When he got home that night he had a difficulty in mounting the stairs. When he succeeded, he got himself to the glass, and found he was white to the lips. He had had a shock—he had discovered, as he had turned out of Lady Mary’s softly-lighted hall into the street, that he loved the girl irretrievably, and with the knowledge came fear.
For a few minutes he leaned against the mantel-piece, his head sunk into his hands, then he raised himself with a sigh, threw off his light overcoat, and sat down to smoke, but he couldn’t draw a puff, then it struck him that he was numb with cold.
He looked at the grate with a purpose to make a fire lighting in his eyes, but with a shrug he shirked the trouble. He could not go to bed, that was out of the question; as for sitting there freezing, that was just as impossible. He must move, he must feel the life stir in him again. He stood up and shook himself, then a thought struck him, he hurried to his room, changed his clothes, and went out round the corner to the mews where he kept the horses he had brought up from Strange Hall.
He found the gear, saddled the freshest, and rode away through short cuts and byways, away from the noise and hurly-burly, out into the quiet of the country. Then he drew rein, pulled the mare aside on to a green strip flanking the road, and let her go her own pace. For a long time he gave her grace and smoked savagely.
“It is about the most killing blow that could have fallen on a man. It would be bad for any fellow; but for me, who can love if I can do anything, to have to pour it all out at the feet of a girl who couldn’t understand what love, much less passion, means, to save her life! It’s a beastly backhanded stroke of fate, and I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything bad enough to deserve it. Lord, how the mare’s sides smoke! I must have ridden like a maniac. The worst of it is, this isn’t a thing one can clear off and forget—with the woman right in one’s soul!—the fine, grand, proud creature! God! it’s almost sacrilege to expect her to love, with love in the beastly state it is—to love any man-Jack of us; it’s honour enough to love her and yet,—yet,—when a man has once done it, done it once and for ever, the only thing in life seems to be to get something in return. What commercial brutes we are even in this holiest connection of all! But let her love or not, I’ll give her my love if she’ll take it and I shall pick up crumbs like old Lazarus.—Pah, how she dominates one!—Ah, and when her love wakes up—but, the devil! suppose another fellow is the instrument chosen! Ah!—ah! hold up, mare, are you stumbling or am I reeling? It’s myself, by Jove, God help us!”
Involuntarily he drove his spurs into the beast, she started forward angrily, unused to maniacs. Presently he came to his senses and pulled her up with a drag on her mouth that she did not forget for some time. She went sulky and stumbled for the next mile, small blame to her! A Christian would have done more.
Gradually her master’s face cleared itself and softened.
“Perhaps,” he muttered, “perhaps no other fellow after all, but—who knows?—a baby’s tender little mouth may do it.”
CHAPTER XX.
When Strange got back to town, after baiting man and beast at a little inn on the outskirts of Weybridge, Tolly’s greeting, which was blasphemous and amazed, and the unusual look in his green eyes, caused his master to glance at himself in the glass.