Sister Cecilia received—nay, she almost welcomed—the news of Jem Agar's death in an intensely Christian spirit. She looked upon it in the light of a chastening-a sort of moral cold bath, unpleasant at the time, but cleanly and refreshing in its effect. Intense goodness and virtue of the jubby-jubby order seem frequently to produce this result. Trouble—provided that it be not personal—is elevated to a position which it was never intended to occupy by an all-seeing Providence. There are some people who step into the troubles of others as into the chastening bath above referred to, and splash about. They pretend to feel deeply bereavements which cannot reasonably be expected to affect them, and go about the world with a well-scrubbed air of conscious virtue, saying in manner if not in words, “Look at me; my troubles compass me about, but my innate goodness enables me to take them in the proper spirit and to be cheerful despite all.”
This was precisely Sister Cecilia's attitude towards her small world of Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom over the whole neighbourhood.
“Ah!” she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her whole heart. “These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin—strange to us now.”
“Yes, miss; that they be,” Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often slightly aggravating.
At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her “poor boy.” The grave seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all sin, but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.
Jem never had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her had passed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have perforce to accept much affection which they scornfully refused in life.
“Poor Jem!” said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar the day after that lady's visit to Gray's Inn. “I always thought that perhaps he and dear Dora would come to—to some understanding.”
She stirred her tea with patient, suffering head inclined at a resigned angle.
“Do you think there was any understanding between them?” inquired Mrs. Agar.
“Well—I should not like to say.”
Which, being translated, meant that she would like to say, but did not know.
It had always been a pet scheme of Mrs. Agar's that Dora should marry Arthur; firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts—namely, money and common-sense—Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the flaccid hand of her son.
“I will try and find out,” said Sister Cecilia after a pause.
Mrs. Agar said nothing. She was meditating over this last stroke of fate in favour of her scheme, and her thoughts were disturbed by that distrust in the continuance of good fortune which usually spoils the enjoyment of the unscrupulous in those good things which they have obtained for themselves.
So Sister Cecilia took it for granted that she was doing the will of the mistress of Stagholme when she wrote a note that same evening inviting Dora to have tea with her the following afternoon.
At the hour appointed Dora arrived, and was duly shown into the little cottage drawing-room, of which the decoration hovered between the avowedly devout and the economo-aesthetic.
Sister Cecilia swept down upon her with a speechless emotion which, in the nature of things (and Sister Cecilia), could not well be of long duration.
“My dear,” she whispered, “God will give you strength to bear this awful trial.”
Dora recovered her breath and re-arranged her crushed habiliments before inquiring, with just sufficient feeling to save her from downright rudeness, “What is the matter; has something else happened?”
Sister Cecilia drew back. She was vaguely conscious of having run mentally against a brick wall. There was something new and unusual about Dora which she could not understand—something, if she could only have seen it, suggestive of the quiet, strong man in whose honour the whole parish wore mourning. But Sister Cecilia was not a subtle woman. She had had so little experience of the world, of men and of women, that she fell easily into the error of thinking that they were all to be treated alike and with equal success by little maxims culled from fourpenny-halfpenny devotional books.
“No, dear,” she exclaimed; “I was referring to our terrible loss. My heart has been bleeding for you—”
“It is very kind, I'm sure,” said Dora quietly; “I forgot that I had not seen you since the news reached us.”
It is probable that her self-control cost her more than she suspected. Her lips were drawn and dry. She wore a thick veil, which she carefully abstained from lifting above the level of her eyes. “I am sure,” moaned Sister Cecilia, “it has been a most trying time for us all. I wonder that Mrs. Agar has borne up so bravely. Her health is wonderful, considering.”
Dora sat looking straight in front of her. She was withdrawing her gloves slowly. Her face was that of a person whose mind was made up for the endurance of an operation.
The twaddling voice, the characteristic reference to health, were intensely aggravating. There are some women who talk of their own health before the dead are buried. They do not seem to be able to separate grief from bodily ill. Clad in crape, they rush to the seaside, and there, presumably because grief affects their legs, they hire a man to wheel themselves and Sorrow in a bath-chair. Why—oh, why! does bereavement drive women into bath-chairs on the King's Road, or the Lees, or the Hoe?
“Wonderful!” said Dora.
Sister Cecilia, busying herself with the teapot, proceeded to blow her own trumpet with the bare-facedness of true virtue.
“I have been with her constantly,” she said. “I think it is better for us all to tell of our grief; I think that we are given speech for that purpose. For although one may only be able to offer sympathy and perhaps a little advice, it is always a relief to speak of one's sorrow.”
“I suppose it is,” admitted Dora from her strong-hold of reserve, “for some people.”
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Sister Cecilia, all heedless of the sarcasm. For extreme charity is proof against such. It covers other things besides a multitude of sins. Wielded foolishly it runs amuck like a too luxuriant creeper, and often kills commonsense. “And that is why I asked you to come, dear. I thought that you might want to confide in some one—that you might want to unburden your heart to one who feels for you as if this sorrow were her own—”
“Only one piece of sugar, thank you,” interrupted Dora. “Thank you. No. Bread and butter, please. It is very kind of you, Sister Cecilia. But, you see, when I have any unburdening to do there is always mother, and if I want any advice there is always father.”
“Yes, dear. But sometimes even one's parents are not quite the persons to whom one would turn in times of grief.”
“Oh!” observed Dora, without much enthusiasm.
Unconsciously Sister Cecilia was doing the very best thing possible for Dora, She was arousing in her the spirit of antagonism—hardening a stricken heart, as it were, by a fresh challenge. She was teaching Dora to fight for what we learn to deem most sacred—namely, the right to monopolise our own thoughts and feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of further details.
Self-reliance was lurking somewhere in this girl's character, but it had never been developed by the pressure of circumstances. Reserve she had seen practised by her father, but the actual advantages thereof were only now beginning to be apparent to her. The body, we are told, adapts itself to abnormal circumstances; so is it with the mind. Already Dora was beginning, as they say at sea, to find her feet; to take that stand amidst her environments which she was forced to hold, practically alone, thereafter.
And Sister Cecilia, with that blind faith in a good motive which gives almost as much trouble as actual vice, floundered on in the path she had mapped out for herself.
“You know, dear,” she said, looking out of the window with a sentimental droop of her thin, inquisitive lips, “I cannot help feeling that this—this terrible blow means more to you than it does to us.”
“Why?” inquired Dora practically.
Sister Cecilia was silent, with one of those aggravating silences which do not allow even the satisfaction of a flat contradiction. A meaning silence is a coward's argument. She was beginning to feel slightly nervous before this child, ignorant that childhood is not always a matter of years and calendar months.
“Why?” asked Dora again.
Sister Cecilia looked rather bewildered.
“Well, dear, I thought perhaps—I always thought that my poor boy entertained some feeling—you understand?”
“No,” replied Dora, borrowing for the moment her father's most crushing deliberation of manner, “I cannot say I do. When you say your 'poor boy,' are you referring to Jem?”
Sister Cecilia assented with a resigned nod worthy of the very earliest martyr.
“Then, as every one has discovered so many virtues in him—quite suddenly—we had better emulate one of them, and have at the least the good feeling to hold our tongues about any feelings he may have entertained. Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?”
“Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you,” said the well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally misunderstood.
“I have no doubt of that,” returned Dora, with an equanimity which was again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. “But in future you will be consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on my behalf at all.”
“As you will, dear; as you will,” in the hopeless tone of age, experience, and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush headlong down the hill.
“Yes,” returned Dora calmly; “I know that, thank you. And now, I think, we had better change the subject.”
The subject was therefore changed; but Sister Cecilia, having, as it were, whetted her appetite for details, was not at her ease with other food for the mind, and presently Dora left.
The girl went back into her small world with a new knowledge gained—the knowledge that in all and through all we are really quite alone. There can be only one companion, and if that one be absent, there are only so many talking-machines left to us. And many of us pass the whole of our lives in conversation with them. So it is; and we know not why.
In a subtle way she felt stronger for this little tussle—a fight is always exhilarating. She felt that from henceforth the memory of Jem was hers, and hers alone, to defend and to cherish. It was not much of a consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime.
A sense, when first I fronted him, Said, “Trust him not!”
After successfully carrying through the purchase of mourning stationery and attending to other important items connected with sorrow in its worldly shape, Arthur Agar went back to Cambridge. There was enough of the woman in his nature to enable him to cherish grief and nurse it lovingly, as some women (not the best of them) do. In this attitude towards the world there was none of that dogged going about his business which characterises the ordinary man from whose life something has slipped out.
He wandered by the banks of the Cam with mourning in his mien, and his cherished friends took sympathetic coffee with him after Hall. They spoke of Jem with that fervid admiration which University men honestly feel for one a few years their senior who has already “done something.”
“A ripping soldier” they called him and some of them entertained serious doubts as to whether they had done wisely in choosing the less glorious paths of peace. And Arthur Agar settled down into the old profitless life, with this difference—that he could not dine out, that he used blackedged notepaper, and that his delicate heliotrope neckties were folded away in a drawer until such time as his grief should be assuaged into that state of resignation technically called half-mourning.
One afternoon well towards the end of the term Arthur Agar's “gyp” crept in with that valet-like confidential air which seems to be bred of too intimate a knowledge of the extent of one's wardrobe.
“There is a gentleman, sir,” he said, “as wants to see you. But in no wise will he give his name, which, he says, you don't know it.”
“Is he selling engravings?” asked Arthur.
The “gyp” looked mildly offended. As if he didn't know that sort!
“No, sir. Military man, I should take it.”
Arthur Agar had met the Scotch Balaclava veteran in his time too. He hesitated, and the “gyp,” who felt that his reputation was at stake, spoke:
“He is eminently a gentleman, sir,” he said.
“Well, then, show him up.”
A moment later a man who might have been the wandering Jew fin de siècle stood in the doorway. His smart military moustache was small and evidently trimmed, his face was sunburnt, and in his eyes there gleamed the restlessness of India.
He bowed, and awaited the exit of the man. Then, coming forward, he was able for the first time to see Arthur Agar's face distinctly, and his glance wavered.
At that moment Arthur Agar was staring at him with something in his face that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to paralyse his breathing powers, and his temples throbbed painfully.
Arthur Agar's life had been passed in eminently pleasant places. The seamy side of existence had always been carefully hidden from his eyes. He therefore did not recognise this strange sense which had leapt into his being—the sense of superhuman, physical, mortal revulsion.
He was divided between two instincts. One side of his nature urged him to shriek like a woman. Had he followed the other, he would have rushed at this man, whom he had never seen before, seeking to do him bodily harm. He would not have paused to reason that in anything like a struggle he would stand no chance against the sinewy, dark-eyed soldier who stood watching him. For there are moments even in this age of self-suppression when we do not pause to think, when he who cannot swim will leap into deep water to save another.
This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger it was who spoke.
“I presume,” he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water, “I presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?”
While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window. He did not seem to like the glance of this young man, for even the most practical of us have a conscience at times.
“Yes.”
The new-comer laid his walking-stick on the table, and turned to make sure that the door was closed.
“I knew your step-brother,” he explained, “Jem Agar, in India.”
Then the instinct of the gentleman and the host asserted itself over and above the throbbing hatred.
“Ah! Will you sit down?”
The stranger took the proffered chair and laid aside his hat. But neither of them was at ease. There was a subtle suggestion that they had met before and quarrelled—vague, unreasoning, quite impossible if you will; but it was there. They were as men meeting again with a past between them (too full of strong passions ever to be forgotten) which each was trying in vain to ignore.
“I have brought home a few belongings of his,” the stranger went on to explain. “Just a port-manteau with some clothes and things.”
He paused, and drew a small packet from the pocket of a covert-coat which he carried over his arm.
“Here,” he went on, “are some papers of his—a diary and one or two letters. The rest of the things are at my hotel in town.”
Arthur took the packet, and, still in the same dreamy, unreal way, opened it. He turned to the last entry—dated six weeks back.
“Got out of bed at five, but nothing to be seen in the valley. I feel a bit chippy this morning. If nothing turns up to-day shall begin to feel uneasy. The men seem all right. They are plucky little fellows.”
There was a self-consciousness about Jem Agar's diary, a selection of the right word, which conveyed nothing to Arthur. But it fell into other hands later on, where it was understood better.
General Michael was watching the undergraduate with the same critical attention which he had brought to bear on the writer of the diary not two months before.
“Did you see much of your step-brother?” he asked abruptly, feeling his way towards his purpose.
Arthur looked up. He was getting accustomed to the loathing that he felt for this man, as one gets accustomed to an evil odour or a physical pain.
“I saw enough of him to be very fond of him,” he replied.
“And your mother—was she attached to him? Excuse my asking; I have a reason.”
The little pause was enough. Seymour Michael had expected as much.
He had never forgiven Mrs. Agar the insults she heaped upon his head in the drawing-room of Jaggery House. It is very difficult to bring shame home to a Jew, and on that occasion this son of the modern Ishmaelites had been thoroughly ashamed of himself. The sting of that past ignominy was with him still, and would remain within his heart until such time as he could revenge himself.
With that mean, underhand watchfulness for an opportunity which is almost excusable in one of the unfortunates against whom every man's hand is raised to-day, he had never parted with his thirst for revenge. The moment seemed propitious. It was within his power to lay for Anna Agar one of those spiteful feminine traps of which a woman can only fully appreciate the sting.
He determined to leave Mrs. Agar in ignorance of the real facts respecting her step-son. His vengeance was to allow her to rejoice—almost openly, as she did—in the stroke of fortune by which her own son, Arthur, had become possessed of Stagholme. He knew the woman well enough to foresee that in a hundred ways she would heap up ignominy, meanness, deception, which would crumble in one vast wreck about her head when Jem Agar returned.
It was a vengeance worthy of the man, and spiteful enough to be fully comprehended by its victim. But, like others handling petards, Seymour Michael grew somewhat careless, and forgot that the wrong man is sometimes hoist.
He knew his position well enough to make all safe as regarded Jem Agar on his return. It was absolutely necessary to tell Arthur Agar—necessary for his own safety in the future. The other two persons to whom the secret was to be imparted were Mrs. Agar and Dora Glynde. From Mrs. Agar Seymour Michael determined to withhold the news for his own reasons. Dora was to be kept in the dark because she was a woman, and therefore unsafe.
This was the plan in its original shape with which Michael sought out Arthur Agar at his rooms in college at Cambridge. It was further assisted and elaborated by a circumstance which the originator could scarcely have been expected to foresee—the fact of Arthur Agar's love for Dora, which was at this time beginning to take to itself a definite existence. It began, as all love does, with a want more or less elevated according to the nature of the wanter. Arthur Agar required some one for whom to buy those small and feminine luxuries which he could not for manly shame purchase to himself. He delighted in spending money in those establishments tersely called magasins de luxe in the country from whence their contents do emanate. He therefore got into the habit of “picking up little things” for Dora, with the result that she in her turn picked up that very small object, his heart.
Michael had seen enough of Arthur Agar during this short interview to endow him with the same need of contempt which he had entertained towards Anna Agar, the mother. The strong personal resemblance, the obvious weakness of the boy's face, and, above all, that sense of having the upper hand, which makes brave men out of cowards, gave him confidence. It seemed that he had only to play the cards thrust into his hand.
“I knew,” he pursued, “Jem Agar very well. He was a peculiar man: very quiet, very reserved, and just the man to make a difficult position rather more difficult.”
Arthur's intelligence was not keen enough to follow the drift of this remark.
“Yes,” he said gently.
“He hinted to me once or twice,” went on Seymour Michael, “that things were not very harmonious at home.”
“I was not aware of it,” answered Arthur, whose innate gentlemanliness told him that this should be held sacred ground.
The General shifted his position.
“He was a first-rate soldier,” he said warmly.
It was obvious to both that they were not getting on. Something seemed to hold them both back, paralysing the savoir-faire which both had acquired in their intercourse with the world. Seymour Michael was puzzled. He was not afraid of this boy. He knew himself to be stronger—capable of over-mastering him entirely. But for the first time in his life he felt awkward and ill at ease.
Arthur Agar only wanted this man to go. He felt that he could forego the news which he must undoubtedly be in a position to give if only he could be rid of this hated presence. At moments the loathing came to him again, like a cold hand laid upon his heart.
“Were you with him,” inquired the undergraduate, “at the time of his—death?”
“No. I was at head-quarters, forty miles to the rear.”
There was a little pause, then suddenly Seymour Michael leant forward with his two hands on the table that stood between them.
“Mr. Agar,” he said, “are you able to keep a secret?”
“I suppose so,” answered Agar apprehensively.
“Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give you leave to reveal it.”
Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as if this man had always been in his life—as if he would never go out of it again.
“I am not sure that I care to hear it,” he wavered.
“You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were requesting me to tell you this.”
“You promise that that is true?”
Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice or deceit in others to trouble him.
“I promise,” replied Seymour Michael.
Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man was almost a panic.
“Then tell me,” he said.
Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's pale face.
“The estate is not yours,” he said. “Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not dead.”
“Not dead!” repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. “Not dead! Then who are you? Tell me who you are!”
“Ah! That I cannot tell you.”
And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes ill deeds done!
He is a wise liar who makes use of the truth at times. Seymour Michael was clever enough to stay his fantastic tongue in his further explanation to Arthur Agar.
“It is a long story,” he said, “and in order to fully state the case to you I must go into some matters of which perhaps you have heard little. Do you happen to be anything of a politician? Are you, I mean, interested in foreign affairs?”
Arthur confessed that he knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded, characteristic room.
“You perhaps know,” Seymour Michael went on, in a tone of which the sarcasm was lost upon its victim, “that Russia is living in hopes of some day possessing India?”
“Oh—ah—yes!”
Arthur Agar was obviously not at all interested. There were so many things of a similar nature to be remembered—things which did not really interest him—and those nearer home had precedence in his mind. He knew, for instance, that Trinity Hall lived in hopes of heading the river that year, and that the Narcissus Club were going to give a narcissus-coloured dance in May week, at which entertainment even the jellies were to be yellow.
The General now launched into an explanation, couched carefully in language suitable to his hearer's limited knowledge of the facts.
“Russia,” he said, “is now so large that, unless they make it larger still and get tropical resources to draw upon, it will fall to pieces. They want India. Some day there will be a fight, a very large fight. But not yet. In the meantime it is a question of learning every inch of that country where the battle-fields will be, and every thought in the minds of those men who will look on at the fight. I—”
He paused, recollecting that the fame of his own name might have penetrated even to this out-of-the-way spot. “Some of us have been at this all our lives. Over there, on the Frontier, there are certain numbers of us, on both sides, playing a very deep game. Your brother is one of the players, a prominent man on the field; a half-back, one might call him.”
There was a strong temptation to continue the allegory—to say that he himself was goal-keeper; but Seymour Michael was one of the few men who can in need make even their own vanity subservient to convenience.
“We watch each other,” he went on, “like cats. We always know where the others are, and what they are doing. Your brother was one of the most closely watched by the other side. For some time we have been aware of an influence at work with a tribe of Hillmen who have hitherto been friendly to us, and we have not been able to find what this influence is, or how it is brought to bear upon them. We were so closely watched that we could not penetrate to the affected country. But at last the chance came. Your brother was gazetted as killed. We allowed the report to remain uncontradicted. We let the other side think that Jem Agar was dead, and therefore incapable of doing any more harm, and now he has gone up into that country to find out what they are after.”
Arthur nodded.
“I see,” he said. He was rather vague about it all, and had not quite realised yet that this was all true, that this man whom he still hated and distrusted without any apparent reason was real and living, speaking to him in real waking life and not in a dream. Moreover, he had not nearly realised that Jem was alive. The evidence of his own black clothes, of the sombre-edged stationery, of his mourning habit of life this term, was too strong upon a mind like his to be suddenly thrown aside. Perhaps he had discovered that the consolation of inheritance was greater than was at first apparent. In six weeks he had slipped very comfortably into Jem's shoes, and it seemed only right and proper that his life should have a background of the noble proportions of Stagholme. Also, now Stagholme meant Dora; for he was worldly-wise enough to know that his own personal value in the world's estimation had undergone a great change in six short weeks. He knew that the man with the money usually wins.
It would almost seem that Seymour Michael divined his thoughts, at least in part.
“There are two reasons,” he went on to say, “why absolute secrecy is necessary; first, for Agar's own sake. He is, of course, in disguise. No one suspects that he is there, and that is his only safeguard in the country where he is. Secondly—but I want your whole attention, please.”
“Yes, I am listening.”
Seymour Michael leant forward and emphasised his remark by tapping on the table with his gloved finger.
“The mission is so extremely dangerous that it comes almost to the same thing.”
“What do you mean?” inquired Arthur Agar, whose gentle intellect only compassed subtleties of the drawing-room type.
“I mean that Jem Agar is almost as good as a dead man, although he was not killed at Pregalla.”
The man who had wept in this same room six weeks before looked up with a gleam of something very like hope in his troubled eyes. Such is the power of love. For Arthur Agar had not been ignorant of the probability that in his step-brother, once dead but now living, he had had a rival. Sister Cecilia had seen to that.
“But when shall we know? When will he come back?” inquired he. And Seymour Michael, the subtle, began to see his way more clearly.
“Certainly not for six months, probably not for nine.”
One may take it that no man is sent into the world a ready-made scoundrel. It all depends upon the circumstances of life. No one is safe right up to the end, and events may combine to make the very best of us into that thing which the world calls a villain.
Arthur Agar, all inexperienced, weak, hereditarily handicapped, suddenly found himself on the balance. And the scales were held, not by the hand of Justice, blind and clement, but by Seymour Michael, very open-eyed, with a keen watchfulness for his own purpose; biassed; unscrupulous. It must be admitted that circumstances were against Arthur Agar.
“There is nothing to be done,” added Seymour Michael, with a smile which his companion could not be expected to fathom, “but to keep very quiet, and to make the best of your opportunities while you occupy the position of heir.”
Arthur smiled in a sickly way. He felt suddenly as if this man could see right through him, and all the while he hated him. Seymour Michael meant “debts”—it was only natural that one of his race should think of money before all things—Arthur's thoughts were fixed on Dora. And guiltily he imagined himself to be detected.
“You will be doing no harm to Jem,” said the tempter, with his pleasant laugh. “You are called upon to act the part well for his sake.”
“Ye-es, I suppose I am,” answered Arthur. “And I must tell no one?”
“Absolutely no one.”
Despite his credulous nature, Arthur Agar was singularly suspicious on this occasion.
“Are these Jem's own instructions?” he asked.
“His own instructions,” replied Seymour Michael callously.
Arthur paused in deep reflection. It was evident, he argued to himself, that Jem could not have cared for Dora, or he would never have left her in ignorance of the truth. If, therefore, during Jem's absence, he could win Dora for himself, he could not in any way be accused of wronging his step-brother. And we all know that a conscience which argues with itself is lost.
“To make things easier for us both,” pursued Seymour Michael, “I propose that this interview remain a strict secret between ourselves, and for that purpose I have suppressed my own name. It is a fairly well-known name. I may mention that in guarantee of good faith. As, however, you do not know me, it will be easier for you to suppress the fact that we have ever met.”
Arthur almost laughed at these last words. It seemed as if he had known this man all his life—as if his whole existence had merely been a period of waiting until he should come.
“And my mother must not know?” he said. He kept harking back to this question with a singular persistence. There are a few men and many women for whom a secret is a responsibility to be transferred to the first-comer without hesitation. One half of the world takes pleasure in divulging a secret—for the other half it is positive pain to keep one.
Seymour Michael never dreamt that the secret might be in unsafe hands. To a secretive man like himself the incapacity to keep a counsel never suggested itself. There is no doubt that where we all err is in persistently judging others by ourselves. Arthur Agar was keenly aware of his own incompetence in many things—he was one of those promising undergraduates who hire a man to water six small plants in a window-box. Incompetence was by him reduced to a science. There were so many things which he could not do, that he was forced to find occupations for a very extensive leisure, and these were usually of the petty accomplishment order, which are graceful in young girls and very disgraceful in young men.
Now the doctrine of incompetence is a very dangerous one. Already in the criminal courts we are beginning to hear of men and women who do not feel competent to keep the law. There were many laws of social procedure and a few of schoolboy honour which Arthur Agar felt to be beyond him, and he considered that in making confession he was acquiring a right to absolution.
He did not tell General Michael that he was not good at keeping secrets, chiefly because that gentleman was not of the trivial confession type; but he made a mental reservation.
Seymour Michael had risen and was walking backwards and forwards slowly between the window and the door. He seemed quite at home in the small room, and his manner of taking three strides and then wheeling round suggested the habit of living in tents.
“What you must say is that you have received your brother's effects,” he said. “If they ask from whence—from the War Office. I am the War Office to all intents and purposes. The affair is almost forgotten. All the details have been published—the usual newspaper details, with Fleet Street local colouring. You should have no difficulty.”
“No,” answered Arthur meekly, but with another mental reservation.
“There are, of course, certain legal formalities in progress,” went on the General, “relative to the estate. Those must be allowed to go on. We may trust the lawyers to go slowly. And afterwards they can amuse themselves by undoing what they have done. That is their trade. Half of them make a living by undoing what the others have done. You are ...”
Seymour Michael so far forgot himself as to pause and make a mental calculation. Arthur saw him do it and never thought of being surprised. It seemed quite natural that this man should possess data upon which to base mental calculations.
“... not twenty-one yet?” Michael finished the sentence.
“No.”
“So that, you see, they cannot make over the estate to you before the time your brother comes or—should—come—back.”
Arthur understood the emphasis perfectly this time. He was getting on.
“There are,” continued Michael, who was eminently methodical, “a few military formalities, which have had my attention. In fact, I think that everything has been attended to. In case you should require any information, or perhaps advice, write to C 74, Smith's Library, Vigo Street. That is the address on that envelope.”
Arthur rose too. The thought that his visitor might be about to depart thrilled through him with the warmth of relieved suspense.
“For your own information,” said Michael, looking straight into the wavering, colourless eyes, “I may tell you that in my opinion—the opinion of an expert—this expedition is exceedingly hazardous. We—we must be prepared for the worst.”
Arthur Agar turned away. He had felt the deep eyes probing his very soul—looking right through him. A sickening sense of weakness was at his heart. He felt that in the presence of this man he did not belong to himself.
“You mean,” he muttered awkwardly, “that Jem will never come back?”
“I think it most probable. And then—when we have to abandon all hope, I mean—we shall be glad that we kept this thing to ourselves.”
Seymour Michael held out his hand, and pressed the boy's weak fingers in a careless grip. Then he turned, and with a short “Good-bye” left him.
Arthur stood looking at the closed door with the frightened eyes of a woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room—the futile little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy of such environments—the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece, the little glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of stephanotis, the hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation wherein Art sappeth Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new world of things which he could not do. He gazed—not without a vague shame—into a perspective of incompetencies.
In the laissez-aller of the unreflective he had assumed that life would be a continuance of small pleasures and refined enjoyments, little dinners and pleasant converse, Dora and a comfortable home, mutual mild delight in flowers and table decoration. Into this assumption Seymour Michael had suddenly stepped—strong, restless, and mysterious—and Arthur became uneasily conscious of possibilities. There might be something in his own life, there might even be something within himself, over which he could have no control. There was something within himself—something connected with the man who had gone, leaving unrest behind him, as he left it wherever he passed. What was this? whither would it lead?
Arthur Agar rang the bell, and kept the “gyp” in the room on some trivial pretext. He was afraid of solitude.