Right or Wrong
By
Lacey Amy
Illustrated
by Dudley Gloyne Summers
From
MacLean’s Magazine, 1 February, 1928.
Digitized
by Doug Frizzle, 1 Jan 2017.
We were
gathered round the fireplace at the end of the club dining room, six of us, a
trio of pipes, a brace of cigarettes, and one lone cigar. Half a dozen glasses
stood about in various stages of depletion . . . You know that Adams fireplace,
the deep leather chairs before it, the priceless Eastern rug, gift of a wealthy
member. You know the atmosphere it breeds when lunch is over, on a December day
when the London ‘particular’ has dropped an acrid yellow mantle over the city,
smothering the police torches and a river more despairing than the Styx. From
the bar at the end of the hall drifts the faintest drone of comfortable voices,
and now and then, through the momentarily opening door at the head of the
stairs, the click of billiard balls. Dreamy, reminiscent, somewhat inclined to
take life and oneself seriously—giving birth to unintentional aphorisms and
intentional theories—delving for underlying motives—what I would have done in
your place.
Always
a congenial group there on such a day—the smaller to-day because the fog was so
dense that even the London taxi driver was blind.
If I
remember rightly it started with drifting comment on a nasty divorce play that,
despite the censure of the critics, seemed to be taking hold—the morbid curiosity
of the mob for domestic tragedy that surely has been raked to its lowest dregs,
that in these days throws a lengthening shadow—yes, over you and me, though the
third boy is just entering Winchester.
And
then—I forget the connection—we were talking of Nevinson’s case.
Nevinson
had been—was still, for that matter—a friend of mine. But Nevinson had climbed
to such large headlines that his friends did not discuss their friendship. Some
of them didn’t. Some don’t at a time like that:
Nevinson
was in trouble, serious trouble. Trust funds momentarily misused in an
emergency and, by a twist of fate, discovered almost at the moment. I, who knew
the story, put the best light on it for the boys:
“Two days more—only two
days—and the two thousand would have been in its place, and, Nevinson’s mother
rescued from her own folly.”
Sutton—he had the sofa
corner nearest the door, just under the palm—Sutton removed his cigar and examined
it critically.
“That’s
scarcely the point, don’t you think? There’s a right and wrong about these
things. Mind you, I’m absolutely impersonal . . . . but it’s the thing Nevinson
did. Was it right or wrong?” He lifted his head in the confident way he has.
“There’s never any doubt which is which.”
Sutton was inclined to
be dogmatic like that. Decent chap at heart, and awfully clever. To clever. It
made him a little arrogant in argument.
But I was all for
Nevinson. With two years behind the bars before him I could not be impersonal.
“But there are
gradations of right and wrong . . . And there must exist a line where they
merge. Are we always able to distinguish
that line?”
Sutton
shook us his
head and lit a fresh cigar. One of us retrieved the living match from the rug
where he had flipped it, but Sutton did not notice, he was preparing the
argument that would annihilate me.
I looked about for some kind of support, for my
position was weak and I knew it. Something about Dick Meredith—he had the other
corner of Sutton’s sofa—caught and held my attention. He
looked sympathetic. But then Dick always does—that’s the sort of chap he is.
And not just because he’s a padre . . . . Meredith lay back in the cushions,
his wide-open clerical coat gathered about his ears. He had a new pipe—apple
shape, he called it—and he seemed to be having trouble with it. Yet I knew not
a word of our conversation had escaped him. He had been back only a few weeks
from a flying visit to Canada—somewhere out West—and some of his friends had
fancied a change in the simple, joyous friend we liked so well. After the war
Meredith had taken a mission in East London. He preferred work, even without
pay, to drinking tea with admiring old ladies and pursuing young ones.
Meredith’s
eyes lifted to Sutton’s stubborn face, and fell away . . . and lifted again
furtively.
I
appealed to him:
“Dick, you’re an authority on
right and wrong—”
He stopped me
with a swift uplifting of one hand.
“I’m
not—I’m not!” It was like a cry.
“Sutton
says—”
“I’ve
heard what Sutton says!” One hand fumbled with a match box among the glasses.
Sutton
laughed complacently: “Dick can’t contradict that—right is right, and wrong is wrong.”
“Of
course.” Meredith struck a match in a hand that had taken to trembling, and
drew the flame slowly into the little round bowl of his new pipe. “Yes . . . of
course, Sutton . . . but . . . what is right . . . exactly? . . . And what is
wrong?”
Sutton’s laugh was the one that
customarily greets a parson in flagrante delicto.
“Have the padres nothing to
guide them, Dick?”
Meredith
only nodded—not so much agreeing, you understand, as giving Sutton credit for
honesty.
“Yes
. . . we’ve a sort of a code . . . But for the most part it’s man-made.”
Sutton threw out
an accusing hand. “What in the world’s the Bible for, Dick, old man?” It was
almost as if Dick had disgraced his profession.
And
Meredith kept on nodding, his eyes on the fire. A white-coated waiter came at
someone’s signal to refill the glasses.
“Trouble is, Sutton, the
Bible didn’t count on the amount of detail we mortals need for a complete code
. . . And it was written—well, before the war; that’s sufficient . . . There
are occasions it doesn’t seem to—” He pulled up sharply and appealed from face
to face. “Don’t misunderstand me, boys. It’s all there—somewhere—if we knew how
to find it.”
Sutton
broke in irritably: “The moral issue is clear enough, Dick . . . . Anyway,
there’s a man’s conscience.”
You
see, Sutton felt pretty safe when it came to moral issues. He had spent too
many of his slim years in France for much to be known against him. No, that’s
not fair. Sutton was straight enough, if a little— But this is not Sutton’s
story.
“Four months ago, Sutton
I’d have backed you in that” said Meredith, wincing, “but since I’ve been to
Canada . . . I’m not so sure . . . Right or wrong? Trying to answer that has
made life difficult of late . . . Is a man’s conscience the final arbiter? . .
. Does right show a clear trail, and is all outside it wrong?” He sat upright
and peered from one to another of us. “Is truth right—always?”
“You’re
not,” Sutton groaned, “working round to the old chestnut—all the truth all the
time? In the great issues of life—”
Meredith caught him up
eagerly.
“That’s what I mean—the
great issues of life . . . perhaps the greatest of all . . . Would you call the
home one of the great issues—a man’s wife—his child?”
Sutton hesitated,
probably running over in his mind our domestic histories.
“Of course there are
incidents in a man’s past—”
“But in his present,
Sutton, in his present?”
“To my mind there is but
one reply—frankness, no secrets—the one safe foundation for—for a happy home.”
Sutton was happily
married—three months ago. Yet, all in a moment, his cocksureness seemed to
weaken.
Meredith sighed. “I wish
I were certain as you, Sutton. . . and yet . . . and yet—. That’s the very
problem that haunts me. Frankness? No secrets? . . . I don’t know.” His voice trailed off miserably. A
waiter softly drew a curtain tighter against the fog.
“Of
course,” Sutton granted, “if a man has made an ass of himself long before—”
“That doesn’t help,
Sutton . . . I know a case—this case that worries me, where the man has been
splendid . . . But to-day he’s in hell . . . and he’s taken me with him . . .
Because he’s my oldest friend, and because well, as Sutton says, if a padre
can’t distinguish right from wrong!”
He
knocked his pipe thoughtfully on the tray and shut it up in a case that fitted
an obscure pocket of his coat.
“If you don’t mind boys,
I’d like to talk to tell a story. For two months I’ve held it locked in my
breast, and it keeps on gnawing. Not that anyone can help me. If there’s a
solution I—I don’t want to face hearing it. I’m frightened. I’d rather leave
it—uncertain . . . Perhaps God in His mercy will solve it for my friend—and for
me.”
There was a low creaking
of leather upholstery. Nobody ordered drinks, but five matches scratched
sharply, as one coughs at a concert—self-conscious, apologetic. A boat whistled
out on the river, and we started.
“It was no pleasure trip, my
visit to Canada. I had to go. Last February the eighteenth—I remember it so
well; I was up in the billiard room—a cablegram was handed me. The sort of
cable that draws a man round the world at any cost. ‘For God’s sake come and
help me.’ ”
Meredith
mused for a moment, and presently his cheeks reddened. For Meredith was never
the man to ring the dramatic.
“I’ll have to go
back—back a score of years or more. There were three of us, brought up in the
same city, chummed as boys, chummed at Harrow and Cambridge. The Trinity, the
profane called us. The other two—we’ll give them strange names, though not
likely any of you know them! Brander Raymond and Maurice Colby . . . I was the
odd one of the three a bit. more serious than they. Perhaps that was my niche
in the group. Wanderers they always were, even as lads, Raymond and Colby.
Wild, some said. They were known as The Twins, they resembled each other so
remarkably—same black hair, same deep blue eyes, much the same cast of
countenance; and they played on the resemblance by dressing alike and imitating
each other’s mannerisms . . . After Cambridge they did their longest wander, to
America. . . ”
Meredith stopped. He was
leaning over the table, one hand rubbing the mist-laden glass; and he wiped his
fingers, and straightway fell to rubbing again.
“Seven years and more
after peace was signed—that was fifteen years after I had seen him off at
Euston—there came that cablegram . . . ‘For God’s sake come and help me.’ . . . You don’t wonder I was ready to go in a week—reservations,
tickets, and a supply for the mission? . . . And then my mother fell ill. . . .
Sitting at her bedside during the months that followed, that cablegram kept
lifting before my eyes. Colby wanted me—needed me. But why? If only he had
given some explanation! . . . But as I moiled over that cry for help it lost
some of its urgency but none of its appeal. Think of it—‘For God’s sake come and
help me.’ Not quite the wording of sudden emergency. Those last three words,
redundant weakening the wail of it, they spoke of panic partly stifled, of raw
nerves, of a host of other emotions fighting his need. There were times in the
night watches when I could picture Colby starting for the cable office and turning
back—starting—turning back—like a man visiting the dentist, you see what I
mean? . . . ‘For God’s sake come—and help me.’
“When it was certain
that mother would need me for weeks, perhaps for months, I cabled again . . .
And Colby replied: ‘Glad to see you when you can come.’ . . . The message one
sends a stranger! . . . My second cable had reached him when his nerves were
easier . But I knew Maurice Colby . . .
“It was almost six
months after Colby’s cry for help when I landed at Montreal. And there I had
another surprise—a telegram handed me by the boat purser: ‘Welcome.’ And it was
signed ‘Maurice and Elsie!’
“You
didn’t tell us about Elsie,” Daggett murmured.
“No—that was it—I hadn’t
known there was an Elsie. And then to hear of her like that—Only a name to a
telegram! Of course, I’d speculated a lot. I’d pictured a woman somewhere. One
does when a man’s in trouble. But—the telegram didn’t help. Colby was
married—that was plain. But here were he and his wife side by side to welcome
me. No domestic trouble there. And no financial difficulty, no run-in with the
law would have waited so complacently my convenience—six months . . . Don’t you
wonder—as I did?
“And so, after a four
days’ trip, in none too genial a mood I left the train at Edmonton, out near the
Rocky Mountains. . . . Six thousand miles to help a friend—who couldn’t
conceivably need it . . .It was good for both of us that Colby had sent his man
to meet me—in one of the three cars he owned. Yes, I learned much of Colby's
fortunes in a few minutes from a loquacious driver—who remembered when half way
home that his master had sent me a note. I opened it. ‘Say nothing.’ Just that.
It sent me foundering deeper. For I knew now that Colby was not only rich but
happy—a thousand acres, a valuable thoroughbred herd, a profitable market for
his milk and eggs; his grain—they call it ‘grain’ in Canada famous all over the
West.
“And Elsie, of
course—Elsie and a baby now three months old. ‘Maudlin happy,’ the driver
called it in an affectionate way.”
Meredith wiped his
fingers once more and thrust his handkerchief in his sleeve, a trick he had
learned in the war.
“Their house was a
magnificent one for the prairies—large, with two bow windows, and a verandah
netted downstairs from mosquitoes and glassed above for a sleeping porch. All
freshly painted. It stood on a knoll, framed in clumps of silvery trees, facing
a stretch of river rushing for the Arctic. Nearby was another house for the
help—and a great red barn, and stone pig houses, and elaborate poultry runs—all
the expensive equipment of a farm that repays indulgence.
“Colby and Elsie—yes,
and the baby, about the size of that vase—welcomed me at the door. She held the
baby, Colby's arm encircled them both; and as he introduced us he caught her
closer in a spasmodic way . . . as if to protect her from me who had come so
far to help . . . Elsie and I were friends from the start. She was one of our
finest English girls, pretty, alert, intelligent and not afraid of work.
Somehow she had managed to keep her complexion, too . . . and her husband. You
could see that in the doglike devotion of his eyes as he spoke her name.
“He was changed, of course, Colby was, for it was
fifteen years and more since I’d seen him. Heavier, graver—a different Corby
from the lad who had laughed himself in and out of his boyish scrapes . . . He
must have noted the changes of the years in me, too, for he eyed me with some
suspicion, almost as if he questioned my identity
. . . And there was something else in his face—dread?—defiance?—I couldn’t
fathom it. I lifted my eyebrows to reassure him. Then he went on to present me
to Elsie and the child, seemingly satisfied.
“But I had a feeling that Colby
was not—not altogether comfortable about me. Perhaps it was the furtive glances
I caught—calling to me, lifting appealing hands . . . and yet holding me off.
Like his bewildering telegrams. Colby’s need battling with Colby’s fears. Yet
it seemed so presumptuous, that feeling of mine; for he was madly in love,
sometimes almost grossly happy . . . And he had reason to be . . . That first
night—It happened every night from first to last—laughed at my fears. We were
in the big living room before the grate. One needs a fire sometimes about
Edmonton on August evenings. Neither Elsie nor Colby were quite
comfortable—nothing serious, you know—sort of hesitating, as if I were almost
in the way. And after a time Elsie jumped up with a little laugh and ran to
Colby and threw her arms about his neck.
“Let’s not be silly old married
people, Maurice. Dick would want us to be natural.”
“Colby grinned sheepishly, with a
drawn look about his eyes, and followed her to the bedroom across the hall. And
in a moment they returned—hand in hand—pushing before them the baby’s white cot
on its rubber-tired wheels. And Elsie turned out one of the lamps, and the cot
was placed across the room in the shadow, close to Colby’s big leather chair,
and Elsie tucked herself in her husband’s lap where she could look down on the
face of the sleeping child . . .
“That’s the sort of home I had come six thousand
miles to help! . . . Sweeter domestic scene than I’d ever pictured. It was
their regular evening—there in the dim night, Elsie in Colby’s arms . . . And now and then she would lean forward, lip caught
between her teeth, to stare down into the cot. Then she would drop back with a
fluttering sigh to Colby’s neck and press her lips against his chin.
“ ‘Silly old Dick,’ she
teased. ‘Give us two months and we’ll find a home for you, too!’ . . . It was
tempting. You see what I mean? . . . And the last I saw as I mounted the stairs
was the two of them, hand in hand, pushing
the white cot back across the hall to their bedroom . . .
“Not a word had I had
alone with Colby. I knew he was avoiding me. That was why next morning, after a
Canadian breakfast Elsie herself prepared, I followed Colby out to the barn
where his milkman would make the morning’s report.
“
‘Look here, Maurice—”
“He stopped me with a
frantic gesture. ‘It’s all right, Dick, it’s all right. Don’t bother.’
“ ‘But I’ve come all
this way to—”
“ ‘To see an old friend
you hadn’t seen for fifteen years,’ he laughed.
“ ‘You’ve deceived me,
Maurice.’ The silly mystery of it irritated me.
“He whirled on me then,
his face white and set. ‘I haven’t Dick, before God I haven’t.’ He tried to laugh it away. ‘But it’s all right now, Dick, old friend
. . . now that you’re here.’
“I took him by the arm.
‘Maurice, you still need help—I’m sure of it.”
“ ‘Perhaps I do—God
knows—perhaps I do.’ He turned so that I could not see his face. ‘But let’s be
happy while we may.’ And then we were at the stable, and the milkman waiting to
make his report.
“What could I do? Once or
twice more I tried to draw him out, but always the same reply: it was all right
now that I was there. Yet all I did was to soak in their happiness and envy
Colby. Things continued like that for three weeks . . . and I had only four to
give them. Harvesting was in full swing, and Colby was excited over a new
variety of frost-resisting wheat he planned to raise for seed—the ten-dollar a
bushel kind. He worked feverishly from early to late, yet always there were
those wonderful evenings before the grate in the living room, with the baby
asleep in its shadowed cot, and Elsie curled in her husband’s lap. I began to see
his
dread as nothing but the very intensity of his happiness.
“We had talked little of
the old times, for Elsie knew none of Colby’s former friends. He had met her
in the country during his Cambridge days. Raymond’s name was mentioned only
once. Elsie had left us for a moment. And Colby, glancing toward the door,
whispered huskily: ‘For God’s sake, let Raymond alone.' I received the
impression that he knew something to Raymond’s discredit and was too loyal to
discuss him, especially before Elsie.
“It troubled me more
than a little, you know how trifling things will when a cloud of mystery hangs
about. Always I was thinking of Raymond—whenever I looked at Colby my mind
wandered to the absent one of The Trinity who had once resembled him. It kept
me awake at nights—I dreamt; of Raymond. And one night my dreams were so vivid
that, meeting Colby in the hall on my way to breakfast, I spoke of it. He threw
up a silencing hand, his face white, and went on into the dining room without a
word. At breakfast he ate noting, and Elsie, rallying him, was snubbed. She
stared, tears gathering in her eyes; and Colby, leaping up with a stifled groan,
swept her into his arms. I looked away, as if I had intruded on a scene of
marital intimacy.
“ ‘Indigestion my dear,’
he explained. ‘What a beast it can make of a man! I’ll be all right when the
threshing’s done. Nerves.’ He addressed me across the table: ‘It’s a month of
hell for us farmers, Dick, this harvest time. A night’s frost can make all the
difference between a fortune and bankruptcy.’
“And Elsie, all smiles now, peered at me with wet,
happy eyes over her husband’s arm. ‘There never was a month or an hour of hell
for Maurice’s wife, Dick, and don’t you believe it. Our first misunderstanding—our
very first.’
“ ‘Call that a misunderstanding?’ I sniffed. ‘You’re
so infernally happy I—I don’t understand Maurice. I never thought he was better
able to make a woman happy than I was myself. Blind fool! I’m proud of you,
Maurice, proud one of the old Trinity has turned out so well.’
“And Colby’s face twisted mirthlessly, and he
swallowed his coffee in a gulp. At the end of the meal he asked me if I would
go to Edmonton with him—some business in connection with the milk supply. It
was the first time he’d ever deliberately arranged that we should be alone
together, and somehow it thrilled me . . . I had reason to thrill.”
Beads of perspiration stood on Meredith’s forehead,
and with a hand that shook he wiped them away.
“That
ride of ours—perhaps a half hour, no more—did it all. Since then I’m not so
sure . . . about right and wrong about a man’s conscience being a safe guide .
. . I’m not so sure of anything . . . My friend told me his story . . . ”
He sat silent so long
that Daggett’s chair rustled. Two boats out on the river shrieked at each
other. The waiter, looming at the back of the room through the mist that had
crept in and given body to the smoke, caught his breath audibly. It was Sutton
brought Meredith back:
“What was it this story
of Colby’s?”
Meredith raised his head
sharply in thought he’d been six thousand miles from the club fireplace.
“It
wasn’t
Colby’s story. . . It was Brander Raymond’s! . . . Because it wasn’t Colby, but
Raymond! . . . All the time Elsie’s husband—my friend who had always resembled
Colby in the old days, whom I’d not seen for fifteen years—all the time it was
Raymond!”
For a full half minute
the only sound in the room was the subdued ticking of the old lacquered
grandfather's clock that was one of the treasures of the club.
“It wasn’t Colby,”
Meredith repeated, “it was Raymond . . . All the time it was Raymond!” He
seemed to have difficulty convincing even himself. And we just sat and gaped.
‘‘He told me all about it, Raymond did. For a time after he and Colby separated
he wandered about the States, seeking adventure rather than a fortune. He found
it on a Texan ranch. But when war broke out he struck for San Francisco,
thinking America would be in it straight. Finding how things stood, he wrote to
Colby, planning to go to Canada and join up there with his friend. But Colby
wasn’t joining up—heart or something . . . . And Raymond delayed . . . first to
join up when at last America came in . . .
“After the war he
returned to San Francisco, got mixed up in real estate in Los Angeles, and in
four years cleaned up a fortune. First thing he did then was to make for Western
Canada and Colby . . . He found him—Medicine Hat—the place Kipling christened
‘The Town That Was Born Lucky.’ . . . It wasn’t lucky for Raymond—any more than
it had been for Colby . . . But I don’t know . . . Poor Colby! Down and out—been
down and out for years—a sot—one of those most scorned of Englishmen in Western
Canada, a remittance man. Raymond in a way blamed himself for having cut loose;
and so he set himself to retrieve his mistake. In other words, to save Colby .
. .
“For a year be worked with him—lived with him,
watched him day and night, did everything he knew. Hopeless.
“Colby told him at the first of the girl he had in
England—who’d waited for him all these years—who still waited. All her letters
he poured over Raymond, pestered him with each as it arrived. And Raymond knew
that, with the waiting across the seas, was a supreme faith in Colby, a hope
the years had failed to dim . . . Even Colby had intervals of hope as he read
those letters . . . Raymond grew almost to hate his old friend for the part he
was playing.
“You see, Colby had told the girl
nothing—had continued to hold out hope—hinted at sending for her soon, always
soon. Then he would weep to Raymond in his sodden way—and drink to drown his
conscience.
“Raymond, I gather,
spent money like water, bribing to keep the liquor from Colby. All he got
mostly was sneers. For Colby, everyone else saw, was beyond help. And so
Raymond came to his last resource. It was hastened by a letter from Colby’s
girl. Her mother had just died and she was alone in the world—save for Colby.
She had given up teaching to nurse her mother, and there was small prospect of
work. And they were poor—made poor by the war—Raymond put his mind to it. He bought
a farm near Edmonton and cabled for the girl. You see, he thought if he could
get Colby away from his friends and give him something to do, someone to love
and to hold him by her love, there was more than a chance. It was Colby he
thought of, not Elsie—Colby he set his teeth to save at any cost. Of course he
cabled passage money, all in Colby’s name . . .
“The
day Elsie left Liverpool, Raymond told Colby. And poor Colby, unable to face
Elsie’s awakening, went out and shot himself.”
A shudder ran round the
fireplace. Meredith winced to his memories.
“There was Raymond!
Picture it. A friend he almost felt he had murdered and the murdered friend’s
fiancée on the ocean coming to him.
“Elsie herself solved
one of his difficulties. She came pushing down the slatted gangway and, with
that cuddly cry of hers, threw her arms about his neck.
“
‘Maurice, Maurice!' She lay in his arms, weeping for joy, while Raymond gulped
and could not speak. And all the time Elsie thought it was a love like her own
that held him tight-lipped. ‘I knew you from your picture,’ she murmured. . .
And Raymond remembered that Colby had dragged him into a photographer's at Medicine
Hat. Elsie was babbling. ‘I always knew you’d make good, Maurice, dear—it’s
what has kept me alive all these years. If you’d failed—well, I guess there’d
be no little Elsie to be so happy now.’ And she nestled up against his arm,
loving him the more that he loved her too intensely to do more than gulp.”
Meredith peered at us
through the mist of the room.
“You see the story now? You see how Raymond was
caught? He could have told her the truth, the bald, ugly truth, right there in
the midst of her happiness—and have broken her heart . . . Or he could do what
he did—what you or I would have done—waited for a more propitious time, when he
had his courage screwed up to face this new terror, when Elsie was better able
to stand it. He’d pictured a bad time of it, but nothing so bad as that . . .
And so he waited . . . And the worst of it was that he loved her from the
moment he first saw her—loved her more than Colby was capable of. He couldn’t
hurt her—not just then. You’ve got to consider all that . . . and how
completely content Elsie was, how madly in love with the man she thought was
Maurice Colby . . . You have got to remember there was nothing back home to
send her to but grim, stark poverty and sorrow . . .
“And so, loving her more each minute—and
more beloved—and reckless as love ever makes a man—he married her the next day.
As Maurice Colby . . . And they went straight to the farm he had purchased for
Colby—the farm where I found them so happy and prosperous. And Brander Raymond
settled to the blissful life of Elsie’s beloved husband . . Elsie told me more
than once, before Raymond—I must call him Raymond; it’s how I have to think of him
now—how her love had leaped at sight of him to unimagined heights, how more
each day he had lived up to her every hope of him, how wonderfully had mounted
up the interest of the years on the principal of her love.
“Blissful, did I say? No
not quite blissful for Raymond. Still it was not so bad till the baby was
coming. That complicated things. Approaching fatherhood seemed to heap renewed
responsibility on his head . . . on his conscience, Sutton, if you will. Could
he, he asked himself, bring an innocent child into a world of deliberate deceit?
But—dare he face the uncertainty of Elsie’s reaction to the truth? Was it the
living or the dead she really loved? Would a love founded on an old emotion
stand up against the discovery of her mistake, of her husband’s extended
deception? Would not the revelation diminish her very capacity for love?
“You see how poor
Raymond felt? A million darts pierced him. All the rigid integrity of the
Raymonds, all his love for Elsie, massed now against his peace of mind, lashed
his conscience.
“It was then he sent that
cablegram ‘For God’s sake come and help me.’
That was the problem he
still faced, helpless, pitifully uncertain. Day and night he faced it, like
creeping death:
“ ‘Can aught but
disaster come of living a lie?’
“I, clutching about me
my professional garment of certitude, said ‘No!’
“ ‘Should a husband,
loving her as I do—dare he—confess to her that for more than a year she has
been living with a stranger, has borne him a child?’
“Though I was less sure
of my ground there, I managed to rally to all the conventions of my profession.
Frankness alone was right.
“ ‘Would she wish it
herself—to know that her old love for Colby, her faith in him, all this that
had kept her for sixteen years and made her so happy—would she wish to know it
was only a dream?
“There seemed nothing
for me but to stick to the padre’s guns.
“ ‘Is it fair to
Maurice? He was my friend. Can I betray him—even if I dare?’
“ ‘Maurice is dead,’ I
insisted. ‘Consider the living. Brander, you must—’
“He stopped me with
blanched face. ‘Not that—not that name yet. Not till we’ve decided.’
“ ‘I’ve decided now. You
must tell her. Your very love for her and the child— It’s the difficult things
that make for the deeper happiness that comes of honesty.’
Fine words. . . . They
sound less fine to me now.
“ ‘If only I knew,’
Raymond moaned. ‘if only I knew.’ he had to stop the car to recover himself.
Presently he lifted a white face. ‘I’ll tell her, Dick . . . I’ll tell her the
night before you go.’”
Again that appealing
look of Meredith’s, as if we were his judges.
“I’m afraid—I welcomed
the delay. Not till the night before I went away. I wasn’t so sure—of anything.
Their love, their perfect accord as things were, was so complete that any
change must be for the worse. Leaving the next day, I thought I could face
it—my own responsibility for what might happen . . . And so it was agreed . . .
the night before I was to leave . . .
“I remember that night so well. The harvest
was safely housed—Raymond had done better even than he hoped. Elsie sang about
her work—apologizing for seeming so happy on my last day. ‘Maurice will be all
right now—no more nerves, Dick. Oh, Dick, how good he is, how—how I love him!’ . . We were gathered
about the fireplace as usual. Outwardly, yes, as usual. Elsie curled on
Raymond’s knee where they could see the face of the sleeping baby, I in my easy
chair. I caught a glimpse of Raymond’s face, and it haunts
me still. He was staring at me, begging to be let
off, begging me to end his agony by
stopping him . . . As if I were
God himself! . . . I daren’t
. . . That’s what it is to be a padre—a bachelor padre. I daren’t
. . . But neither dare I see that look in his face. Then Elsie got up and put out the
other lamp and left us sitting in the firelight.
“I
could hear Raymond sigh with relief, and I, too, was glad of the darkness . . .
And we sat—waiting—all but Elsie, who had put on her prettiest dress for me—a
little blue silk with low neck and short sleeves that made her more a little
girl than ever, a girl to shield . . . Colby’s girl . . . The girl Colby had courted
and won . . . and Raymond had married. My pipe went out and I daren’t make the
noise of scratching a match. I just sat, waiting breathlessly for Raymond to
begin . . . I heard him take a deep breath—I heard a rustle of silk—and there was
Elsie, pressed away from him, as if he dare not speak with her nestling into
his neck like that. Elsie laughed, gurgling like a child.
“
‘Crushing her big man, is she? I don’t care. I’ve a lot of years without you to
make up for, you villain—fifteen of them—and your foot can go to sleep if it
wants to.’
“She
squirmed back into her old place, lying where her lips touched his chin.
“
‘Fifteen whole years I had to hoard my love. But it wasn’t love then—though we
thought it was, didn’t we, dear? Since we married, how flimsy it looks!—that
old love . . . I just knew I had a real man, so different
from the others.’
“She sighed happily and reached
a hand to his cheek. They were all alone in the room, they and their baby.
“ ‘Not like that friend
of yours—I don’t mean Dick, of course—that Brander Raymond.’ I dropped my pipe,
and the clatter of it excused Raymond’s start. ‘All nervous yet, aren’t you,
darling?’ she murmured. ‘But you’ll be all right now the grain is in. Poor Brander
Raymond! I didn’t like those parts of your letters. I used to fret that you couldn’t
do something for him. I never thought a friend of yours could fall so low.’ She
pressed closer. ‘I’m going to ’fess up, Maurice, dear. There was a time I
thought perhaps you’d—you’d let go a little . . . And then your picture came
and I knew how untrue I’d been to you. It would have killed me to have my Maurice
fail—after fifteen years of love.’
“She remembered me and
laughed.
“
‘If only we could find a home for Dick! A little wifie!’ She gurgled again.
‘But it wouldn’t be the same as this—it couldn’t be. Sixteen years of love
makes all the difference, Maurice. There would not be all that lifetime of
fidelity and hope behind it. He couldn’t be staunch and true as you—and I couldn’t
ever have looked at another man if anything had happened to you’ She leaned
over and gazed into the face of their child, and with a cuddling sigh pushed back
into Raymond’s arms. ‘If Teddy grows up half as good as his father!’ ”
Meredith dropped his
face in his hands. Half a dozen callous clubmen breathed heavily. A taxi horn
sounded unexpectedly shrill.
Sutton
whispered: “He didn’t tell her, did he?”
“Not then. I staggered over to the cot and in the
firelight caught Raymond’s eye and shook my head. I couldn’t face it—I daren’t.
Was I a coward? I don’t know. Was it wrong to leave Elsie and her child in a
Heaven like that? Would it have been right to sacrifice her happiness to
Raymond’s conscience? I am a padre and—I don’t know. Who does?”
“Did he ever tell her?” Sutton leaned forward in his
corner, all his cocksureness gone.
Meredith
wiped his face “I don’t know . . . I haven’t dared to write—and every mail finds
me trembling. Raymond deserved the best of life, yet—there it was—right or
wrong?”
Boats
whistled out on the river, a taxi hooting to the club entrance. Voices rose from the
street. The waiter pulled back the curtains.
Outside the fog was lifting.
The End
