“Everything,” replied Comethup. “That’s what has brought me here. You don’t suppose I’d be racing about Paris for two or three days after you for the pleasure of the thing, do you? I said I wasn’t going to speak about myself, but I find I must. This girl, ’Linda, the sweetest and brightest it was ever a man’s good fortune to win—this girl loves you; would give, I think, her immortal soul for you. Yet, at a whim, a caprice, you fling her aside, careless whether you break her heart, or——”
“Break her heart! Hearts are not so easily broken; even I can tell you that, although I am a poet. Besides, what the devil’s her heart got to do with you?”
“More than you can understand. I think I’d give everything I have in the world to spare her any pain. I’m afraid you can’t understand what that feeling is. I’d give my very soul to save her from tears or sorrow, to prevent any one of her ideals from being shattered. If I could die and know that in dying I gave her any greater happiness—well, my life wouldn’t be worth an hour’s purchase from this moment—Oh, I forgot; you don’t understand all that. But there’s one thing you shall understand: you’re going back with me to London to-night.”
“Indeed? You seem to have made up your mind about that. If you take so deep an interest in ’Linda, why the devil don’t you let me go my own way and—well, look after her yourself?”
The words were nothing; it was the horrible smile that played about Brian’s lips—the sneering suggestion that he knew of the love in the other man’s mind, and triumphed in the knowledge; it was all this that maddened Comethup. With a cry he threw himself upon the other and forced him to his knees, and kept a grip upon his throat sufficient to stifle the life out of him had he kept it there long. “You coward! I’ve bandied words with you too long; I’ve told you things that are as far from your ken as the knowledge of the stars. Get up”—he dragged him to his feet and flung him off—“and get on that coat! I’ll waste no more time in talking. I won’t lose sight of you until I see you in your own home.”
“Well, and if I refuse?” said Brian sullenly, glaring at the other like a creature at bay.
Comethup laughed quietly and glanced round the room; buttoned his coat swiftly and came at his cousin slowly, steadily, without once taking his eyes from the eyes that shifted uneasily before his. “Why, if you refuse, I’ll kill you! Don’t think that’s a threat merely; we’re near the top of this house, and I can choke the life out of you long before any one breaks in this door, or even before you can give the alarm. Understand—I’m desperate; I’ve staked everything on this, and I won’t hesitate. Now, as we stand man to man, I’ll tell you what you may have guessed before. I love your wife; to me she’s higher even than the angels. And my love has this quality—that life and death and heaven and hell are nothing, mere words, compared with my love for her, compared to what that love would make me do. It’s a madness, isn’t it, friend Brian, that a man may love a woman so well that he would kill another man rather than see her trust in that other betrayed? She thinks nothing of me. How should she? If I killed you, she would never cease to revile my memory and hold you up as a martyr; there’s where the madness comes in. But that would be best for her, better than that she should find you out. Do you understand me?”
Brian looked at him curiously for a few moments and then began to laugh in a foolish, half-nervous fashion, as though he had suddenly been confronted with something he did not understand, and scarcely knew what attitude to take toward it. “Well, you’re more mad than I thought you were,” he said at last. “Suppose I go back to London, do you think I’m going to settle down in that dull house all my days? I tell you I’m made of different stuff. I want life, movement, music, laughter about me; a dull old dog like you can’t understand that.”
“You shall have them all,” said Comethup eagerly. “Come, I’ll make no one-sided bargain; let’s understand one another. I’ve shown you my hand, shown you the reason for this thing I’m doing. Don’t think I’m doing it for your sake; you needn’t flatter yourself to that extent. In all these things I put her first—her happiness is the great thing. Now, if I ask you to take up again a life which you say is distasteful, I’ll take upon myself to make it sweet. You shall have what money you want; I have a large income now, and when—God forgive the thought, but you force me to say it—when my aunt dies I shall be a very rich man. If you do this thing, I swear to you you shall never need money; that’s all it’s in my power to do, as a complete outsider, for the woman I love. She won’t ever know it, and you—well, you can keep her happy.”
“Oh, yes, I can do that,” said the other easily. “You talk of your love for her; you know you might strive all your days, you poor beggar, and never come nearer her heart; might spend every farthing you have in the world on her, and she would scarcely feel grateful to you. That’s where I’ve got the pull of you. She’s grateful to me if she can win a smile from me at any hour of the day; she’s so wrapped up in me that the simple words ‘my dear,’ flung carelessly to her, are more to her than the most impassioned love-speech could be from you or any one else. I don’t know what it is”—he went on with a laugh, tossing his hair back from his forehead—“but I have that power over women; I may even flout and insult them, and, by God! I think they like me the better for it.—Well, I don’t see the fun of risking starvation if it can be avoided, and, after all, you’re pretty safe. I’ll go back to London; but mind, I hold you to your word. If you care so much for her happiness, by the Lord, you shall pay for it!”