And Furnival (there I think his fine motive was apparent) took care to bring their ribald remarks under Burton's notice. Furny's idea evidently was to point out to Burton that his position was untenable, that it was not fitting that the same man should deal with Mr. Wrackham and with Ford Lankester. He had to keep himself clean for him. If he didn't see it he must be made to see.
He did see it. It didn't need Furnival to make him. He came to me one evening and told me that it was impossible. He had given it up.
"Thank God," I said.
He smiled grimly. "God doesn't come into it," he said. "It's Lankester I've given up."
"You haven't!" I said.
He said he had.
He was very cool and calm about it, but I saw in his face the marks of secret agitation. He had given Lankester up, but not without a struggle. I didn't suppose he was wriggling out of the other thing, he said. He couldn't touch Lankester after Wrackham. It was impossible for the same man to do them both. It wouldn't be fair to Lankester or his widow. He had made himself unclean.
I assured him that he hadn't, that his motive purged him utterly, that the only people who really mattered were all in the secret; they knew that it was Antigone who had let him in for Wrackham; they wouldn't take him and his Wrackham seriously; and he might be sure that Ford Lankester would absolve him. It was high comedy after Lankester's own heart, and so on. But nothing I said could move him. He stuck to it that the people in the secret, the people I said mattered, didn't matter in the least, that his duty was to the big outside public for whom Lives were written, who knew no secrets and allowed for no motives; and when I urged on him, as a final consideration, that he'd be all right with them, they wouldn't understand the difference between Charles Wrackham and Ford Lankester, he cried out that that was what he meant. It was his business to make them understand. And how could they if he identified himself with Wrackham? It was almost as if he identified Lankester——
Then I said that, if that was the way he looked at it, his duty was clear. He must give Wrackham up.
"Give up Antigone, you mean," he said.