“You have no right to talk to me like this,” said Chicot.
“Have I not? Why should not one man talk freely to another, uttering the truth boldly. I do not presume to judge or to blame. Who among us is pure enough to denounce his brother’s sin? But why should I pretend not to understand you? Why affect to think you a loving and devoted husband? It is better that I should be plain with you. Yes, Mr. Chicot, I believe this business is going to end your way, and not mine.”
Jack stood looking gloomily out of the open window down into the dingy street, where the strawberry barrow was moving slowly along, while the costermonger’s brassy voice brayed out his strange jargon. He had no word to answer to the surgeon’s plain speaking. The accusation was true. He could not gainsay it.
“Yes, I loved her once,” he said to himself presently, as he sat by the bedside after George Gerard had gone. “What kind of love was it, I wonder? I felt my life a failure, and had abandoned all hope of ever getting back into the beaten tracks of respectability, and it seemed to me to matter very little what I did with my life or what kind of woman I married. She was the handsomest woman I had ever seen, and she was fond of me. Why should I not marry her? Between us we could manage to live somehow, au jour la jour, from hand to mouth. We took life lightly, both of us. Those were pleasant days. Yet I look back and wonder that I could have lived in the gutter and revelled in it. How even a gentleman can sink when once he ceases to respect himself. When did I first begin to be weary? When did I begin to hate her? Never till I had met—. Oh, Paradise, which I have seen through the half-opened gate, shall I verily be free to enter your shining fields, your garden of gladness and delight?”
He sat by the bed in thoughtful silence, till the nurse came in to take his place, and then he went out into the dusty streets, and walked northward in search of air. He had promised the nurse to be back at ten o’clock, when she could have her supper and go to bed, leaving him in charge for the night. This was the usual routine.
“All may be over when I go home tonight,” he said to himself, and it seemed to him as if the past few years—the period of his married life—were part of a confused dream.
It was all over now. Its follies and its joys belonged to the past. He could look back and pity his wife and himself. Both had been foolish, both erring. It was done with. They had come to the last page of a volume that was speedily to be closed forever. He could forgive, he could pity and deplore all that foolish past, now that it was no longer to fetter the future.
He rambled far that day—he was lighter of foot—the atmosphere out of London was clearer, or it seemed clearer, than usual. He walked to Harrow, and lay on the grass below Byron’s tomb, looking dreamily down at the dim world of London.
It was after eleven when he got back to Cibber Street. The public house at the corner was closed, the latest of the gossips had deserted their doorsteps. He looked up to the first-floor windows, La Chicot’s bed had been moved into the front room, because it was more cheerful for her, the nurse said; but it was Mrs. Mason and not La Chicot who looked out of the window. The sickly yellow light shone through the dingy blind, just as it always did after dark. There was nothing to indicate any change. But all things would be the same, no doubt, if death were in the room.
As Jack stood on the doorstep feeling in his pockets for the key, the door opened, and Desrolles, the second-floor lodger, came out.
“I am going to see if I can get a drop of brandy at the Crown and Sceptre,” he said, explanatorily; “I’ve had one of my old attacks.”
Mr. Desrolles was a sufferer from some chronic complaint which he alluded to vaguely, and which necessitated frequent recourse to stimulants.
“The Crown and Sceptre is closed,” said Jack. “I’ve some brandy upstairs; I’ll give you a little.”
“That’s uncommonly good-natured of you,” said Desrolles. “I should have a night of agony if I couldn’t get a little brandy somewhere. How late you are!”
“I’ve walked further than usual. It was such a fine evening.”
“Was it really? Hereabouts it was dull and grey. I thought we were going to have a thunderstorm. Local, I suppose. I’ve got some good news for you.”
“Good news for me. The rarity of the thing will make it welcome.”
“Your wife’s better, decidedly better. I looked in two hours ago to enquire. The nurse thinks she has taken a turn. Mr. Gerard was here at eight, and thinks the same. It’s wonderful. She rallied in an extraordinary manner between three and five o’clock, took her nourishment with an appearance of appetite for the first time since she has been ill. Mrs. Mason is delighted. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Very wonderful!” exclaimed Jack Chicot: and who shall tell the bitterness of heart with which he turned from the shining vision of the future—the vision that had been with
