When George had seen old Tom Craik enter his carriage and drive away from the house, he breathed more freely. He could not think very connectedly of what had happened, but it seemed to him that the old man had played a part quite as contemptible as that which Totty herself had sustained so long. He would assuredly not have believed that the terrific anger of which he had witnessed the explosion was chiefly due to the discovery of what was intended to be a good action. Craik had never liked to be found out, and it was especially galling to him to be exposed in the act of endeavouring to make amends for the past. But for this consideration, he would have been quite capable of returning the will to its place in the cabinet, and of leaving the house quietly. He would have merely sent for a lawyer and repeated the document with a new date, to deposit it in some place to which his sister could not possibly gain access. But his anger had been aroused in the first moment by the certainty that Totty had understood his motives and must secretly despise him for making such 381a restitution of ill-gotten gain. George could not have comprehended this, and he feared that the old man should do some irreparable harm if he were left any longer with the object of his wrath. The look in Craik’s eyes had not been reassuring, and it was by no means sure that the whole affair had not finally unsettled his intellect.
There was little ground for any such fear, however, as George would have realised if he could have followed Mr. Craik to his home, and seen how soon he repented of having endangered his health by giving way to his wrath. An hour later he was in bed and his favourite doctor was at his side, watching every pulsation of his heart and prepared to do battle at the first attack of any malady which should present itself.
George himself was far less moved by what had occurred than he would have believed possible. His first and chief sensation was a sickening disgust with Totty and with all that recent portion of his life in which she had played so great a part. He had been deceived and played with on all sides and his vanity revolted at the thought of what might have been if Craik’s discovery had not broken through the veil of Totty’s duplicity. It made him sick to feel that while he had fancied himself courted and honoured and chosen as a son-in-law for his own sake and for the sake of what he had done in the face of such odds, he had really been looked upon as an object of speculation, as a thing worth buying at a cheap price for the sake of its future value. Beyond this, he felt nothing but a sense of relief at having been released from his engagement. He had done his best to act honestly, but he had often feared that he was deceiving himself and others in the effort to do what seemed honourable. He did not deny, even now, that what he had felt for Mamie might in good time have developed into a real love, but he saw clearly at last that while his senses had been charmed and his intelligence soothed, his heart had never been touched. 382Doubts about Mamie herself would present themselves, though he drove them resolutely away. It was natural that he should find it hard to realise in her that which he had never felt during their long intercourse, and while his instinct told him that the young girl had been innocent of all her mother’s plotting and scheming, he said to himself that she would easily recover from her disappointment. If he was troubled by any regret it was rather that he should not have left her mother’s house as soon as he had seen that she was interested, than that he should have failed to love her as he had tried to do. On the other hand he admitted that his conduct had been excusable, considering the pressure which Totty had brought to bear upon him.
The most unpleasant point in the future was the explanation which must inevitably take place between himself and Sherrington Trimm. It would be hard to imagine a meeting more disagreeable to both parties as this one was sure to be. There could be no question about Trimm’s innocence in the whole affair, for his character was too well known to the world to admit the least suspicion. But it would be a painful matter to meet him and talk over what had happened. If possible, the interview must be avoided, and George determined to attempt this solution by writing a letter setting forth his position with the utmost clearness. He turned up the steps of a club to which he belonged and sat down to the task.
What he said may be summed up in a few words. He took it for granted that Trimm would be acquainted with what had occurred, by the time the letter reached him. It only remained for him to repeat what he had said to Mamie herself, to wit, that if she would marry him, he was ready to fulfil his engagement. He concluded by saying that he would wait a month for the definite answer, after which time he intended to go abroad. He sealed the note and took it with him, intending to send it to Trimm’s house in the evening. As luck would 383have it, however, he met Trimm himself in the hall of the club. He had stopped on his way up town to refresh himself with a certain mild drink of his own devising.
“Hilloa, George!” he cried in his cheery voice. “What is the matter?” he asked anxiously as he saw the expression on the other’s face.
“Have you been at home yet?” George asked.
“No.”
“Something very disagreeable has happened. I have just written you a note. Will you take it with you and read it after you have heard what they have to say?”
“Confound it all!” exclaimed Sherry Trimm. “I am not fond of mystery. Come into a quiet room and tell me all about it.”
“I would rather that you found it out for yourself,” said George, drawing back.
Sherry Trimm looked keenly at him, and then took him by the arm.
“Look here, George,” he said, “no nonsense! I do not know what the trouble is, but I see it is serious. Let us have it out, right here.”
“Very well,” George answered. “Your wife has made trouble,” he said, as soon as they were closeted in one of the small rooms. “You drew up Mr. Craik’s will, and you kept his secret. When you had gone abroad, your wife got the will out of the deed-box in your office and took it home with her. She kept it in that Indian cabinet and Mr. Craik found it there this afternoon, and made a fearful scene. Unfortunately your wife could not find any answer to what he said, and thereupon Mamie declared that she would not marry me.”
Sherrington Trimm’s pink face had grown slowly livid while George was speaking.
“What did Tom say?” he asked quietly.
“He hinted that his sister had not been wholly disinterested in her kindness to me,” said George. “Unfortunately Mamie and I were present. I did the best I could, but the mischief was done.”
384Sherrington said nothing more, but began to walk up and down the small room nervously, pulling at his short grizzled moustache from time to time. Like every one else who had been concerned in the affair, he grasped the whole situation in a moment.
“This is a miserable business,” he said at last in a tone that expressed profound humiliation and utter disgust.
George did not answer, for he was quite of the same opinion. He stood leaning against a card-table, drumming with his fingers on the green cloth behind him. Sherry Trimm paused in his walk, and struck his clenched fist upon the palm of his other hand. Then he shook his head and began to pace the floor again.
“An abominable business,” he muttered. “I cannot see that there is anything to be done, but to beg your pardon for it all,” he said, suddenly turning to George.
“You need not do that,” George answered readily. “It is not your fault, Cousin Sherry. All I want to say, is what I had already written to you. If Mamie will change her mind and marry me, I am ready.”
Trimm looked at him sharply.
“You are a good fellow, George,” he said. “But I don’t think I could stand that. You never loved her as you ought to love to be happy. I saw that long ago and I guessed that there had been something wrong. You have been tricked into the whole thing—and—just go away and leave me here, will you? I cannot stand this.”
George took the outstretched hand and shook it warmly. Then he left the room and closed the door behind him. In that moment he pitied Sherrington Trimm far more than he pitied Mamie herself. He could understand the man’s humiliation better than the girl’s broken heart. He went out of the club and turned homewards. He had yet to communicate the intelligence to his father, and he was oddly curious to see what the old gentleman would say. An hour later he had told the whole story with every detail he could remember, from 385the day when Totty had told him to go and see Mamie to his recent interview with Sherry Trimm.
“I am sorry for you, George,” said Jonah Wood. “I am very sorry for you.”
“I think, on the whole, that is more than I can say for myself,” George answered. “I am far more sorry for Mamie and her father. It is a relief to me. I would not have believed it, this morning.”
“Do you mean that you were not in love?”
“Yes. I am just as fond of her as ever. There is nothing I would not do for her. But I do not want to marry her and I never did, till that old cat made me think it was my duty.”
“I should think you would have known what your duty was, without waiting to be told. I would have told her mother that I did not love the girl, and I would have gone the next morning.”
“You are so sensible, father!” George exclaimed. “I looked at it differently. It seemed to me that if I had gone so far as to make Mamie believe that I loved her, I ought to be able to love her in earnest.”
“When you are older, you will know better,” observed the old gentleman severely. “You have too much imagination. As for Mr. Craik, he will not leave you his money now. I doubt if he meant to.”
George went and shut himself up in the little room which had witnessed so many of his struggles and disappointments. He sat down in his shabby old easy-chair and lit a short pipe and fell into a profound reverie. The unexpected had played a great part in his life, and as he reviewed the story of the past three years, he was surprised to find how very different his own existence had been from that of the average man. With the exception of his accident on the river and the scene he had witnessed to-day, nothing really startling had happened to him in that time, and yet his position at the present moment was as different from his position three years earlier as it possibly could be. In that time 386he had risen from total obscurity into the publicity of reputation, if not of celebrity. He was not fond of disturbing the mass of papers that encumbered his table, and there, deep down under the rest were still to be found rough drafts of his last poor little reviews. Hanging from one corner there was visible the corrected “revise” of one of his earliest accepted articles. At the other end, beneath a piece of old iron which he used as a paper-weight, lay the manuscript of his first novel, well thumbed and soiled, and marked at intervals in pencil with the names of the compositors who had set up the pages in type. There, upon the table, lay the accumulated refuse of three years of hard work, of the three years which had raised him into the public notice. Much of that work had been done under the influence of one woman, of one fair young girl who had bent over his shoulder as he read her page after page, and whose keen, fresh sight had often detected flaws and errors where he himself saw no imperfection. She had encouraged him, had pushed him, and urged him on, in spite of himself, until he had succeeded, beyond his wildest expectations. Then he had lost her, because he had thought that she was bound to marry him. He did not think so now, for he felt that in that case, too, he had been mistaken, as in the more recent one he had deceived himself. He had never been in love. He had never felt what he described in his own books. His blood had never raced through his veins for love, as it had often done for anger and sometimes for mere passing passion. Love had never taken him and mastered him and carried him away in its arms beyond all consideration for consequences. It was not because he was strong. He knew that whatever people might think of him, he had often been weak, and had longed to be made strong by a love he could not feel. He had been ready to yield himself to a belief in affections which had proved unreal and which had disappointed himself by their instability and by the ease with which he had recovered from them. Even in the 387solitude of his own room he was ashamed to own to his inner consciousness how little he had been moved by all that had happened to him in those three years.
He thought of Johnson, the pale-faced hardworking man, whose heart was full of unsatisfied ambition and who had distanced his competitors by sheer energy and enthusiasm. He envied the man his belief in himself and his certainty of slow but sure success. Slow, indeed, it must be. Johnson had toiled for many years at his writing to attain the position he occupied, to be considered a good judge and a ready writer by the few who knew him,............