“Yes, and he has four children. Just think, four! Two boys and two girls.”
“How interesting!” The two men smoked silently for a few minutes, then Clarges said, “It must be a beautiful thing to be married, you know.”
“Well, I ought to know,” returned his cousin.
Clarges put his cigar down and went on. “To have somebody that belongs to you, and to know that you belong to somebody; that's marriage, and I think it must be very beautiful. Of course, you belong to other people too, just the same, and they belong to you, but not so much, not in the same way. You don't go to church all in a tremble with your father and your mother, or your sister or your brother. You don't wear a ring—a beautiful, great broad band of gold, you know, always shining there on your finger—or you don't put one on for anybody else save just the person that belongs to you in that way, in the way of marriage, you know. And to be able to think wherever you are, 'Well, there is that person, anyway, thinking of me, waiting for me; the whole world doesn't matter if that person is really there, anywhere, thinking of me, waiting for me.' Now, you know, I'll never feel that, never, in this world. What good is there in me? I may be Arthur Clarges, of Clarges, of course, but without money, that means nothing. I say, Bovey, it's rather ghastly, but it's perfectly true. I haven't a single soul in the world but you and Lady Violet to think of me at all, or for me to think of.”
“I don't suppose you have,” said the Hon. Bovyne, thoughtfully. “You are a lone beggar, Arthur, but a cheery one nevertheless.”
“So you see,” Clarges went on, “If in accompanying you around the world in search of new pleasures and exciting experiences, anything happens to me, you know, Arthur Clarges, of Clarges, nobody need mind. There isn't anybody to mind.”
“All this because Simpson has got four children! Well, I hope you'll get married yet, Arthur, you queer fish, and have six, two more than Simpson. I know what you are driving at, however. You think me a selfish brute. You can't understand how I can leave Lady Vi., and the two kids, and go off annually on tours of exploration and so forth. I tell you, I am the better for it, and she is the better for it, and nobody is any the worst for it, unless it be yourself. Men who have knocked about as I have done, will continue to knock about as long as they live. In the army, out of the army, all the same. Lady Vi. understands me, and I her, and you forget, Arthur, that you are very—young.”
“Then may I never get any older,” said Charles, almost rudely.
Not long afterwards his cousin, slightly heavy with wine, went to bed. Clarges, abnormally wakeful, tried to read Bell's Life which lay before him and waited until Bovey was fast asleep. They occupied the same room, a large double-bedded one, which opened into a bathroom and parlour en suite. When he was perfectly certain that his cousin was sound asleep, so sound that “a good yelp from the county pack, and a stirring chorus of 'John Peel' by forty in pink could not wake him,” thought Clarges, the latter undertook his delicate task and accomplished it. He did it quickly and skilfully with a tiny lancet he found in his cousin's well-appointed travelling bag. Bovey never stirred. Clarges next undertook to “do” himself. Then a strange thing happened. He had gone to the glass and bared his left arm when a sudden faintness overcame him. He tried to shake it off and sat down. Presently it left him and he felt quite as usual. Then he made a second attempt. The same thing occurred again. This time it was worse, and sight and strength failing, he sank on his own bed, fainting. By a tremendous effort he prevented entire unconsciousness from taking place and lay there half dressed and tremulous.
“Well, I am a fool! I can't help it. I can't try any more to-night, for I am as weak and sleepy—if I can get up and undress it's as much as I am capable of. But Bovey's all right. There's Lady Violet”—turning his eyes to the photograph he had stuck in the looking glass frame—“she'd thank me if she knew.” Sweet Lady Vi—so good to all around her—so good to me—dear Lady Vi, the loveliest woman in England!