Brook felt in his pocket mechanically for his pipe, as a man who smokes generally takes to something of the sort at great moments in his life, from sheer habit. He went through the operation of filling and lighting with great precision, almost unconscious of what he was doing, and presently he found himself smoking and sitting on the wall just where Clare had leaned against it during their interview. In three minutes his pipe had gone out, but he was not aware of the fact, and sat quite still in his place, staring into the shrubbery which grew at the back of the terrace.
He was conscious that he had talked and acted wildly, and quite unlike the self with which he had been long acquainted; and the consciousness was anything but pleasant. He wondered where Clare was, and what she might be thinking of him at that moment. But as he thought of her his former mood returned, and he felt that he was not ashamed of what he had done and said. Then he realised, all at once, for the second time, that Clare had been on the platform on that first night, and he tried to recall everything that Lady Fan and he had said to each other.
No such thing had ever happened to him before, and he had a sensation of shame and distress and anger, as he went over the scene, and thought of the innocent young girl who had sat in the shadow and heard it all. She had accidentally crossed the broad, clear line of demarcation which he drew between her kind and all the tribe of Lady Fans and Mrs. Cairngorms whom he had known. He felt somehow as though it were his fault, and as though he were responsible to Clare for what she had heard and seen. The sensation of shame deepened, and he swore bitterly under his breath. It was one of those things which could not be undone, and for which there was no reparation possible. Yet it was like an insult to Clare. For a man who had lately been rough to the girl, almost to brutality, he was singularly sensitive perhaps. But that did not strike him. When he had told her that he loved her, he had been too much in earnest to pick and choose his expressions. But when he had spoken to Lady Fan, he might have chosen and selected and polished his phrases so that Clare should have understood nothing—if he had only known that she had been sitting up there by the cross in the dark. And again he cursed himself bitterly.
It was not because her knowing the facts had spoilt everything and given her a bad impression of him from the first: that might be set right in time, even now, and he did not wish her to marry him believing him to be an angel of light. It was that she should have seen something which she should not have seen, for her innocence’s sake—something which, in a sense, must have offended and wounded her maidenliness. He would have struck any man who could have laughed at his sensitiveness about that. The worst of it—and he went back to the idea again and again—was that nothing could be done to mend matters, since it was all so completely in the past.
He sat on the wall and pulled at his briar-root pipe, which had gone out and was quite cold by this time, though he hardly knew it. He had plenty to think of, and things were not going straight at all. He had pretended indifference when his mother had told him how Lady Fan meant to get a divorce and how she was telling her intimate friends under the usual vain promises of secrecy that she meant to marry Adam Johnstone’s son as soon as she should be free. Brook had told her plainly enough that he would not marry her in any case, but he asked himself whether the world might not say that he should, and whether in that case it might not turn out to be a question of honour. He had secretly thought of that before now, and in the sudden depression of spirits which came upon him as a reaction he cursed himself a third time for having told Clare Bowring that he loved her, while such a matter as Lady Fan’s divorce was still hanging over him as a possibility.
Sitting on the wall, he swung his legs angrily, striking his heels against the stones in his perplexed discontent with the ordering of the universe. Things looked very black. He wished that he could see Clare again, and that, somehow, he could talk it all over with her. Then he almost laughed at the idea. She would tell him that she disliked him—he was sick of the sound of the word—and that it was his duty to marry Lady Fan. What could she know of Lady Fan? He could not tell her that the little lady in the white serge, being rather desperate, had got herself asked to go with the party for the express purpose of throwing herself at his head, as the current phrase gracefully expresses it, and with the distinct intention of divorcing her husband in order to marry Brook Johnstone. He could not tell Clare that he had made love to Lady Fan to get rid of her, as another common expression put it, with a delicacy worthy of modern society. He could not tell her that Lady Fan, who was clever but indiscreet, had unfolded her scheme to her bosom friend Mrs. Leo Cairngorm, or that Mrs. Cairngorm, unknown to Lady Fan, had been a very devoted friend of Brook’s, and was still fond of him, and secretly hated Lady Fan, and had therefore unfolded the whole plan to Brook before the party had started; or that on that afternoon at sunset on the Acropolis he had not at all assented to Lady Fan’s mad proposal, as she had represented that he had when they had parted on the platform at Amalfi; he could not tell Clare any of these things, for he felt that they were not fit for her to hear. And if she knew none of them she must judge him out of her ignorance. Brook wished that some supernatural being with a gift for solving hard problems would suddenly appear and set things straight.
Instead, he saw the man who brought the letters just entering the hotel, and he rose by force of habit and went to the office to see if there were anything for him.
There was one, and it was from Lady Fan, by no means the first she had written since she had gone to England. And there were several for Sir Adam and two for Lady Johnstone. Brook took them all, and opened his own at once. He did not belong to that class of people who put off reading disagreeable correspondence. While he read he walked slowly along the corridor.
Lady Fan was actually consulting a firm of solicitors with a view to getting a divorce. She said that she of course understood his conduct on that last night at Amalfi—the whole plan must have seemed unrealisable to him then—she would forgive him. She refused to believe that he would ruin her in cold blood, as she must be ruined if she got a divorce from Crosby, and if Brook would not marry her; and much more.
Why should she be ruined? Brook asked himself. If Crosby divorced her on Brook’s account, it would be another matter altogether. But she was going to divorce Crosby, who was undoubtedly a beast, and her reputation would be none the worse for it. People would only wonder why she had not done it before, and so would Crosby, unless he took it into his head to examine the question from a financial point of view. For Crosby was, or had been, rich, and Lady Fan had no money of her own, and Crosby was quite willing to let her spend a good deal, provided she left him in peace. How in the world could Clare ever know all the truth about such people? It would be an insult to her to think that she could understand half of it, and she would not think the better of him unless she could understand it all. The situation did not seem to admit of any solution in that way. All he could hope for was that Clare might change her mind. When she should be older she would understand that she had made a mistake, and that the world was not merely a high-class boarding-school for young ladies, in which all the men were employed as white-chokered professors of social righteousness. That seemed to be her impression, he thought, with a resentment which was not against her in particular, but against all young girls in general, and which did not prevent him from feeling that he would not have had it otherwise for anything in the world.
He stuffed the letter into his pocket, and went in search of his father. He was strongly inclined to lay the whole matter before him, and to ask the old gentleman’s advice. He had reason to believe that Sir Adam had been in worse scrapes than this when he had been a young man, and somehow or other nobody had ever thought the worse of him. He was sure to be in his room at that hour, writing letters. Brook knocked and went in. It was about eleven o’clock.
Sir Adam, gaunt and grey, and clad in a cashmere dressing-jacket, was extended upon all the chairs which the little cell-like room contained, close by the open window. He had a very thick cigarette between his lips, and a half-emptied glass of brandy and soda stood on the corner of a table at his elbow. He had not failed to drink one brandy and soda every morning at eleven o’clock for at least a quarter of a century.
His keen old eyes turned sharply to Brook as the latter entered, and a smile lighted up his furrowed face, but instantly disappeared again; for the young man’s features betrayed something of what he had gone through during the last hour.
“Anything wrong, boy?” asked Sir Adam quickly. “Have a brandy and soda and a pipe with me. Oh, letters! It’s devilish hard that the post should find a man out in this place! Leave them there on the table.”
Brook relighted his pipe. His father took one leg from one of the chairs, which he pushed towards his son with his foot by way of an invitation to sit down.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, renewing his question. “You’ve got into another scrape, have you? Mrs. Crosby—of all women in the world. Your mother told me that ridiculous story. Wants to divorce Crosby and marry you, does she? I say, boy, it’s time this sort of nonsense stopped, you know. One of these days you’ll be caught. There are cleverer women in the world than Mrs. Crosby. ”
“Oh! she’s not clever,” answered Brook thoughtfully.
“Well, what’s the foundation of the story? What the dickens did you go with those people for, when you found out that she was coming? You knew the sort of woman she was, I suppose? What happened? You made love to her, of course. That was what she wanted. Then she talked of eternal bliss together, and that sort of rot, didn’t she? And you couldn’t exactly say that you only went in for bliss by the month, could you? And she said, ‘By Jove, as you don’t refuse, you shall have it for the rest of your life,’ and she said to herself that you were richer than Crosby, and a good deal younger, and better-looking, and better socially, and that if you were going to make a fool of yourself she might as well get the benefit of it as well as any other woman. Then she wrote to a solicitor—and now you are in the devil of a scrape. I fancy that’s the history of the case, isn’t it?”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk about women in that sort of way, Governor!” exclaimed Brook, by way of answer.
“Don’t be an ass!” answered Sir Adam. “There are women one can talk about in that way, and women one can’t. Mrs. Crosby is one of the first kind. I distinguish between ‘women’ and ‘woman.’ Don’t you? Woman means something to most of us—something a good deal better than we are, which we treat properly and would cut one another’s throats for. We sinners aren’t called upon to respect women who won’t respect themselves. We are only expected to be civil to them because they are things in petticoats with complexions. Don’t be an ass, Brook. I don’t want to know what you said to Mrs. Crosby, nor what she said to you, and you wouldn’t be a gentleman if you told me. That’s your affair. But she’s a woman with a consumptive reputation that’s very near giving up the ghost, and that would have departed this life some time ago if Crosby didn’t happen to be a little worse than she is. She wants to get a divorce and marry my son—and that’s my affair. Do you remember the Arab and his slave? ‘You’ve stolen my money,’ said the sheikh. ‘That’s my business,’ answered the slave. ‘And I’m going to beat you,’ said the sheikh. ‘That’s your business,’ said the slave. It’s a similar case, you know, only it’s a good deal worse. I don’t want to know anything that happened before you two parted. But I’ve a right to know what Mrs. Crosby has done since, haven’t I? You don’t care to marry her, do you, boy?”
“Marry her! I’d rather cut my throat. ”
“You needn’t do that. Just tell me whether all this is mere talk, or whether she has really been to the solicitor’s. If she has, you know, she will get her divorce without opposition. Everybody knows about Crosby.”
“It’s true,” said Brook. “I’ve just had a letter from her again. I wish I knew what to do!”
“You can’t do anything.”
“I can refuse to marry her, can’t I?”
“Oh—you could. But plenty of people would say that you had induced her to get the divorce, and then had changed your mind. She’ll count on that, and make the most of it, you may be sure. She won’t have a penny when she’s divorced, and she’ll go about telling everybody that you have ruined her. That won’t be pleasant, will it?”
“No—hardly. I had thought of it.”
“You see—you can’t do anything without injuring yourself. I can settle the whole affair in half an hour. By return of post you’ll get a letter from her telling you that she has abandoned all idea of proceedings against Crosby.”
“I’ll bet you she doesn’t,” said Brook.
“Anything you like. It’s perfectly simple. I’ll just make a will, leaving you nothing at all, if you marry her, and I’ll send her a copy to-day. You’ll get the answer fast enough. ”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Brook, in surprise. Then he thoughtfully relighted his pipe and threw the match out of the window. “I say, Governor,” he added after a pause, “do you think that’s quite—well, quite fair and square, you know?”
“What on earth do you mean?” cried Sir Adam. “Do you mean to tell me that I haven’t a perfect right to leave my money as I please? And that the first adventuress who takes a fancy to it has a right to force you into a disgraceful marriage, and that it would be dishonourable of me to prevent it if I could? You’re mad, boy! Don’t talk such nonsense to me!”
“I suppose I’m an idiot,” said Brook. “Things about money so e............