The Gap in the Curtain

'I gather that you're not in love with her?' said Tallis.

Reggie looked wooden. He was trying to live up to his code. 'I admire her immensely,' he stammered. 'And I'm grateful to her—far more grateful than I can ever express—I owe her a tremendous lot … She has worked like a slave for me—given up most of her time—oh, she's a marvel! Unselfish, too … Nobody has ever taken such an interest in me … '

'I know, I know. But do you love her?'

Then, just as an ice jam cracks on a river, Reggie's decorum went with a rush.

'No, by God,' he cried wildly. 'I don't love her! And she doesn't love me. She has taken me up, and she'll stick to me till I'm in my grave, but she doesn't love me. She couldn't love anybody—not made that way. I'm only her business partner, the thing she needed to round off her life …

Love her! O Lord, I'm nearer hating her. I'm in terror of her. She mesmer-ises me, like a stoat with a rabbit. She has twenty times my brains, and I've simply got to do as I'm told … And then there's her awful family. I'm lapped in them, suffocated by them. I loathe her infernal apes of brothers—they're so cursed gentlemanlike and efficient and patronising. Dash it all, man, there are times when I can scarcely keep from hitting their blinking faces.'

He dragged a paper from his pocket, and flung it at Tallis.

'There's worse still. Look at that. Read it carefully and smack your lips over its succulent beastliness. That's the Cortal idea of what I'm going to give my life to. That's the prospectus of my business. The 'Interpreter's House,' by God! It has interpreted them to me all right. Do you grasp the perfect hell of it? I'm to spend my days with the things I thought I cared about, but the gloss is rubbed off every one of them. I'm to be a sort of Cook's guide to culture on a sound commercial basis. Damn it, I'd rather clean out drains in Chicago, for then I should know that there was a jolly world to which I might some day return. But it's just that jolly world that's been blasted for me.'

He dropped his head on his hands and groaned.

'There's no way out except to cut my throat, and that wouldn't be playing the game. I suppose I must go through with it. I mustn't behave like a cad … Besides, I daren't. I simply haven't the nerve.'

Tallis was smiling cryptically.

'Funny you should tell me this. For the same thing happened to me about a quarter of a century ago.'

Reggie looked up quickly. 'Gospel truth?' he asked.

'Gospel truth. She was an American—from Philadelphia—very pretty, and sweet, and sticky as barley sugar. She had a family, too, just like the Cortals, and she had a business mind. She took me up, and meant to run me, and at first I was fascinated. Then I saw that it would mean Gehenna—Gehenna for both of us.'

'What did you do?' The question came like a pistol crack.

'I did the only thing. Ran away and hid myself. Very far away—to western Tibet. I thought at the time that I was behaving like a cad, but now I know that it would have been far more caddish to have gone on.

Marriage by capture doesn't suit people like you and me.'

Reggie stared.

'I am not going to Tibet,' he said. He had forgotten all about Moe and Flambard, but something remained by way of an inhibition against the Orient.

'No need to. The world is wide. There's plenty of other places.'

Tallis rose and rang a bell.

'I'm an abstemious man,' he said; 'but I always drink brandy in moments of crisis. This is a crisis for you, my lad, and I'm going to take charge of it. You must run away and hide, like a little boy. It's the only thing to do, and it's also the wisest and the most courageous thing. Cut the painter, burn the ship, hew down the bridge behind you.'

There was light in Reggie's dull eyes.

'Where shall I run to?' he asked, and his voice had lost its flatness.

'Come with me,' said Tallis. 'I'm off tomorrow morning, and shall be away for the better part of a year. I have a bit of work to do before I can finish my book. I have shut up Libanus and sent my valuables to the bank. We go up to Liverpool tonight, so you will just have time to make your arrangements.'

'I'm not going east,' said Reggie, as the vague recollection rose again in him.

'No more am I. I am going west.'

Tallis fetched a sheet of club notepaper on which he wrote with a fat gold pencil.

'We must proceed according to Cocker,' he said. 'No secret shuffling out of the country. This is an announcement of my departure which will appear in the press tomorrow, and I have added your name. It is your Declaration of Independence to all whom it may concern. Also you are going straight from here to see Verona and tell her. That will correspond to the tea chests in Boston Harbour. The train for Liverpool leaves at ten minutes past seven. We can dine on it.'

'What shall I say to her?' Reggie faltered, but not as one without hope.

'That's your concern. You will find words if you really mean business.

You are improving on my conduct, for I never made my adieux to the lady, but then Verona has done a good deal for you, and she is old Jim Jack's niece. After all, it's a kindness to her, for a girl with her brains can do better for herself than a chap like you. When you get home, you'll find that she has espoused some appalling magnate.'

Reggie was on his feet, his lassitude gone, his shoulders squared. He spruced himself up with the help of an adjacent mirror, and his move-ments were brisk.

'Right,' he said. 'The seven-ten at Euston. I needn't take much lug-gage, for I can buy what I want in … ' He stopped short. 'New York is no good. I can't hide myself there. The Cortals know half the place, and those blighted brothers are always hopping over.'

Tallis was paying for the brandy.

'You needn't worry about that,' he said. 'New York is only our jumping-off point. We are bound for farther south … Central America …

a place called Yucatan.'

Part 5

SIR ROBERT GOODEVE

'A covert place

Where you might think to find a din

Of doubtful talk, and a live flame

Wandering, and many a shape whose name

Not itself knoweth, and old dew,

And your own footsteps meeting you,

And all things going as they came.'

D G ROSSETTI, The Portrait.

1

Chapter

For five months after that Whitsuntide at Flambard I saw and heard nothing of Goodeve. But I could not get him out of my mind, for of all the party he had struck me as the one to whom the experience meant the most, the one who had been the most tense and expectant. Whatever he had seen on the phantasmal Times page of a year ahead he would take with the utmost seriousness. I liked him so much that I was a little anxious about him. He was finer clay than the others.

My own attitude towards Moe's experiment varied during these months. Sometimes I was inclined to consider the whole thing the vag-ary of a genius gone mad. But there were moments when I remembered his brooding pits of eyes and the strange compulsion of his talk, and came again under his spell. I made an opportunity to see Landor—the man I had telephoned from Flambard before my first conversation with Moe—and tried to discover what substance a trained scientist might find in Moe's general theory. But Landor was not very helpful. The usual reaction had begun, and I gathered that at the moment the dead man had more critics than followers. Landor