Part 5 (1/2)
”Say Miss Maurice, then, by all means,” Lenox answered coldly. ”She is welcome to call herself what she pleases so far as I am concerned. Go on.”
”I want to know when that letter reached you.”
”On the afternoon of the day--I was married.”
”Good Lord!” the other e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed blankly. ”And all that I wrote of,--was it news to you?”
Lenox nodded without looking up.
”My dear fellow, for G.o.d's sake don't tell me that a thoughtless letter of mine was responsible----”
Lenox rose and went over to the mantelpiece. The full light on his face was more than he cared about just then.
”You asked for the truth,” he said, in a hard, even voice, ”and--you have made a clean shot at it. We separated that day. I have neither seen nor heard of her since.”
A long silence followed this bald statement of the case. Max Richardson had no words in which to express the pain he felt. Brutus arose, and rubbed himself against his master's legs, as if dimly aware that sympathy of some sort was required of him, and the regular beat of the sentry's footsteps a.s.serted itself in the stillness.
At last Richardson spoke. ”Wonder you cared about shaking hands with me again after that.”
Lenox came nearer, and took him by the shoulder.
”My dear good d.i.c.k,” he said quietly, ”don't talk rubbish; and oblige me by putting the whole affair out of your head. It's as dead as a door-nail. Has been these five years. After all, you were simply an instrument--a providential instrument,” he added grimly--”in the general scheme of things.” He paused for a moment; then returned to his station on the hearth-rug.
”You say she has been painting under her own name. Has she been doing much in that line lately?”
”Yes. She has made great strides. Her Academy pictures fetched high prices last year.”
”I am glad of that.”
The words were spoken with such grave politeness that Richardson looked up as if suspecting sarcasm. But the other's face was inscrutable.
”Do you happen to know where she is at present?” he asked, after a pause.
”No. I believe she and her brother travel about Europe. They never came back to England. That's what made my cousins feel sure there was something behind.”
”Yes, naturally.” Then, with an abrupt return to his usual manner, he added, ”Now, old chap, I'm going to send you packing, and get to work.
Deuced glad to have you back again. Hodson's a slacker of the slackest. We shan't keep _him_ up here much longer, I fancy. Border notions of work don't agree with his delicate digestion! See you again at early parade:--sharp up to time.”
And as Richardson's footsteps died into silence, Eldred Lenox went slowly back to the writing-table.
The past five years had not dealt tenderly with this man of surface hardness and repressed sensibilities. The black hair at his temples was too freely powdered with silver, the lines between his brows, and about his well-formed mouth and jaw, were too deeply indented for a man of five-and-thirty. The whole rugged face of him was only saved from harshness by a humorous kindliness in the keen blue eyes, that had measured distance and faced death with an equal deliberation; and by a forehead whose breadth made the whole face vivid with intellect and power. He looked ten years older than the inwardly exultant bridegroom who had stood upon that sunlit road outside Zermatt, waiting to take possession of the woman he had won.
The attempt to relieve bitterness of spirit with the stimulant of incessant work, and the questionable sedative of tobacco strongly tinctured with opium, was already producing its insidious, inevitable result--was, in truth, threatening to undermine an iron const.i.tution while failing conspicuously to achieve the end in view.
After sitting for twenty minutes before a blank sheet of foolscap, Lenox gave up all further effort at mental concentration. A nostalgia of vast untenanted s.p.a.ces was upon him,--of those great glacier regions where a man could stand alone with G.o.d and the universe, could shake himself free from the fret of personal desire. And he had agreed to forgo this--the one real rest and refreshment life afforded him,--to ”suffer gladly” the insistent trivialities of hill-station life, merely, forsooth, because a woman had asked it of him. He anathematised himself for an inconsistent weak-minded fool. But he had no intention of breaking his promise to Mrs Desmond.
Since work was out of the question, he pushed his chair back impatiently, left the table, and flung out both arms with a gesture of desperate weariness. Yet sleep was far from him, and he knew it; unless he chose to induce it by the only means ready to his hand.
And to-night he did so choose. In general he had steeled himself to resist the temptation to smoke no more than was needed to quicken and clarify thought. But the short talk with Richardson had set all his over-strained nerves on edge. His sum of sleep in the past week did not amount to twenty-four hours, and for once in a way oblivion must be purchased at any cost.
Going over to the tall tobacco-jar that supported his library, he refilled his pouch with cool deliberation, stretched himself out upon the deck-lounge, and smoked pipe after pipe, till the portion of the drug contained in each acc.u.mulated to a perceptible dose. Then the great Dream Compeller took pity upon him, deadening thought, feeling, consciousness itself, till the pipe fell from between his fingers,--and he slept.