“There are two things,” he answered; “a small choice.”
“Yes.”
“The first and the simplest,” he went on in the tone of voice which she had never quite fathomed—half cynical, half amused—“is to pretend that last night—never was.”
He waited for her verdict.
“We will not do that,” she replied softly; “we will take the other alternative, whatever it is.”
She glanced up half shyly beneath her lashes, and he felt that no difficulty could affright him.
“The other is generally supposed to be very difficult,” he said. “It means—waiting.”
“Oh,” she answered cheerfully, “there is no hurry. I do not want to be married yet.”
“Waiting perhaps for years,” he added—and he saw her face drop.
“Why?”
“Because I am dependent on my father for everything. We could not marry without his consent.”
A peculiar, hard look crept into her eyes, and in some subtle way it made her look older. After a little pause she said:
“But we can surely get that—between us?”
“I propose doing without it.”
She looked up—past him—out of the window. All the youthfulness seemed to have left her face, but he did not appear to see that.
“How can you do so?”
“Well, I can work. I suppose I must be good for something—a bountiful Providence must surely have seen to that. The difficulty is to find out what it intends me for. We are not called in the night nowadays to a special mission—we have to find it out for ourselves.”
“Do you know what I should like you to be?” she said, with a bright smile and one of those sudden descents into shallowness which he appeared to like.
“What?”
“A politician.”
“Then I shall be a politician,” he answered, with lover-like promptness.
“That would be very nice,” she said; and the castles she at once began to build were not entirely aerial in their structure.
This was not a new idea. They had talked of politics before as a possible career for himself. They had moved in a circle where politics and politicians held a first place—a circle removed above the glamour of art, and wherein Bohemianism was not reckoned an attraction. She knew that behind his listlessness of manner he possessed a certain steady energy, perfect self-command, and that combination of self-confidence and indifference which usually attains success in the world. She was ambitious not only for herself but for him, and she was shrewd enough to know that the only safe outlet for a woman’s ambition is the channel of a husband’s career.
“But,” he said, “it will mean waiting.”
He paused, and then the worldly wisdom which he had learnt from his father—that worldly wisdom which is sometimes called cynicism—prompted him to lay the matter before her in its worst light.
“It will mean waiting for a couple of years at least. And for you it will mean the dullness of a long engagement, and the anomalous position of an engaged girl without her rightful protector. It will mean that your position in society will be quite different—that half the world will pity you, while the other half thinks you—well, a fool for your pains.”
“I don’t care,” she answered.
“Of course,” he went on, “I must go away. That is the only way to get on in politics in these days. I must go away and get a speciality. I must know more about some country than any other man; and when I come back I must keep that country ever before the eye of the intelligent British workman who reads the halfpenny evening paper. That is fame—those are politics.”
She laughed. There seemed to be no fear of her taking life too seriously yet. And, truth to tell, he did not appear to wish her to do so.
“But you must not go very far,” she said sweetly.
“Africa.”
“Africa? That does not sound interesting.”
“It is interesting; moreover, it is the coming country. I may be able to make money out there, and money is a necessity at present.”
“I do not like it, Jack,” she said in a foreboding voice. “When do you go?”
“At once—in fact, I came to say goodbye. It is better to do these things very promptly—to disappear before the onlookers have quite understood what is happening. When they begin to understand they begin to interfere. They cannot help it. I will write to Lady Cantourne if you like.”
“No, I will tell her.”
So he bade her goodbye, and those things that lovers say were duly said; but they are not for us to chronicle. Such words are better left to be remembered or forgotten as time and circumstance and result may decree. For one may never tell what words will do when they are laid within the years like the little morsel of leaven that leaveneth the whole.
IV
A Tragedy
Who knows? the man is proven by the hour.
In his stately bedroom on the second floor of the quietest house in Russell Square Mr. Thomas Oscard—the eccentric Oscard—lay, perhaps, a-dying.
Thomas Oscard had written the finest history of an extinct people that had ever been penned; and it has been decreed that he who writes a fine history or paints a fine picture can hardly be too eccentric. Our business, however, does not lie in the life of this historian—a life which certain grave wiseacres from the West (End) had shaken their heads over a few hours before we find him lying prone on
