‘I’d rather have cut off my hand, or tugged out my heart, than wound you, Charley; but I never knew till it was too late.’
All this, perhaps, was not quite true; but it was true—enough. Douglas did not want to quarrel; he liked his faithful old retainer. A bird in the hand—that is always worth something, though perhaps not so much as is the worth of the two who are in the bush; and he is a foolish man who will turn away the certain advantage of friendship for the chance of love; anyhow, the address went entirely into the simple, if wounded, heart.
‘I didn’t mean to show I was vexed. I don’t know that I’m vexed—a man is not always in the same disposition,’ he said, but his voice was changing. Douglas patted him on the shoulder, and went back to his seat.
‘You needn’t envy me—much,’ said Douglas. ‘We don’t know what’s to come of it; the father won’t hear of me. He would have had nothing to say to you either, and think what a rumpus it would have made in the parish! And there’s the Rector to think of. Charley——’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ Charley said, with a great heave of his shoulders. His pipe had gone out. As he spoke, he got up slowly, and came to the table to look for the matches. Cosmo lighted one, and held it out to him, looking on with interest while the solemn process of rekindling was gone through. Charley’s face, lighted by the fitful flame as he puffed, was still as solemn as if it had been a question of life and death; and Cosmo, looking on, kept his gravity too. When this act was accomplished, the curate in silence gripped his friend’s hand, and thus peace was made. Poor faithful soul; his heart was still as heavy as lead—but pain was possible, though strife was not possible. A load was taken off his honest breast.
‘I’ve seen it coming,’ he said, puffing harder than was needful. ‘I oughtn’t to have felt it so much. After all, why should I grumble? I never could have been the man.’
‘You are a far better fellow than I am,’ cried the other, with a little burst of real feeling.
Charley puffed and puffed, with much exertion. The red gleam of the pipe got reflected under his shaggy eyebrows in something liquid. Then he burst into an unsteady laugh.
‘You might as well fire a damp haystack as light a pipe that’s gone out,’ was the next sentimental remark he made.
‘Have a cigar?’ said Cosmo, tenderly, producing a case out of his pocket, with eager benevolence. And thus their peace was made. Anne’s name was not mentioned, neither was there anything said but these vague allusions to the state of affairs generally. Of all things in the world sentimental explanations are most foreign to the intercourse of young Englishmen with each other. But when Willie Ashley returned, very wet, and with an incipient cold in his head from the impatient flight he had made, he was punished for his cowardly abandonment of an unpleasant position by finding his brother with the old bonds refitted upon him, completely restored to his old devotion and subjection to Cosmo. Willie retired to bed soon after, kicking off his boots with an energy which was full of wrath. ‘The fool!’ he said to himself; while the reconciled pair carried on their tobacco and their reunion till far in the night. They were not conversational, however, though they were reconciled. Conversation was not necessary to the curate’s view of social happiness, and Cosmo was glad enough to go back upon his own thoughts.