III
Bottles did not go to bed till late that night. Long after Sir Eustace
--who, always careful of his health, never stopped up late if he could
avoid it--had vanished, yawning, his brother sat smoking pipe after
pipe and thinking. He had sat many times in the same way on a wagon-
box in the African veld, or up where the moonlight turned the falls of
the Zambesi into a rushing cataract of silver, or alone in his tent
when all the camp was sleeping round him. It was a habit of this
queer, silent man to sit and think for hours at night, and arose to a
great extent from an incapacity to sleep, that was the weak point in
his constitution.
As for his meditations, they were various, but mostly the outcome of a
curious speculative side to his nature, which he never revealed to the
outside world. Dreams of a happiness of which heretofore his hard life
had given him no glimpse; semi-mystical, religious meditations upon
the great unknown around us; and grand schemes for the regeneration of
mankind--all formed part of them.
But there was one central thought, the fixed star of his mind, round
which all the others continually revolved, taking their light and
colour from it, and that was the thought of Madeline Croston, the
woman to whom he had been engaged. Years and years had passed since he
had seen her face, and yet it was always present to him. Beyond the
occasional mention of her name in some society paper--several of
which, by the way, he took in for years and conscientiously searched
on the chance of finding it--till this evening he had never even seen
it or heard it spoken; and yet with all the tenacity of his strong,
deep nature he clung to her dear memory. That she had left him to
marry another man weighed as nothing in the balance of his love. Once
she had loved him, and thereby he was repaid for the devotion of his
life. He had no ambitions. Madeline had been his great ambition; and
when that had fallen, all the others had fallen with it, even to the
dust. He simply did his duty, whatever it might be, as well as in him
lay, without fear of blame or hope of praise--shunning men, and never,
if he could avoid it, speaking to a woman, content to earn his
livelihood, and for the rest rendered colourless by his secret and
pathetic passion.
And now it appeared that Madeline was a widow, which meant--and his
heart beat fast at the thought--that she was a free woman. Madeline
was a free woman, and he was within a few minutes' walk of her. No
thousands of miles of ocean rolled between them now. He rose, went to
the table, and consulted a Red book that lay on it. There was the
address--a house in Grosvenor Street. Overcome by an uncontrollable
impulse, he went out of the room. Going to his own he found his
mackintosh and a round hat, and softly left the house. It was then
past two in the morning, pouring with rain, and blowing hard.
He had been a little in London as a lad and remembered the main
thoroughfares, so had no great difficulty in finding his way up
Piccadilly till he came to Park Lane, into which the Red book told him
Grosvenor Square opened. But to find Grosvenor Street itself was a
more difficult matter, and at such a time on such a night there was
naturally nobody to ask--least of all a policeman. At last he found
it, and hurried on down the street with a quickening pulse. What he
was hurrying to he could not tell, but that over-mastering impulse
forced him on quicker and quicker yet.
Suddenly he halted, and examined the number of one of the houses by
the faint and struggling light from the nearest lamp. It was /her/
house; now there was nothing between them but a few feet of space and
fourteen inches of brickwork. He crossed over to the other side of the
street, and looked up at the house, but could scarcely make it out
through the driving rain. There was no light in the house, and no sign
of life about the street. But there were both light and life in the
heart of this watcher. All the pulses of his blood were astir, keeping
time with the commotion of his mind. He stood there in the shadow,
gazing at the murky house, heedless of the bitter wind and pelting
rain, and felt his life and spirit pass out of his control into an
unknown dominion. The storm that raged around him was nothing to the
convulsion of his inner self in that hour of madness, which was yet
happiness. Yet as it had arisen thus suddenly, so with equal swiftness
it died away, and left him standing there with a chill sense of folly
in his mind and of the bitter weather in his body; for on such a night
a mackintosh and a dress coat were not adapted to keep the most ardent
lover warm. He shivered, and turning, made his way back to Albany,
feeling heartily ashamed of himself and his midnight expedition, and
heartily glad that no one knew of it except himself.
On the following day Bottles--for convenience' sake we still call him
by his old nickname--was obliged to see a lawyer with reference to the
money which he had inherited, and to search for a box which had gone
astray aboard the steamer; also to buy a tall hat, such as he had not
worn for fourteen years; so that between one thing and another it was
half-past four before he got back to the Albany. Here he donned the
new hat, which did not fit very well, and a new black coat which
fitted so well that it seemed to cut into his large frame in every
possible direction, and departed, furiously struggling with a pair of
gloves, also new, for Grosvenor Street.
A quarter of an hour's walk, for he knew the road this time, brought
him to the house. Glancing for a while at the spot where he had stood
on the previous night, he walked up the steps and pulled the bell.
Though he looked bold enough outwardly--indeed, rather imposing than
otherwise--with his broad shoulders and the great scar on his bronzed
face, his breast was full of terrors. In these, however, he had not
much time to indulge, for a footman, still decked in the trappings of
vicarious grief, opened the door with the most startling promptitude,
and he was ushered upstairs into a small but richly furnished room.
Madeline was not in the room, though to judge from the lace
handkerchief lying on the floor by a low chair, and the open novel on
a little wicker table alongside, she had not left it long. The footman
departed, saying, in a magnificent undertone, that "her ladyship"
should be informed, and left our hero to enjoy his sensations. Being
one of those people whom suspense of any sort makes fidgety, he
employed himself in looking at the pictures and china, even going so
far as to walk to a pair of very heavy blue velvet curtains that
apparently communicated with another room, and peep through them at a
much larger apartment of which the furniture was done up in ghostly-
looking bags.
Retreating from this melancholy sight, finally he took up a position
on the hearthrug and waited. Would she be angry with him for coming?
he wondered. Would it recall things she had rather forget? But perhaps
she had already forgotten them--it was so long ago. Would she be very
much changed? Perhaps he should not know her. Perhaps--but here he
happened to lift his eyes, and there, standing between the two blue
velvet curtains, was Madeline, now a woman in the full splendour of a
remarkable beauty, and showing as yet, at any rate in that dull
November twilight, no traces of her years. There she stood, her large
dark eyes fixed upon him with a look of wistful curiosity, her shapely
lips just parted to speak, and her bosom gently heaving, as though
with trouble.
Poor Bottles! One look was enough. There was no chance of his
attaining the blessed haven of disillusionment. In five seconds he was
farther out to sea than ever. When she knew that he had seen her she
dropped her eyes a little--he saw the long curved lashes appear
against her cheek, and moved forward.
"How do you do?" she said softly, extending her slim, cool hand.
He took the hand and shook it, but for the life of him could think of
nothing to say. Not one of the little speeches he had prepared would
come into his mind. Yet the desperate necessity of saying something
forced itself upon him.
"How do you do?" he ejaculated with a jerk. "It--it's very cold, isn't
it?"
This remark was such an utter and ludicrous /fiasco/ that Lady Croston
could not choose but laugh a little.
"I see," she said, "that you have not got over your shyness."
"It is a long while since we met," he blurted out.
"I am very glad to see you," was her simple answer. "Now sit down and
talk to me; tell me all about yourself. Stop; before you begin--how
very curious it is! Do you know I dreamed about you last night--such a
curious, painful dream. I dreamed that I was asleep in my room--which
indeed I was--and that it was blowing a gale and raining in torrents--
which I believe it was also--so there is nothing very wonderful about
that. But now comes the odd part. I dreamed that you were standing out
in the rain and wind and yet looking at me as though you saw me. I
could not see your face because you were in the dark, but I knew it
was you. Then I woke up with a start. It was a most vivid dream. And
now to-day you have come to see me after all these years."
He shifted his legs uneasily. Considering the facts of the case, her
dream frightened him, which was not strange. Fortunately, at that
moment the impressive footman arrived with the tea-things and asked
whether he should light the lamps.
"No," said Lady Croston; "put some wood on the fire." She knew that
she looked her very best in those half-lights.
Then, when she had given him his tea, delighting him by remembering
that he did not like sugar, she fell to drawing him out about the wild
life he had been leading.
"By the way," she said presently, "perhaps you can tell me--a few days
ago I bought a book for my boy"--she had two children--"all about
brave deeds and that sort of thing, and in it there was a story of a
volunteer officer in South Africa (the name was not mentioned) which
interested me very much. Did you ever hear of it? It was this: The
officer was in command of a fort containing a force that was operating
against a native chief. While he was away the chief sent a flag of
truce down to the fort, which was fired on by some of the volunteers
in the fort, because there was a man among the truce party against
whom they had a spite. Just afterwards the officer returned, and was
very angry that such a thing had been done by Englishmen, whose duty
it was, he said, to teach all the world what honour meant.
"Now comes the brave part of the story. Without saying any more, and
notwithstanding the entreaties of his men, who knew that in all
probability he was going to a death by torture, for he was so brave
that the natives had set a great price upon him, wishing to kill him
and use his body for medicine, which they thought would make them as
brave as he was, that officer rode out far away into the mountains
with only an interpreter and a white handkerchief, till he came to the
chief's stronghold. But when the natives saw him coming, holding up
his white handkerchief, they did not fire at him as his men had fired
at them, because they were so astonished at his bravery that they
thought he must be mad or inspired. So he came straight on to the
walls of the stronghold, called to the chief and begged his pardon for
what had happened, and then rode away again unharmed. Shortly
afterwards, the chief, having captured some of the officer's
volunteers, whom in the ordinary course of affairs he would have
tortured to death, sent them back again untouched, with a message to
the effect that he would show the English officer that he was not the
only man who could behave 'like a gentleman.' I should like to know
that man. Do you know who he was?"
Bottles looked uncomfortable, as well he might, for it was an incident
in his own career; but her praise and enthusiasm sent a flush of pride
into his face.
"I believe it was some fellow in the Basuto War," he said,
prevaricating with peculiar awkwardness.
"Oh, then it /is/ a true story?"
"Yes--that is, it is partially true. There was nothing heroic about
it. It was a necessary act if our honour as fair opponents was to
continue to be worth anything."
"But who was the man?" she asked, fixing her dark eyes on him
suspiciously.
"The man!" he stammered. "Oh, the man--well, in short----" and he
stopped.
"In short, /George/," she put in, for the first time calling him by
his Christian name, "that man was /you/, and I am so proud of you,
George."
It was very hateful to him in a way, for he loathed that kind of
personal adulation, even from her. He was so intensely modest he had
never even reported the incident in question; it had come out in some
roundabout way. Yet he could not but feel happy that she had found him
out. It was a great deal to him to have moved her, and her sparkling
eyes and heaving bosom showed that she was somewhat moved.
He looked up and his eyes caught hers; the room was nearly dark now,
but the bright flame from the wood the servant had put on the fire
played upon her face. His eyes caught hers, and there was a look in
them from which he could not escape, even if he had wished to do so.
She had thrown her head back so that the coronet of her glossy hair
rested upon the back of her low seat, and thus, without strain, could
look straight up into his face. He had risen, and was standing by the
mantelpiece. A slow, sweet smile grew upon the perfect face, and the
dark eyes became soft and luminous as though they shone through tears.
In another second it had ended, as she thought that it would end and
had intended that it should end. The great strong man was down--yes,
down on his knees before her, one trembling hand catching at the arm
of her chair, and the other clasping her tapering fingers. There was
no hesitation or awkwardness about him now, the greatness of his long-
pent passion inspired him, and he told her all without let or stop--
all that he had suffered for her sake throughout those lonely years,
all his wretched hopelessness, keeping nothing back.
Much she did not understand; such a passion as this was too deep to be
fathomed by her shallow lines, too soaring for her to net in her
world-straitened imagination. Once or twice even his exalted notions
made her smile: it seemed ridiculous, knowing the world as she did,
that any man should think thus of /any/ woman. Nor, when at length he
had finished, did she attempt an answer, feeling that her strength lay
in silence, for she had a poor case. At least, the only argument that
she used was a purely feminine one, but perfectly effective. She bent
her beautiful face towards him, and he kissed it again and again.
