arthur with some spirit. "The plurality is merely apparent. 'Succeed' is subjunctive after if."
"Ah, true," I said. "Then suppose you go round the world and I give my hand to whoever comes back and proposes to me first."
"Something like the man in Jules Verne!" cried the Captain. "Glorious!"
"Except that it can be done quicker now," I said.
Lord Arthur fell in joyously with the idea, which was a godsend to me, for the worry of having about you two men whom you love and who love you cannot be easily conceived by those who have not been through it. They, too, were pining away and felt the journey would do them good. Captain Athelstan applied for three months' furlough. He was to put a girdle round the earth from West to East, Lord Arthur from East to West. It was thought this would work fairly—as whatever advantages one outgoing route had over the other would be lost on the return. Each drew up his scheme and prepared his equipment. The starting-point was to be my house, and consequently this was also the goal. After forty-eight days had passed (the minimum time possible) I was to remain at home day and night, awaiting the telegram which was to be sent the moment either touched English soil again. On the receipt of the telegram I was to take up my position at the front window on the ground floor, with a white rose in my hair to show I was still unwon, and to wait there day and night for the arrival of my offer of marriage, which I was not to have the option of refusing. During the race they were not to write to me.
The long-looked-for day of their departure duly arrived. Two hansoms were drawn up side by side, in front of the house. A white rose in my hair, I sat at the window. A parting smile, a wave of my handkerchief, and my lovers were off. In an instant they were out of sight. For a month they were out of mind, too. After the exhausting emotions I had undergone this period of my life was truly halcyon. I banished my lovers from my memory and enjoyed what was left of the season and of my girlish freedom. In two months I should be an affianced wife and it behoved me to make the best of my short span of spinsterhood. The season waned, fashion drifted to Cowes, I was left alone in empty London. Then my thoughts went back to the two travellers. As day followed day, my anxiety and curiosity mounted proportionately. The forty-eight days went by, but there was no wire. They passed slowly—oh, so slowly—into fifty, while I waited, waited, from dawn to midnight, with ears pricked up, for that double rat-tat which came not or which came about something else. The sands of September dribbled out, and my fate still hung in the balance. I went about the house like an unquiet spirit. In imagination I was seeing those two men sweeping towards me—one from the East of the world, one from the West. And there I stood, rooted to the spot, while from either side a man was speeding inevitably towards me, across oceans and continents, through canals and tunnels, along deserts or rivers, pressing into his service every human and animal force and every blind energy that man had tamed. To my fevered imagination I seemed to be between the jaws of a leviathan, which were closing upon me at a terrific rate, yet which took days to snap together, so wide were they apart, so gigantic was the monster. Which of the jaws would touch me first?