He held out his hand. She turned and looked at him wildly.
“Noel, I never thought you could be so hard! You don’t know how miserable you’re making me!”
“There’s Eric, too,” he reminded her. “Don’t forget he’s got no love for Petrovitch. Don’t forget Humphries was his friend. Eric’s been pretty decent to you. As for … as for Claire!…”
Tears welled into her eyes. Noel, who, like many another man, found them undermining the foundations of his wrath, softened a little.
“Sleep on it, Connie,” he said more kindly. “I’ll give you until to-morrow to make up your mind. Ring me up in the morning and let me know what you’ve decided to do. So long!”
And he turned and left her.
[CHAPTER XV]
“Bless you, Claire,” began Stephen’s next letter, “you make even my life worth living. Your letters are my one delight. All the same, we are poles apart in some things. You say, ‘Oh, the joy of wanting nothing!’ I would say, ‘Oh, the misery of wanting nothing!’ But fortunately there is one great want that keeps my old bones above ground, and that is the longing I have to see you and Judy and Eric again. Of course I was a fool not to marry. It may be fun to be a bachelor when you’re young, but it’s hell when you’re old. I marvel at the number of women who face a life of single cussedness voluntarily. With me, there has been only one woman, and she holds this letter in her hands, as she has always held the writer’s heart in her hands. But I’ve known plenty of women who would have made good wives, and perhaps given me Judys and Erics.
“Yes, you are right; I took defeat badly. My advice, now, would always be to marry—as best one can. There is nearly always a compromise to be made. There would have been no compromise, on my part, had I married you. Therefore it was not to be, for the perfect thing is always out of reach. Don’t tell me your marriage with Robert was perfect. Robert was my best friend and I knew his faults. But he made you happy, and that is the great thing. It ought to be carven on a man’s tombstone, ‘He made a woman happy.’ Well, at least, they can carve on mine, ‘He made no woman unhappy.’
“I am feeling much better to-day, so Miss McPherson is correspondingly gloomy. But she is a good, devoted soul, and has borne with me wonderfully, and I have settled something on her. Which brings me to your last letter. If Judy and that fellow want to marry, I will gladly settle something on Judy. Don’t tell her, of course. People who really care for each other ought to be endowed if they can’t afford to marry. I don’t see the good of waiting till I’m dead. I will do what I should do if Judy were my daughter. You must let me know how things go. There’s only my niece Monica to think of. She’ll give what I leave her to the Church. I don’t mind that, for though the Church has never done much for me—admittedly through my own fault—it has for other people.
“And that brings me to a subject I approach with diffidence. Don’t think me in my dotage, Claire, if I tell you that I have become interested in Spiritualism. I’ve been reading a great deal, and I have come to the unalterable conclusion that men like Crooks, Myers, Lodge and Doyle know what they are talking about. Some of us take our religion on trust. Others of us want to find out. Having floundered in a sea of agnosticism all my life long, I now begin to feel the ground beneath my feet. I got more out of the ‘Vital Message’ in an hour than I’ve got out of parsons in seventy years. I believe that if Spiritualism were rightly understood, it would fuse all religions and all sects. I need hardly tell you that the Spiritualism I mean does not depend on knockings and rappings, and the horrible fake-s?ces of the mercenary minded. Some day I must talk to you about this. I have said enough here, perhaps too much; but I wanted to tell you of the thing that has meant so much to me.
“If I continue as well as this I may come to London next month. London! Shall I know it, I wonder? It will not know me. But you will, and that is all I ask.
“Stephen.”
To this, Madame Claire made immediate reply: