“Stuff!” cried Ralph; “what difference can it make to me? I have thought you had something on your mind sometimes; but married or single, we’re the same two fellows that have walked the desert together, and helped each other through many a scrape. I’m sorry for you, old chap—that is, if there’s anything to be sorry for. Of course, I don’t know.”
“I’ve been afloat on the world ever since,” said Bertram. “It was all my fault. I was a cursed fool, and trapped when I was a boy. Then I thought the woman was dead—had all the proofs and everything, and—You say you know nothing about that sort of thing, Wradisley. Well, I won’t say anything about it. I fell in love with a lady every way better than I—she was—perhaps you do know more than you say. I married her—that’s the short and the long of it; and in a year, when the baby had come, the other woman, the horrible creature, arrived at my very door.”
“Good Lord!” cried Ralph softly, in his beard.
“She was dying, that was one good thing; she died—in my house. And then—We were married again, my wife and I—she allowed that; but—I have never seen her since,” said Bertram, turning his head away.
“By Jove!” said Ralph Wradisley once more, in his beard; and they walked on in silence for a mile, and said not another word. At last—
“Old chap,” said Ralph, touching his friend on the shoulder, “I never was one to talk; but it’s very hard lines on you, and Mrs. Bertram ought to be told so, if she were the queen.”
Bertram shook his head. “I don’t know why I told you,” he said; “don’t let us talk of it any more. The thing’s done and can’t be undone. I don’t know if I wish any change. When two paths part in this world, Wradisley, don’t you know, the longer they go, the wider apart they get—or at least that’s my experience. They say your whole body changes every seven years—it doesn’t take so long as that to alter a man’s thoughts and his soul—and a woman’s, too, I suppose. She’s far enough from me now, and I from her. I’m not sure I—regret it. In some ways it—didn’t suit me, so to speak. Perhaps things are best as they are.”
“Well,” said Ralph, “I’d choose a free life for myself, but not exactly in that way, Bertram—not if I were you.”
“Fortunately we are none of us each other,” Bertram said, with a laugh which had little mirth in it. He added, after a moment: “You’ll use your own discretion about telling this sorry tale of mine, Wradisley. I felt I had to tell you. I can’t go about under false pretenses while you’re responsible for me. Now you know the whole business, and we need not speak of it any more.”
“All right, old fellow,” Ralph said; and they quickened their pace, and put on I don’t know how many miles more before they got back—too late for lunch, and very muddy about the legs—to eat a great deal of cold beef at the sideboard, while the servants chafed behind them, intent upon changing the great dining-room into a bower of chrysanthemums and temple of tea. They had to change their dress afterwards, which took up all their time until the roll of carriages began. Bertram, for his part, being a stranger and not at all on duty, took a long time to put himself into more presentable clothes. He did not want to have any more of the garden party than was necessary. And his mind had been considerably stirred up by his confession, brief as it was. It had been necessary to do it, and his mind was relieved; but he did not feel that it was possible to remain long at Wradisbury now that he had disclosed his mystery, such as it was. What did they care about his mystery? Nothing—not enough to make a day’s conversation out of it. He knew very well in what way Ralph would tell his story. He would not announce it as a discovery—it would drop from his beard like the most casual statement of fact: “Unlucky beggar, Bertram—got a wife and all that sort of thing—place down Devonshire way—but he and she don’t hit it off, somehow.” In such terms the story would be told, without any mystery at all. But Bertram, who was a proud man, did not feel that he could live among a set of people who looked at him curiously across the table and wondered how it was that he did not “hit it off” with his wife. He knew that he would read that question in Mrs. Wradisley’s face when she bade him good-morning; and in Lucy’s eyes—Lucy’s eyes, he thought, with a half smile, would be the most inquisitive—they would ask him a hundred questions. They would say, with almost a look of anxiety in them, “Oh! Mr. Bertram—why?” It amused him to think that Lucy would be the most curious of them all, though why, I could not venture to say. He got himself ready very slowly, looking out from the corner of his window at all the smart people of the county gathering upon the lawn. There was tennis going on somewhere, he could hear, and the less loud but equally characteristic stroke of the croquet balls. And the band, which was a famous band from London, had begun to play. If he was to appear at all, it was time that he should go downstairs; but, as a matter of fact, he was not really moved to do this, until he saw a little flight across the green of a small child in white, so swift that some one had to stoop and pick her up as he picked up Tiny at the gate of Greenbank. The man on the lawn who caught this little thing lifted her up as Bertram had done. Would the child be hushed by his grasp, and look into his face as Tiny had looked at him? Perhaps this was not Tiny—at all events, it gave no look, but wriggled and struggled out of its captor’s hands. This sight decided Bertram to present himself in the midst of Mrs. Wradisley’s guests. He wanted to see Tiny once again.