It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

The story has scarcely room for anything that was said or done at Royd until two days after the reunion that closed the last chapter. All it wants may be told in a few words. Challis was sulky all the rest of the first evening, and would not admit it to himself. Judith was dignified, glittering, and universal; talked to everybody, whereas Challis wanted her to talk to him. She was judicious, no doubt—woman of the world, and so on—but was it necessary to carry it so far? Surely Marianne in the background safeguarded the situation?

The party made itself at home rapidly, having begun at an advantage from previous experience. On the third day after its arrival any two members of it were ripe for arranging their day in each other's pockets, and treating their hosts as a sort of lay inn-keepers of benevolent dispositions, but quite negligible. Challis had taken the latter at their word when they said he was to stop in his room and write all day if he liked. He had brought his MS. of "Estrild" with him, and had made up his mind to complete it. The play would have its value, even if the Estrild he had set his heart on, and had written the part for, decided on not attempting it.

For a doubt had crept into the scheme as it stood when Challis paid that visit to the sprained-ankle patient in Grosvenor Square. Something had influenced Judith since then; probably some passage of arms with her family. At least, so Challis surmised. But she had told him next to nothing, so far. Her passing lameness had occasioned a break in tentative readings of the play, in which others than herself had taken part; and during this interruption it had been evident that the young lady's ambition to fly in the face of Society and family tradition had undergone a change. But the invitation to Royd at Whitsuntide remained in black and white, and could not be gainsaid.

Therefore, Challis had found himself on that well-remembered lawn, as recorded in our last chapter, at the time appointed, with no misgiving on him at the moment as to the cordiality of his welcome. Nothing had happened to create one. But as the hours grew to a day, and then to days, he began to be conscious somehow that his hosts had towards him a feeling they were too well-bred to show; and not only that, but that an indefinable discomfort had arisen between himself and Judith. Something had flawed the relation that each called friendship, and refrained from speculating about any other designation for. He had recognized this consciousness for the first time at that moment beside the carriage. And the reason he so readily accepted her ladyship's permission to indulge his inspirations ad libitum in his own room was that he felt it was a sort of release to him to do so. Was it a release for them also?—for Judith?

If this visit was to be no more than the fulfilment of an invitation to which his hosts stood pledged, let him work it out like a term of penal servitude, and go his ways at the end of it. But he chafed at the impossibility of challenging the position in any way. How in the name of common-sense could he say to the Baronet or her ladyship, "I see through your persistent amiability of manner that your feelings towards this eminent author are not the same to a nicety as they were six months since, and I should like to review the situation with you, with a view to the removal of misunderstandings"?

Still less was it possible to say to Judith, "You know that an indescribable change of manner has come over you in your demeanour towards your humble admirer, and he would give worlds to know the cause of it. But, in consideration of a certain effect you have upon him, of a certain exaltation he experiences in your presence, a certain depression at your absence, a very certain exasperation at any suspicion of a slight to him in favour of another male, he much doubts his powers of self-command through an explanatory interview. So he cannot ask questions. But if you could, with your womanly tact, frame some communication that would let him know what-the-anything it is all about, he would feel very grateful."

The position was a delicate one, with that necessity in the background for locking his heart up tight, for the sake of Polly Anne, of whom—odd though it may seem—he never lost sight. Only he never actually formulated an admission of its delicacy. The nearest approach to it was when a sudden image of Mr. John Eldridge flashed across his mental bioscope, shut one of its eyes, and said, "Rather ticklish, Master Titus—eh?"

Very few people will understand the odd freaks of Challis's mind, but it is useless to write this story and omit them.

There was only one thing he was absolutely clear about. Nothing the word dishonourable would apply to was admissible into any hypothetical drama his mind would construct, to cut the—rather hypothetical, please!—Gordian knot of his relation to Judith. He pictured himself to himself as potentially Don Juan, Captain Macheath, Silenus, or the late Prince Regent, as far as his normal ideas of morality went; but he was one thing, mind you, and Judith was another! She, being what she was, made any speculations in that department irrelevant. They did not arise from any question before the House. Besides—her position! Think of it!

He never contrasted his estimation of Judith now with his rough valuation of her at first sight. Just a handsome woman—the fine contents of an expensive, well-cut dress—a fit mate for fifty thousand a year, deer-forests in Scotland, houses in Park Lane, opera-boxes, and newspaper paragraphs! If he had done so, might he not have suspected, in the exaggeration of thought that placed her above and beyond suspicion, an element of danger more formidable to him than the imaginary laxity he was so ready to credit himself with. He might at least have seen the moral imbecility of what was virtually an appeal to Judith's self-respect and integrity to protect him from his own weakness. Perhaps he had subcutaneous misgivings of the correctness of his insight into her character when he decided that it would never do to tempt confidences of a personal nature.