“He’s been ordered abroad immediately,” O’Rane answered. “California. Lungs.”
I do not know whether Barbara heard more than the last word; but she seemed to rise from her chair and cross the room in a single movement. O’Rane’s expression changed to wonder and then softened to pity as she caught and gripped his hand. No name had been mentioned in her hearing; but I think we both realized that he and I and all the world—with one exception—might be ordered to California for our lungs without striking an equal terror into her heart. In that moment I knew how far I had always been from winning her love.
O’Rane, I feel, atoned for want of sight by keenness of hearing. I fancied that a little of the pity in his expression might be intended for me.
“Is he . . . dying?,” Barbara whispered.
“Not yet awhile.” O’Rane withdrew his hand to feel for a chair. I thought I saw his expression changing again, this time hardening slightly as though to keep the flash-point of her emotions low or, perhaps, to douse them with a single chilling jet. “He can get all right if he wants to. You may imagine, he’s rather bowled over at present.” As he turned to me, I felt that he wanted Barbara to hear his next announcement without being watched. “It came quite suddenly,” he told me; “and, but for this, you’d have seen him happily married to Ivy Maitland.” If Barbara gave any sign of interest, I saw and heard nothing. O’Rane took time to let his announcement sink in; and I fancied again that he was tacitly advising her to close her side of an account which Eric had already closed against her. If she chose to think that he was still in love with her and that his engagement to Ivy was an act of despair, no argument would cure her; at least there was now no reason why this shadow should force its way between us any longer. “It’s rather a facer,” O’Rane continued, “when you lose your wife and your health on the same day. I’ve been telling him all evening that no woman in the world is big enough to spoil a man’s life, but at the moment he’s in the mood to creep into a corner and die. He’s too good for that. I want you to see him before he starts, George; and write to him while he’s away.”
Naturally, I promised without hesitation. If Barbara sent a letter of farewell, she said nothing to me about it; when I told her next day that I was going to Ryder Street on my way to the office, she nodded abstractedly but made no suggestion of accompanying me; and, on my return, she sat like a spirit of tragedy, refusing to ask me the result of my mission, till I volunteered to tell her.
“By the way, I missed Eric this morning,” I said.
“Oh? Had he gone already?,” she asked.
“The maid said he was not at home,” I answered; and, mercifully for me, Barbara did not enquire further.
A less diplomatic version would have recounted that, as I hurried round to Ryder Street, I saw Eric getting out of the taxi in front of me. His front-door slammed as I was halfway up the stairs; and, when I said something to the maid about being one of his older friends, I was informed that Miss Maitland was still seriously ill. Divining that Miss Maitland could not be occupying all the rooms in the flat, I scribbled a note in which I begged Eric to see me for two minutes. A verbal message apprised me that Mr. Lane was engaged; and I went away, more hurt, I believe, than ever in my life before. Since his interrupted romance with Ivy, the fellow could bear me no grudge for marrying the woman he had tried so long to win; our friendship went back, sixteen years, to Oxford and the dinners of the Phœnix. There were not too many survivors from those days; and, coming to sympathize, I had seen my sympathy flung back in my face. I made every allowance for his illness and misery; but I could not write to him, at least for the present and, when a letter from him, several months later, hurtled like a flask of vitriol from California to England, I was too nearly blinded to attempt an answer.