Part 24 (1/2)

”Then,” I said, ”I shall have to tell you.”

”So,” I concluded some minutes later, ”do you think you are--doing right--to marry?”

We still stood, he with his back to the name-board, I with my hand against it, almost enveloping him with my physical presence. And now, no detail of my arraignment spared, I had at last caught his eye. Even before he spoke my heart gave a savage leap. Already his soft and spongy nature had begun to be hardened to that att.i.tude I needed.

”Oh!” he said.... Then, proudly, ”But this is interference.”

”You think,” I repeated slowly, ”that you have the right to get married?”

His very admission was a defiance of me. ”I know I've been rather a rotter,” he bl.u.s.tered.

Once more I repeated monotonously:

”You still think, after what I've just said, that you have the right----”

”I think,” he broke out, ”that if you looked after your own girl and left me to look after mine it would be better. I'm frightfully sorry about the other thing, of course, but--dash it all!----”

Our long exchange of looks said the rest, and it was not my fault if he didn't understand what his refusal to heed me would involve. Some people never understand, and cry afterwards, ”You never told me that!” as if one man had the right to demand of another that he should speak the uttermost word. I cannot see that there is any such right. For such as these there is no uttermost word. Elias and the Prophets cannot make them understand. Though one rose from the dead to tell them they would not believe. The G.o.d who made them as they are cannot make Himself known to them--He can only destroy them again. They go out into the night in their ignorance, and for them there is no resurrection in knowledge....

Therefore if the uttermost word will not enlighten them, why speak it?

Weakness lies in that word. Because it is weak. Art leaves it unspoken, and the Seer, having spoken it, comes down from Sinai no more. Only by a withholding from it does man achieve. Making three parts greater than the whole, he does not put forth to the last. He will not return bankrupt to heaven. The unuttered utterance is his credential, to be restored to the Bestower of it.

Therefore I did not, at that time, tell Archie Merridew that if he married I should slay him. But all, all else was in my eyes for his taking.

Then our gaze severed.

As I dropped my hand from the wall the devil frisked in me again. I had warned him, and had my own safety to consider now. Without attention to detail you can accomplish nothing in this world, and a thing is bunglingly done when you yourself suffer the consequences of it.

Whatever I might do, I intended to suffer no consequences.

”Well, Archie,” I said, as a man speaks who washes his hands of something, ”I've told you what I think about it. There's no doubt it is, as you say, an interference, but I think it's justified, and so I'll say no more.... And now, about that other: I need hardly say that I expect you to make things all right for me again.”

”I will--I really will, Jeff,” he promised at once.

”You see,” I amplified, while the devil in me frisked, ”leaving my reputation out of the question, it's beastly inconvenient. For instance, I'm badly in need of some shorthand practice, and I certainly don't intend to go up these stairs again until I'm rehabilitated.”

He leaped at the chance of a reparation that would cost him little. ”Oh, that's easy,” he said. ”Of course your own place--I mean, why not use mine, as you used to?”

”Oh,” I objected, ”I can't very well use your place when you're not there.”

”I'm going to be there most of the time now,” he replied. ”Perhaps you think I'm off on the skite again, but I'm not.” (”The Devil was sick,”

thought I again.) ”I'm dead off all that now--straight. I do wish you'd come!”

”But,” I said (while that imp in me positively capered), ”you'll be awfully busy--with other things. I hear you're to be married at once----”

”Not too busy for that, old man,” he a.s.sured me. ”Do come!”

”Well, I'll see,” I promised.