Part 31 (1/2)

”Oh, I suppose I'm rather like the politician who had his future behind him. But I haven't made up my mind what to do. I'm living rather from hand to mouth just now, and taking a holiday from thinking.”

”Oh, I'll mind my own business, if that's what you mean.”

”d.i.c.k, how can you? Of course it wasn't. Please don't be huffy about nothing.”

”I'm worried about you. Don't let those people up at the Patch get at you again, Winnie--for pity's sake, don't! Take care of yourself, my dear. My heart bleeds to see you where you stand to-day, and if you got into any other trouble--you don't understand that you're a woman a man might do bad as well as good things for.”

Emotion was strong in his voice; Winnie lightly attributed it to his nationality.

”Don't fret about me. I've got to pay for my blunders, and, if I've any sense at all, I shall be wiser in future.”

”If ye're ever inclined to another man, for G.o.d's sake try him, test him, prove him. Ye can't afford another mistake, Winnie. It'd kill you, wouldn't it?”

”I shouldn't--like it,” she answered slowly. ”Yes, I shall be cautious, d.i.c.k. And it would take a good deal to make me what you call 'inclined to' any man just yet.” She broke into a laugh. ”But it's your domestic prospects that we were discussing this afternoon!”

”I have none,” he answered shortly, almost sourly.

”Oh, you've only just begun to think of it,” she laughed. ”Don't despair of finding somebody worthy some day!”

They had just reached the station--nearly a quarter of an hour ahead of their time. Dennehy was going back to sleep at the Aikenheads', but he sat down with her in the waiting-room under a glaring gas lamp, to wait for the train. Seen in the light, Dennehy's face looked sad and troubled. Winnie was struck by his expression.

”d.i.c.k,” she said gently, ”I hope we haven't been chaffing you when--when there's something serious?”

He shrugged his shoulders. ”No, no, ye couldn't call it serious.”

”I believe it is, because you were in good spirits till we began about that. Then you looked funny and--well, you don't look at all funny now.

If there is anything--oh, don't despair! And all good, good wishes, dear d.i.c.k! Oh, what a pity this should come, just when everything else is looking so bright for you!”

”I tell ye, Winnie, there's nothing serious.”

Winnie nodded an entirely unreal acquiescence. ”Very well, my friend,”

she said.

A long silence fell between them. In direct disobedience to a large notice, Dennehy lit a cigarette and smoked it quickly, still looking sad and moody. Winnie, troubled by his trouble and unconvinced by his denial, was wondering why in the world she had never thought of such a thing happening to d.i.c.k Dennehy. Why not? There was no reason; he was a man, like the rest. Only we are in the habit of taking partial and one-sided views of our friends and neighbours. The most salient aspect of them alone catches our eye. To cover the whole ground we have neither time nor, generally, opportunity. They come to stand, to us, for one quality or characteristic--just as the persons in a novel or a play often, perhaps generally, do, however much the writer may have endeavoured to give the whole man on his canvas. Now the quality of lover--of even potential lover--had never seemed to a.s.sociate itself at all necessarily or insistently with d.i.c.k Dennehy, as it did, at once and of necessity, with G.o.dfrey Ledstone. So Winnie had just not thought of it. Yet she knew enough to understand how it is that this very kind of man takes love hard, when it does chance to find him out--takes it hard and keeps it long--long after the susceptible man has got over his latest attack of recurrent fever. Was poor d.i.c.k Dennehy really hard hit?

”Who'd look at me, anyhow?” he had asked. Well, he certainly was not handsome. But Winnie remembered her two handsome men. ”I should like to have a word with that girl!” she thought. Her reference was to d.i.c.k's hard-hearted mistress.

But Winnie was not of the women--if indeed they exist--whose innocence merges in denseness and who can successfully maintain for a twelvemonth a total ignorance of the feelings of a man with whom they are thrown into familiar acquaintance. Suddenly, some two minutes before her train was due, her brain got to work--seized on the pieces of the puzzle with its quick perception. Here was a man, naturally ardent, essentially sanguine, in despair--surely about a woman? He did not deny the woman, though he protested that the matter was not 'serious.' Merely to look at him now proved it, for the moment at least, grievous. Well, for 'serious' she read practicable; for 'not serious' she subst.i.tuted hopeless. Then he had looked at her in that queer way; the words had been all right, conceived in the appropriate vein of jocular flirtation; but the look was out of joint. And then his extreme and emotional concern for her welfare and prudent conduct! Would he, even though a Celt, have felt that anxiety quite so keenly, if another and hopeless affection had been dominating his mind? ”Who'd look at me, anyhow?” That protest his modesty made consistent with an aspiration for any lady; it need not be taken too seriously. But his abrupt curt answer about his prospects--”I have none”----?

The pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit pretty well, yet the proof was not conclusive. Say that the evidence was consistent, rather than demonstrative. Somehow, intangibly and beyond definition, there was something in the man's bearing, in his att.i.tude, in the totality of his words and demeanour, which enforced the conviction. There even seemed an atmosphere in the bare, dirty little waiting-room which contained and conveyed it--something coming unseen from him to her, in spite of all his dogged effort to resist the transference. He smoked a second cigarette fiercely. Why, when he had been serene and cheerful all the afternoon, should he be so suddenly overcome by the thought of an absent woman that he could not or would not speak to or look at a friend to whom he was certainly much attached?

The train rumbled into the station. ”Here it is!” said Winnie, and rose to her feet.

d.i.c.k Dennehy started and jumped up. For a second his eyes met hers.

”Come along and put me into a carriage,” she added hastily, and made her way at a quick pace to the train. ”Where are the thirds?”

They found the thirds, and she got in. He shut the door, and stood by it, waiting for the train to start.