Part 10 (1/2)

”Oh, just friendly interest,” he had replied, slapping his jacket pocket. ”Where did I put my cigarette case?... We _are_ friends, aren't we?”

”Rather less so when you go chattering about me.”

”Sorry, old man,” he had replied contritely, though his contrition had been less for his blabbing than that I apparently had taken it amiss. ”I didn't think--you didn't tell me not--it slipped out----”

”Well, well--no great harm's done. But if I were you--” if I had hesitated it was merely for a private and subtle relish ”--I'd take a memory powder, to use an expression of Miss Windus's.”

(You will remember how I had come to overhear that expression, and you may see, by turning back, the precise context of the allusion.)

Archie had been sitting in his favourite att.i.tude, with his stockinged feet against the pilaster of the fireplace. He had twinkled again.

”I don't think it _can_ be Miss Windus,” he had chuckled again. ”Anybody can see you can't stand her.”

”Oh? Sorry I've allowed that to appear.”

”And the college isn't exactly swarming with girls,” he had continued.

I had told him that he was dragging the college in entirely on his own responsibility.

”Oh no!” he had said promptly, with a far too cunning glance at me. ”You don't put me off like that, old boy! I've got you down to that, and I'm going to hold you to it! Serve you right for your dashed secretiveness!

So if it isn't Miss Windus, and it isn't Miss Soames----”

At that I had been able quite calmly to jest. I had fetched up a laugh.

”Steady a minute,” I had said. ”If you're really bent on going into the Sherlock Holmes business you'll have to do it properly, you know--give reasons for your eliminations. Accuracy's everything. Let's have your reason for ruling Miss Soames out.”

”Good old Jeff,” he had remarked, laughing; ”accurate even in his jokes!

Well, say Evie's a young twenty, and you're a d.a.m.ned experienced old thirty--how will _that_ do?”

I believe, taken with all the rest, that it had seemed to him perfectly conclusive.

”That's better,” I had approved. ”I only meant that if you're going to be methodical you must _be_ methodical, that's all. Good mental training for you, my boy.”

”So it is,” he had agreed, with the forthcoming examination in his mind.

”I say--we'll have a shorthand speed-test presently--but first I'm going to drag this out of you....”

And by-and-by I had all but made the confession that it was Miss Causton whom I adored from a distance and hesitated to approach.

Another contributory source to this oddest freak of my life was the terms on which I had returned to the college. That wide and unexpected development of my new studies was no explanation to anybody but myself; I had confessed myself, through Archie, to be in love; and the more closely I applied myself to my mysterious work the less mysterious did my whole conduct appear. Yet on the whole, even if Miss Causton had returned at once, I might at the last have feared the hazard with one at once so suspiciously open and problematically deep as she; and there was no allowing matters to remain as they were. There was only Miss Windus for it.

You see the mess I had landed myself in.

Yet my unhappiness in all this was only a part of a general change that was quickly leavening me throughout. It was a change altogether for the better. I was sick, sick of s.h.i.+fts and tricks and meannesses. I was no less sick of them in myself than I was when I encountered them in the Sutts and Polwheles among whom my life was pa.s.sed. I panted for a clearer air and a more s.p.a.cious prospect; I panted for these things because Evie had loosened the band that had confined the wings of my own spirit. And with my own spirit thus freed, I would find a way to escape from the cage of my circ.u.mstances. Once I had done with that old life I would have done with it for ever. And, strange as it may seem, it was because hope was at last greyly and tardily dawning for me that I entered into my last despicable tortuousness with Kitty Windus.

II

For as I got deeper into my studies I began to see in it nothing less than the finger of Providence that I had failed in the second part of the examination in Method. That frustration altered the whole course of my life. I am, of course, speaking in the light of subsequent events, but I see now what a mere pa.s.s would have meant--a sort of success no doubt--but a success in a narrow and short-reaching attempt.

Up to that time my plan had been to qualify myself by means of certificates, to find a billet elsewhere, and then, with Rixon Tebb & Masters' recommendation of steadiness and sobriety, really to begin in some firm where promotion was possible otherwise than by our bottle-neck of a junior clerks.h.i.+p. I had actually had the choice of no less than two such firms, and had been already wondering what I should do with my extra twelve s.h.i.+llings a week--for I should have begun at thirty s.h.i.+llings.