“My darling,” she whispered, very low. And, the road being deserted, I drew her face to mine and kissed her.
CHAPTER 16
I TELL JULIAN
(James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)
Is any man really honourable? I wonder. Hundreds, thousands go triumphantly through life with that reputation. But how far is this due to absence of temptation? Life, which is like cricket in so many ways, resembles the game in this also. A batsman makes a century, and, having made it, is bowled by a ball which he is utterly unable to play. What if that ball had come at the beginning of his innings instead of at the end of it? Men go through life without a stain on their honour. I wonder if it simply means that they had the luck not to have the good ball bowled to them early in their innings. To take my own case. I had always considered myself a man of honour. I had a code that was rigid compared with that of a large number of men. In theory I should never have swerved from it. I was fully prepared to carry out my promise and marry Margaret, at the expense of my happiness—until I met Eva. I would have done anything to avoid injuring Julian, my friend, until I met Eva. Eva was my temptation, and I fell. Nothing in the world mattered, so that she was mine. I ought to have had a revulsion of feeling as I walked back to my rooms in Walpole Street. The dance was over. The music had ceased. The dawn was chill. And at a point midway between Kensington Lane and the Brompton Oratory I had proposed to Eversleigh’s cousin, his Eva, “true as steel,” and had been accepted.
Yet I had no remorse. I did not even try to justify my behaviour to Julian or to Margaret, or—for she must suffer, too—to Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell, who, I knew well, was socially ambitious for her niece.
To all these things I was indifferent. I repeated softly to myself, “We love each other.”
From this state of coma, however, I was aroused by the appearance of my window-blind. I saw, in fact, that my room was illuminated. Remembering that I had been careful to put out my lamp before I left, I feared, as I opened the hall door, a troublesome encounter with a mad housebreaker. Mad, for no room such as mine could attract a burglar who has even the slightest pretensions to sanity.
It was not a burglar. It was Julian Eversleigh, and he was lying asleep on my sofa.
There was nothing peculiar in this. I roused him.
“Julian,” I said.