Читать книгу The Openers of the Gate - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 6

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In the most remarkable stories of psychic development it is often difficult to obtain verification and when this occurs I, for my part, let the matter drop so far as the public is concerned, hopeless of conveying the atmosphere, the intangible nothings which convinced me. That this is often a severe loss to those who study these subjects I know, yet the rule is a wise one. Sometimes, however, I present, as an imaginative story, something that I myself know to be true, and those who read may then accept or refuse it according to their several capacities. Perhaps the truest things are best conveyed thus. In the story I tell now, I know the man. I had seen with pleasure the perfection of the relation between himself and his son (his wife was dead). I had realized a psychic development of the noblest type, but I little guessed the poignant story conveyed in a manuscript which he caused to reach me after his death.

It permitted me under certain restrictions and precautions to tell facts which I myself would have found it difficult to believe had I not known the man whom I have called Simon Roper. As a last preliminary I have only to say I have kept the faith. No one will trace the personages from the words I write.

Roper’s mother was left a widow when he was four years old. They were very poor and the boy attended the village school and did extremely well there. The mother was remarkable—a deeply religious woman and an omnivorous reader. The father had been a doctor.

This village was within two hours by train of the great manufacturing and shipping town of Lilchurch. Centuries ago it must have been beautiful and it still holds the treasure of a noble old Carthusian church dedicated to the Holy Cross. Roaring streets cover the site of what was once a vast priory, the center of all the arts and education of the shire, and all that memory retains of its sacredness is the name Holywell Street, a trough for horses and dogs and a jet released by a spring where thirsty passers-by may drink, little guessing that the Middle Ages believed this water to be a drink divine, curing all hurts of soul and body, and that it drew pilgrims from every corner of England. None come now and the world would say the power has departed with the belief. The world, however, has not the last word to say on such matters.

Mrs. Roper had good right to be hopeful about her son’s career. He passed on to the age-old grammar school at Rifden near Lilchurch, where he won scholarships and otherwise distinguished himself. He left school and—no work was to be had. No one wanted an unusual young man with a taste for literature which he did his best to hide as a known disadvantage in the labor market. At last he got a temporary job as a commercial traveler, and when that was coming to an end their thoughts turned to Canada (they had friends in Saskatchewan) as the only hope. And then the unexpected dropped like a shooting star from the blue.

Business took Simon Roper one day to the stately office of the biggest firm in Lilchurch. It had world-ramifications; its own line of ships, and what not. To be in Parker Walter’s was to be safe and secured from all the slings and arrows of struggling commercial life. Lord Killary was the chief, though all the directors were great men, and when Lord Killary was spoken of 37 people thought of the man who had given and created the Great Central Park which was the glory of Lilchurch, the man to whom all charities looked for sympathy, whose club for all the young men employed was the finest thing in Europe, who knew them all personally and made friends with them when it was at all possible. Yes, of all institutions in Lilchurch, Parker Walter’s was far and away the greatest and Lord Killary was its brain and heart.

Simon Roper was leaving after ten minutes’ audience with a man who scarcely pretended to listen. Fate, on the watch as he came down the marble steps into the great hall, brought Lord Killary at the same moment and landed him with a sprained ankle in young Roper’s arms. It would have been a broken leg otherwise. He sent for him next day to Laytonhurst—his great place eight miles from Lilchurch—that he might thank him personally. And the two liked each other. A billet in Parker Walter’s followed. Simon’s life-tangle was smoothed out.

I wish I could dwell here on the loving care with which Killary was drawn in Roper’s manuscript. He was of good Scotch blood from above Inverness, a man of forty-eight, slight, dark, distinguished, hair brushed with silver—a man who had known trouble, for early in his married life a riding accident had made his wife a cripple and there would never be heirs to his honors. A lonely man too, said Roper, for his tastes led him to things very far apart from the usual business drive. It was his habit to allow and encourage his clerks to come out on Saturdays and Sundays to borrow books from the great library at Laytonhurst, and it may be suspected that he glanced over the old librarian’s lists now and again; for, catching Simon one Saturday afternoon buried in the Greek Anthology with an open 38 Plotinus beside him, he spoke to him not like chief to clerk but like one human being to another, and after that Simon felt he could not avoid thinking of the great Lord Killary as a friend. Here I must insist that Roper was as remarkable in his own way. Something quick, unusual, sympathetic, met me on every page of his manuscript. I can see very well what Killary surprised in him. I can see the two leaning over the table in the library and Killary’s delicate finger pointing to a verse in the Greek—Plato’s famous epitaph on the boy Aster—the Star, as his name betokens, who fell from the firmament so young.

“Shelley translated that!” says Killary. “Would you have the courage, Roper? His isn’t literal, you know.”

He repeated lingeringly Shelley’s lovely lines.

“Thou wert the morning star among the living,

Ere thy fair light had fled;—

Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving

New splendour to the dead.”

“Difficult to beat!” he said and smiled. “The Star of Night—Hesperus—eh?”

Young Roper looked up eagerly: “I’ve done it, my lord.”

“Say it.”

Very shyly Simon repeated:

“Thou, living, wert the Star of breaking dawn,

My Star, and now thy loveliness withdrawn

Has risen in other skies and there thy light

Is Hesperus in that eternal night.”

“Not half bad. Literal too. Shelley would have liked it. Well, Roper, come often—and you know there’s 39 always tea at the Dairy for the boys and girls from our show.”

That was Killary. His own share of his great place could not have been very radiantly happy, for the ordinary amusements of bridge, drinking, hunting, did not appeal to him, and Lady Killary was too suffering to allow of the usual house-party gaieties. Killary rode a great deal—alone. Read a great deal—alone. Traveled—chiefly to visit the big business interests abroad—again alone. His life appeared to be thrown much inward—if outwardly his concerns were world-wide. Simon’s thoughts centered much about him. They had met more than once in the library at Laytonhurst and always his manner was that of a man who lays little stress on social circumstances but much on inward sympathies. No one would guess this at the office. There, business was business with a vengeance. Perhaps it is not too much to say that Killary became a hero to young Simon Roper, and he had a strong and romantic affection for the man. It was about this time that Roper’s mother died and that he made a new friend at the office, Lord Killary’s secretary, Katharine Picard.

He had seen her at a distance of course, but one day they came down in the lift together and she spoke.

“How are you, Mr. Roper? I’m so glad you’ve joined up. I hear you go out to the library at Laytonhurst. Are you living at the club?”

“No, there isn’t a vacancy now. I’m on the waiting list. But I have very decent rooms in Storm Street. They were on the firm’s list.”

“It’s rather wonderful the way they think things out,” she said. “That’s Lord Killary. He will have it. Don’t you like him?”

“Who wouldn’t?” Simon answered joyously. They were standing in the hall now, and it was clear she was 40 going out to lunch. She listened with pleasure. He could see that. He added:

“One can’t even remember to be astonished he has time to think of us all. He makes everything seem so natural.”

Killary passed them, talking with Mr. Parker, not so engrossed in business but what he could nod to the two as he went. Her eyes followed him.

Roper had the impression that like himself she had known the seamy side of life. She had a pale intellectual face with wistful gray eyes, tranquil and reflective under broad brows. Her gray dress with white turned-back collar and cuffs was nunlike in its severity and suited the little round clipped head with one long lock which draped the forehead. He felt he would like to know her better. They might have something in common. Simon liked everything in the manner of a fine silver-point, gray, illusive, delicately imaginative. Katharine Picard was all that.

They stood perhaps a moment and then as she turned to go he ventured:

“Miss Picard, I often lunch at the Thatched House. Could we lunch together today? Do!”

She gave a rosy smile of pleasure and blushed up like a child.

“Why, yes! Oh, I would like it! Thank you so much. Let us go.”

They went down the great steps. He thought how pretty her little feet were in gray suède shoes and silk stockings to match. Yet as a whole her face was not really pretty—except indeed the eyes—it was attractive. He decided that was better. It would wear—the other might not. It had another advantage also. The many young men employed at Parker Walter’s preferred a much more striking style of good looks. They liked 41 highly colored lips, full and fruity, darting eyes with sleek mischievous glances. They liked the cravings of the sexual nature in a man to be understood, answered, even prompted, and they certainly had not far to seek. There was plenty of all that in the young women who graced the Parker Walter offices. These boys did not mind occasional tantrums and a little vulgar violence in their charmers, and they not only condoned but invited a perfectly brainless frivolity which sailing along the surface of things asked no more.

Every Jack had his Jill on every floor. Only Katharine Picard went her way in a kind of moonlight quiet. She had a tiny office opening close to Lord Killary’s, and her business was with him and no other. That being so she had an assured position of her own and received a kind of deference from everyone, which made Roper feel it to be something of a distinction that she should lunch with him. They grew to be friends and it became a habit. He was glad when one day on meeting Lord Killary in the street the great man stopped him and said:

“Miss Picard tells me you lunch together, Roper. That pleases me. She’s such a good girl, but too grave for her age. You and she strike me as having many things in common. Brighten her up if you can. Why don’t you bring her out to tea at the Dairy? I don’t think she has seen it.”

He smiled and went on. Extraordinarily kind for a man in his position to give a thought to his secretary and clerk. But that was Killary’s way. No wonder people loved him. The thought struck Simon: could he have any budding romance in his mind about the two of them?

But no—he was out there! They never would attract each other in that way. He loved her company better 42 than any other. She cared for the kind of things he did—could brood for hours over “The Earthly Paradise” or the myths and legends of lovely dead days. They had come to Christian names; they could sit in Laytonhurst woods in the silence of intimacy and perfect contentment. She took him to her home and introduced him to her rather incapable mother, the widow of a clergyman. He sculled her on the river on long summer evenings; and the Jacks and Jills of the office said it was “a case” and they wondered how his Lordship would stick being robbed of the perfect secretary—the secret, the reserved, the unapproachable Miss Picard. But it never was “a case.” The two concerned knew each other and went their way. Roper used to think that if he had had a sister it would have been like that—a perfect kinship.

Yet after a time Simon too felt the soft cloud of Katharine’s reserve. He was not altogether happy about her. One evening on the river he spoke his mind in the dusky starred veil of coming night, as they drifted down to Lilchurch with the current.

“Katharine, what’s the matter with you? You’re not happy; your mind’s troubled. Everything’s changed.”

She flushed up rosily. He saw the pulse from the heart flood her pale cheek and was half sorry he had ventured. Yet, friends must be bold, and he could not see her paling and saddening daily and take it for granted. He held to his point.

“Tell me, Katharine. I’ll stand in with you whatever it is. Tell me—is your mother hard up?”

Her salary was fine, but still—the little house in the Axmere suburb took some keeping up, and Mrs. Picard’s rheumatism had added on a maid to the establishment within the last six months.

She shook her head.

“For if it were that—Katharine, you’d let me know, wouldn’t you? We’ve shared things together that—Well, it isn’t like the every-day boy and girl.”

She leaned forward and laid a cold hand on his, but her eyes were not cold. They brimmed with gratitude—and yet behind it all was that impenetrable reserve which made her the best secretary in Lilchurch. He was shut out. He was not to know.

“I can’t thank you, Simon. We’re friends. I knew that from the first day I met you but—No. I’ve no trouble. I want a change, p’raps—or a tonic.”

“Then ask Killary. He’s such a decent sort that he’d give you anything—or any of us for that matter.”

She agreed. His secretary would be the last to dispute Lord Killary’s generosity. Simon knew he was reserved with her as with everyone, but there was always the Absolutely Trustworthy behind it. The whole office knew that. This went on for a month, and still Simon could make no headway against his doubts and fears. Katharine’s sister had died of consumption four years ago. Could that be the hidden terror? He began to be seriously afraid it was.

One day an amazing thing befell him. A brief letter from Lord Killary.

Dear Roper,

I wish to speak to you on a matter of importance. It is private. I need say no more for I know you can be trusted. Come down to Laytonhurst on Saturday afternoon and meet me at the gate by the Home Farm at four o’clock. Very Truly yours Killary

Laytonhurst was open to the public on Saturday and Sunday afternoons—that was a part of the man’s exceeding 44 generosity. But the Home Farm was private and it abutted on the Wichworth pine-wood where no one might go except by invitation. Here, you might suppose you were in a Canadian forest, so great were the red tree-boles, so majestic the whispering silence. Simon went, divided between pride and astonishment. He knew that he had been singled out in more ways than one and felt certain that he was to be used in some new development of the business, possibly in one of the coveted posts in the great Asiatic seaports. He would like that immensely though he knew it would be a pinch to leave Katharine—that was a companionship he could hardly hope to repeat.

His heart throbbed as he saw Lord Killary’s tall slight figure by the gate, with Jock, the little black Aberdeen, at his heels. Jock came every day to the office and had his own place and position as definitely marked as Katharine Picard’s—an indispensable part of the personal retinue and much considered and courted. They said Killary thought the world of him.

Killary was in country kit and it suited him far better than his office wear. He looked younger than the forty-eight years given in the Peerage, though a little worn and sad-eyed. Looking at him Simon recalled the lines:

“I felt at once as if there ran

A shoot of love from my heart to the man.”

Yes, one could feel that for this master of millions. It was give as well as take with him and his own heart threw out answering signals.

He welcomed Simon briefly and kindly and led the way into Wichworth Forest, down the wood-ways carpeted with silence from the heaped pine-needles. The slight figure in gray took Simon on—on—into a part 45 he had never seen before. Still as a temple, pillared with woodland columns propping the hidden blue. There was a small seat, and he motioned Simon to it, leaning himself against a mighty bole, the black Aberdeen sitting and looking up into his face stedfastly.

“I can’t, my lord, while you stand,” Simon said.

Lord Killary made a gesture. “I wish you to.”

Simon sat down and felt a something weighing upon him unlike anything he had ever confronted in his life. That he should sit—a young man, a mere clerk—and the great Lord Killary stand! Could this be the preface to a business offer? The solemn silence of the trees formed a background very hard to reconcile with the office atmosphere to be expected. The first speech was startling.

“I can’t beat about the bush. The matter is too urgent. I must come straight to the point. Do you feel I have been of any use to you, Roper?”

In his profound amazement, centered on the belief that some further promotion awaited him, Simon found words inadequate.

“I should say so, my lord. You’ve simply made my life. And much more than that, too. I’ve felt I wasn’t only a number at the office. You spoke to me as if I was human. I can’t thank you, but I know it.”

He had leaped to his feet, and Lord Killary smiled at that a little sadly but protested no further.

“If you feel this, would you be inclined to help me in a very difficult delicate matter? I feel the shame of asking any return for what I did freely and as a matter of justice. But would you?”

He needed no answer. Simon made a step forward and the joy in his face was radiant.

“But could I, sir—I mean, my lord. If I could—by George, I’d be glad!”

Killary’s lips contracted with a little spasm that was not a smile.

“I expected that answer. You’re a good fellow, Roper. I’ve always known it, but this is a matter most painful and difficult to break. I wish to God you could guess it without words—but that can’t be.”

Simon’s mind ranged wildly over possibilities. Money. No—ridiculous. Lady Killary? No—he was a devoted husband. All the world knew that. He was silent from utter bewilderment, staring at the chief open-mouthed. At last Killary said slowly:

“Is there any other person in the world you would step very far out of the way to help?”

“My mother—is dead, but then—” He hesitated an instant for courage and added: “Miss Picard, my lord. I like her more than any other girl I ever knew. Since you ask me—yes, I’d do a lot for her.”

Killary looked at the ground. His voice was like marble as he said:

“Does that mean that you—you love her? Her value to me will perhaps excuse my asking. I mean no intrusion.”

Not in the least knowing what to do with this amazing interview Simon clung to the unvarnished truth as his sole guidance. The case was beyond all diplomacy. One just had to tell the truth and let her rip. But that was difficult enough. It was like having one’s bowels probed with the surgeon’s knife, revealing things wholly unexpected to oneself. Could Killary have noticed anything? Could there be more in Katharine’s feeling for himself than he had ever imagined? Simon was not a vain man but really this seemed the only glimmer of revelation. He said hurriedly:

“I don’t love her as perhaps you mean, my lord, but we’re great friends. We trust each other—and I don’t 47 think there’s anyone like her, but we don’t want to marry each other if you mean that. Not a bit.”

Did Killary sigh? He was still looking at the ground. His hidden eyes could tell no story. But the little Aberdeen drew nearer and looked up stedfastly into the beloved face. He knew.

“I gather you would sacrifice something for her happiness,” the monotonous voice went on. “It would trouble you to know she was distressed.”

For a moment Roper was sure he had guessed. But Killary was wrong. She felt nothing like that for him—clean strong friendship no more.

“I’d do anything to save her unhappiness. Anything.”

“Anything? You mean it?”

“Anything. But what does she want, my lord? Why didn’t she ask me? She knows I’d do it.”

“She doesn’t want you to do this. Yet—I see I must tell you the whole. Roper, I know I shall never regret giving you my confidence. She has spoken of you—But—it tears me.”

“Certainly you shan’t regret it, my lord,” Roper said quietly. There was a moment’s silence, then Lord Killary straightened himself and looked him full in the face.

“I am going to say something that will shake your whole opinion of me. Something dastardly. On that head I make no plea.”

The fixed face opposing him! Even then Killary wondered if any sense of what was coming penetrated Roper’s amazement.

“I have put Miss Picard into a terrible position. She is to have a child, and though I would do all in the world, I can do nothing. I cannot break my wife’s heart to marry the woman I—to whom I owe all. My wife would never divorce me. It would kill her. Miss Picard 48 would never accept the sacrifice from her. And her own sensitiveness would never stand the publicity. I can—”

He stopped so suddenly that it was as if some last strength in him had cracked and left him helpless. Stunned, Simon could only stand in stiff silence with his heart in a whirl of dizzying emotions. Katharine! Her suffering, her suffering! What other girl would agonize as she would over her ruin—for it would be no less. Her work broken. She and Killary could never meet again. Her mother—that little home gone. She could not stay there and face it out. A hundred points of misery for Katharine met and splintered in him as he slowly adjusted his confused thoughts to this new conception of Katharine and Killary. But what could he say—what do? Why was he told? It seemed that everything he said must be wrong, clumsy, impossible. Yet, Killary was waiting—waiting. At last Roper stuttered out something about regarding her as a sister. “If anything could be done.” Killary turned upon him with a dying fire of hope in haggard eyes.

“Something could be done. Otherwise I think she’ll go mad and kill herself. Her mother—no, the whole thing is impossible. Of myself I must not speak. I’ve lost all and deserve it. She must marry—”

A rush of enlightenment. So that was why he was told. He was to be the paid tool to make a hiding place for Killary’s shame. The foul insult. He flung out his hand. “Stop! How dare you? How dare you?”

Even as he spoke he envisaged the whole plot. Oh yes, it was very clear now why Killary had been so good to him! How long had she been his mistress? He was to be Killary’s convenience. He could not suspect Katharine—no, not even in that furious moment—but he saw they were both to be put respectably away out of the rich man’s life when she became troublesome, 49 with a poultice of bank notes to heal her bleeding wound. Even if she knew—who could blame a woman fighting to save her child and herself from ruin at the hands of a scoundrel? Yet he was sure she did not know.

But Killary—the arrogant, insulting brute, paying his way with money and hiding behind his invalid wife—the rich man who could buy other men’s honor as he could their labor! He loathed the very thought.

Roper turned in silence to go. He had once loved the man. He would control his fury while he could. It was a voice he would never have recognized that called to him in stark anguish.

“Roper—for God’s sake! Not for me. If you like I’ll swear to shoot myself tonight if you’ll do that for her—for her. You know her—pure and good and true. If I go out tonight, will you? I make no offers. I ask your life, for she loves me and no other man would ever be anything to her. Are you the man to save a drowning woman and child?”

Yes—and to act as a screen that Killary might use for future meetings with a woman whose name was safeguarded by marriage. He scarcely heard the agonized voice.

“My money is dross. I know no man but you to whom I would trust her for a day. I could buy a hundred men but I can’t buy you—”

It was the wrong word. It drove Roper mad. He thought of all the stories the world knows of men who get their fat billets by their complaisance and climb by shameful concessions. So that was what Killary thought of him? He was purchasable because he was poor and dependent. Had there been a tone, a gleam, of arrogance in Killary’s manner he would have dashed his fist in his face and walked off. But it was only a try-on, and 50 he could safely leave him to use his wealth on someone else more supple, more keen-eyed on the main chance. Loathing for money and its arrogance filled him. He stiffened and straightened himself for his last words.

“My lord, we’d better end this talk. I needn’t say it’s to me as if it had never been spoken, but you misjudged me from start to finish. I’m not that kind of man. And I’d like to say here and now I had better leave the business. It would be disagreeable to you to see me and—well, I shouldn’t like it. I ask one question. Does Miss Picard know you spoke to me?”

Stiff against the tree like a man nailed on the cross Killary said:

“No. She would never forgive me. Nor will she either take money from me. My money is my curse. My one hope was that you might win her confidence, for she trusts you. And what she will do I can’t tell. She loves me—but money—no. You may be right. I thought for a minute there might be a larger outlook but no doubt such things are impossible.”

He was silent for a moment, then added:

“You are right too about leaving Lilchurch. Allow me to mention to Parker you are going and leave him to use his discretion. I swear to suggest nothing. One last word—believe it or not, if you had been my chief instead of my clerk I would have made this appeal to you. For I think only of her. If I could see her safe—”

His voice broke horribly on that. A kind of sob.

Roper shook his head. It might mean anything and he did not himself know what it meant. He only wanted to get away and think what he could do for Katharine now that this man had used her and cast her off. He went quickly along the silent path with contempt and fury battling in his heart. At the corner he turned. Killary had dropped into the seat. He was stooped together 51 in a heap of misery. His face was hidden with one hand; the dog on his hind legs was pawing at the other, for love’s sake, but unnoticed. Roper went furiously on. So men should suffer who ran up the debt and called others to foot the bill.

He got to his rooms and looked at the telephone. Should he call up Katharine? He must see her, and though he would not add to her burden she must know he was leaving, but never why. On second thoughts—he would sleep on it. That interview would be one calling for the utmost tact and sympathy, and tonight he could not count on his outraged self. The morning would bring calm. And he had his own affairs to think of—and anxious ones the moment he could find time for them.

But as to sleep—that shy bird perched out of reach, woo her as he would. The roar of the city slackened, the lights dimmed. The measured tread of the policeman on his beat became audible as he marched along, and still Roper could not sleep. Katharine—Katharine. Her face, pure as a disembodied soul, floated on the stormy background of his cruel thoughts of Killary with closed eyes, not hoping, not pleading any more, enduring. And in that vision he fell asleep at last as the first dawn showed a thin gray edge over the serrated house roofs, and a dream detaching itself from a heavenly crowd entered its home—his heart.

Strange. They were walking together down Holywell Street—the roar of thundering motor-busses and trams, motor horns, the unbridled rush of traffic, filled their ears, and the gaudy glitter of wealthy shops dazzled their eyes. Why were they there? Katharine loathed those big streets. Always they went round the little byways, evading and avoiding, so that they could talk happily of their books and plans for meeting on the 52 river. Now she looked up and tried to make him hear and could not. That angered her. She threw her hand out with a gesture of disgust and lo—the amazing was upon them! The curtain rolled up on a new scene.

Holywell Street was gone. The air was full of healing silence. There were May-trees about them, snowed with blossom, the white almond-like scent filling the air with heavenly sweetness. In long meadow-grass two golden-haired children were gathering buttercups and stringing them with daisy-chains. They had wreathed one looped garland about the horns of a white cow, and her great eyes with their purple bloom gazed in mild bewilderment at the flowers dangling about her.

“Isn’t it heavenly—the peace?” Katherine said, clinging to his arm, her breath coming quick with delight. Sadness had dropped from her like a veil.

The very soul of things ancient and lovely swam in blue air about them dreaming awake. The children were immortal youth, bright-eyed as seraphs. Surely that grass, those flowers, never grew on earth—but on the lawns of Paradise. Beyond great trees was a high-pitched roof as of a church—that also built the unearthly quiet. And before them, at the end of the meadow among the flowered grass, was a little village well, with a trodden track leading to it. There was a turning handle and a rope and a little wooden bucket dangling, and above it a stark cross with the dying Figure with outspread arms to which the whole world bows as the epitome of its sorrows.

“It’s the Holy Well,” Katharine’s voice said beside him, “and it has power to heal all griefs. From every part of England men and women come and drink and go away glad. Let us drink.”

He could hear his own voice edged with bitter irony—surely some memory of the day’s struggle.

“If that were true it would be so crowded that the fields would be trampled bare. We couldn’t get near it, and rich men would buy the land and form a Holy Water Company, Ltd., and sell it at a guinea a drop and the virtue would go out of it. No—don’t let’s drink! A monks’ fraud, and we have real trouble to fight.”

But still she led him on with soft insistence through the scattered gold and silver of the buttercups and daisies.

“Very few people understand. You must bring your own vessel to carry that water away. You must give as well as take. There are no miracles—But, come, let us drink. It may do nothing. It may do—this!”

She waved a hand at the dreaming beauty about them. One of the children ran to the well and turning the light handle brought up the little bucket, dripping and sparkling with living water. He cupped his hand and drank, waving to them after, glad as the Angel of the Resurrection.

“Come—come, and drink! Everybody drinks here.”

They went forward hand in hand. Katharine filled her hands and drank eagerly. It seemed to Simon that he saw pure color flush into her cheeks and lips, heavenly azure into her gray eyes, as the living water ran divinely through her. She shook the drops from her hands and where they fell white flowers sprang, unnameable and starry. Roper cupped his own hands to drink—and as he did so became aware that a man lay prone beside the well. It seemed that neither Katharine nor the radiant children saw him and yet he must have struggled to reach it and there had fallen with thirst unquenched. He lay on his back, arms outflung, head thrown back, blood on the brows, on the mouth, on the hands.

Forgetting his own thirst Roper hollowed his hands and kneeling by the man drained the water between his clenched teeth. It fell upon the tortured brows. Again he filled his hands and Katharine stood, pallid with watching. The dead lips quivered, the closed lids trembled to the opening, and suddenly she fell upon her knees and covered her face with her hands. The children knelt also. There was the sound of a far-off bell. Roper looked up. The Cross was empty. The Figure that had hung upon it lay at his feet. The bleeding brows, the hands—he knew them.

There are things upon which one should not dwell—even in dreams. What man could bear that knowledge and live? A roar like the thunder of crashing worlds broke upon him. They were walking in Holywell Street again and the roar of traffic drowned all else. As she drew him up into Charterhouse Street leading to the Monks’ Close, Katharine’s voice said beside him as if the rest had been a dream or nothing:

“There was once a holy well here. Kings and queens came on their knees, they say. Now only the dogs and horses and poor people drink there. Strange!”

He woke that morning in an extraordinary quiet, the spring sunshine flooding his room. He knew very well that revelation had come to him and life would henceforward march to another drum-beat. Others would not hear it, but he supposed even they would be conscious of a new rhythm. The first step lay clear before him. How could he hesitate? How small and shameful appeared his denials and self-respect and wounded vanity in face of the human agony that had met him in Killary’s hopeless appeal for help. How could he face his own contemptuous refusal, the brutal selfish cruelty springing in hatred from his lips? And 55 why refuse? Is a life so great a gift to offer before the overwhelming Love that rules the world? It seemed as nothing, remembering how he had thrust Killary’s gold against him as a bar to all human pity, and left him beggared—Killary who had trusted him, whom he had loved. Scarlet with shame he stood remembering the bowed figure and his own pitiless contempt. Now—he envied the dog who had clung to him in love unchangeable.

For in this flooding light he recognized the utter loneliness of Killary’s life, wifeless, childless, and the generous outflow of sympathy to himself and others. Roper understood the story now in every fiber of his being. Was it wonderful that he should have turned to Katharine—whom he himself loved as the friend of friends? But he would atone. His hands trembled so that they hindered his mad haste to be writing the letter to Killary that should be the beginning of hope.

Life gives and resumes its opportunities. On the breakfast table lay the paper branded with huge black capitals. The letter would not be written.

SUPPOSED SUICIDE OF LORD KILLARY

When at last Roper could brace himself to read the necessary words they were few and simple. They had found him in the Wichworth woods. He had apparently shot the dog first and then himself. They lay together in the deepening twilight. A letter was beside Roper’s plate.

Dear Roper:

I am doing what is best for all concerned. She will accept now what she would not while I lived. 56 I ask your forgiveness if I wounded you and I believe the time may come when you will accord it and understand I turned to you not as the rich man who can buy but as the beggar who has lost all. I recognize it was too much to ask, but you must believe that a very high estimate of you was implied in my request. You refused it and were justified in so doing. I venture another request—my last. Stay in the business. You are wanted there and Parker knows your worth. On the other matter I have nothing to say. I conclude with my best wishes, and they are sincere. Very truly yours, Killary

Roper did three things. He pressed the letter to his lips. He tore it into shreds and let the morning breeze take them. Then like Peter who also cast away an unreturning opportunity, he went up, locked his door and wept bitterly. Through that crisis of the soul no human understanding could accompany him. He mentioned it in his manuscript and passed on.

At the inquest he was the principal witness—apparently the last person who had seen Killary alive. Had they met by appointment? Roper, calm and self-possessed, answered, “Certainly not.” He had Lord Killary’s permission to walk in Wichworth Forest, and was going for a Saturday afternoon tramp. They walked a little way together—as far as the grove where the bodies were found. Then Lord Killary stopped and told him, if he came back that way, to have tea at the Dairy.

Was there any sign of perturbation, trouble, anything unusual? Nothing, Simon answered. Exactly his usual self, kind and calm. The many questions elicited 57 no more. It was a case of absolutely motiveless suicide, so far as the world could tell. There might have been another meeting after Simon left him, but his life lay bare and blameless before the world and not the greediest paper could snatch at any solution of the mystery. Killary had gone free.

Let us take the story up on the day when Katharine Picard at last desired to see Roper.

They met at his rooms, for it was a part of her anguish that her mother could know nothing of the facts. All Lilchurch must grieve for Killary, and his confidential secretary might be allowed a little extra license in her lamentations, for in addition to the shock such a position is extremely personal and really cannot be reconstructed. Mr. Parker had his own Miss Wareham, whom it would be impossible to dispossess. The money loss was therefore appalling. Mrs. Picard felt that breakfast in bed was certainly indicated and would be appropriate also on the day of the funeral. Did not Katharine think that a wreath with “In Grateful Remembrance” would be expected? Very pretty ones could be had at Gardner’s for ten and sixpence.

There was much more, and when she came into the room on Sunday with her stricken face Roper with his new-born understanding could distinguish all the different strands of pain that wove her garment of agony. He had no thought now of the strangeness of the position or of any delicacies or indelicacies—he burned with love for Killary and Katharine, and as for himself, except as a channel of help he had forgotten he existed. His chief preoccupation was that Killary should know. Yes, he was there watching—watching. Roper could see him, bowed and despairing no longer—eager and hopeful, with Jock beside him eager also. And Killary should be glad—by God, he should be 58 glad! Roper swore it to himself as he pulled the chair for Katharine and sat down resolutely before her. Her face—it wrung him. All color had fallen from her cheeks and lips. Gray shadows deepened the hollows about her eyes. Pain, the pitiless sculptor, had modeled the features pitilessly—the lips a mere cipher of suffering. Her dress hung loose about her. Even the young shoulders stooped under the accepted burden.

“I wanted to see you, Simon, before I go away.”

“Away?”

“Yes. You can see I couldn’t bear it. Don’t make me say it.”

He interposed hurriedly: “Yes. I know—I know. You could never stand it.”

“Could you?” she asked, with eyes that sought some fellowship in suffering.

“Yes. I shall stay,” he said slowly. “I love Killary. I shall stay because he would have wished it.”

“That’s a good reason. You loved him?”

“I love him.”

“Who wouldn’t!” she said and broke into low and bitter weeping. He sat very still. She must lead the way now. Presently, drying her eyes, she said:

“Simon, wherever I go I don’t want our friendship to drop.”

“Nor I. But it never could.”

“I know. But there’s more. The night he died I had the most amazing dream with you in it. So beautiful—so marvelous, that I’ve written it down to keep forever and ever. I want you to read it and tell me if there mustn’t be something wonderful between us to have made me dream that. I wouldn’t show it to one man in a hundred but you are the hundredth.”

He unfolded the paper and read swiftly. His own dream; his very own. Except—a strange exception—that 59 the dying man to whom he had given the water of life kneeling was—Killary.

“He was dying,” she said. “He had shot himself. The blood was on his forehead, but you knelt beside him and gave him the water. You, Simon. I shall love you forever. I’ll tell you now. I loved him.”

Disguises had dropped between them, though there was one secret which would be his forever—for Killary’s sake. He knelt on one knee before her and took her hands. She stared at him in wonder as he spoke.

“Katharine, I dreamed that dream too. We walked together in true things that night and he was with us. We saw the truth. All that you knew I knew. How can we ever be apart again? If you loved Killary keep that love. Who am I that I should butt in? But don’t go away. Don’t, for God’s sake, leave me. Marry me. Be Killary’s, but be my friend. I want no wife. I want you, and because the world will have it we must marry.”

She looked at him in white amazement, trembling from head to foot—in a long silence. Presently, she strained herself to answer with perfect simplicity.

“You must hear the truth. You may think me wicked—how can I tell? But Killary—we loved each other. It was only lately. He was very lonely—he had no wife. Now I am to have a child, and I’m not sorry, I’m so glad that I’m afraid I may die of joy before it’s born. Oh, they say women have hard times in this; but think! If I had died first he would have had nothing, and I—have heaven.”

There was a long silence. He knew Katharine and this did not startle him. She would not—could not think like other girls. Already the pale Madonna clasped the child in the arms of her spirit, confronting death, shame, ruin, with the altar flame in her sunken eyes. But at her next words he trembled.

“Simon, there’s one thing I must ask you. You saw him last. Was there anything about this that drove him to death? With me he was always happy. If I thought I had brought him to it—”

No need to finish that sentence. With what an effort he met her eyes and held them Simon never knew. It seemed to his imagination that Killary stood behind her with uplifted hand. “Be silent—be silent!” He would keep the faith.

“Put that straight out of your head forever,” he answered. “From something he let drop I believe he may have thought of Italy—somewhere happy and far away. I couldn’t understand it then. No—you gave him happiness. Nothing else, my dear. Nothing else.”

Their talk was broken by many silences, and the look in her face rewarded him. Presently he touched her hand again to recall her thoughts.

“Katharine, love is love. I have nothing to do with you and Killary. But the child. Will you injure it in any avoidable way? Won’t you give it the best you can—a name, a home, a man to stand by it?”

She opened her lips to speak, but was silent, looking at him with eyes so searching that they pierced his very soul. He answered their question.

“Yes, I care for you but not in that way, and I believe I’m a man to whom friendship is more than the other. Frankly I tell you that Killary means more to me than any man living or dead—and I can’t tell you why—or any woman. I loved him—I love him.”

She laid her hands on his and said eagerly:

“Oh, because he was so wonderful, so single-hearted, so dear. You knew what he was.”

“Perhaps. Anyhow, he meant more to me than you do and always will, though I love you in my way. Will you take it at that? I’d have done my best for your child. I’ll do better than my best for his.”

The battle was won. She said eagerly:

“You understand. You knew what he was. Yes—I could live with you. But, oh, consider, Simon. Think. Another man’s wife—another man’s child. And if you meet the right woman—”

“I’ve met her! When will you marry me?” he answered unwavering, and took her hand and kissed it. In that action he dedicated his life to Killary. Perhaps the moment of purest happiness he had ever known was when she drew his head to her shoulder as he knelt before her and kissed him on the forehead. She could not measure the magnitude of his sacrifice, and he could rejoice in that, for in himself thankfulness overpowered all sense of human loss. But Katharine would never know.

It was when she went and he sat alone, looking out into the sordid street that he realized and accepted in full the austere beauty of life. It is only possible for a man to participate in the heaven about him by the heaven within him, and Roper tasted heaven that day in its purest essence.

They were married immediately and certainly no surprise was created anywhere. Had he any moment of distaste when Killary’s will announced the bequest of ten thousand pounds to his secretary? None. It was a natural thing in relation to his immense riches and her good services, as far as the world’s opinion went. From Roper all illusions of personality had fallen away, and he and Killary walked as brothers in their joint trust for the girl and the child. I must suppose from what he told me that he had long before developed to the point of high perception, but it is certain that all Killary’s power of thought and love and realization, new-won or enhanced by death, projected itself to Simon now and not to Katharine. That was a part of his reward.

“I shall see him until his next rebirth, and then we shall be together!” he said. “We are leaves of the same tree. I know now that was what I always felt about him. It was no chance that brought us together. There were deep things between him and me. He knew it then. I know it—not too late.”

On the birth of the boy new happiness dawned for Roper. From the beginning they were one in everything—in games, thoughts, hopes, all that makes a child’s life. Roper realized as few parents do that—

“The thirst that from the soul doth rise,

Doth ask a drink divine—”

and the child had it—shall I say—clean from the flowing spring in the Meadow of Flowers. He told me he often saw Killary watching the boy in silent delight, with Jock at his feet—both happy and sharing in the starry vibrations radiating from the child’s happiness.

“But not the real Killary,” he would add, “or the real Jock. Both are up and away about their business. These are his thoughts of us and I love them. My God, the wonder and gladness of my life!”

Under these influences and with her own latent psychic powers Katharine developed a relation of great beauty with Roper. I think no woman of perception could have avoided it, but it became a much closer thing than any sexual relationship could have been. They dreamed the same dreams often and one of these so extraordinary that it has given me a story I must tell later. Holding Roper’s hand, not otherwise, Katharine could see Killary at moments and rejoice in that beloved thought made manifest. Shall I say I believe that at last she scarcely could tell one influence from the other, nor cared to tell? That she made no distinction 63 between their love of her and of the boy? That appears to me to be the crowning achievement of the selfless beauty of Roper’s devotion. For it is the truth. It is love that is, and the person through whom it is manifested matters as little as the pipe through which the living water runs.

She died twelve years after the marriage from an accident. As she lay dying in his arms he asked her whether her life had been happier than it would have been without him. She answered that she thanked the eternal Love in every memory of him and that her last entreaty was that the boy should never know that the father of his soul was not the father of his body also.

He never will. This story can be written because he walks the world proud in the memory of a father who never failed him or any other, whom all men trusted and honored. He will never recognize the mystery I have revealed.

So Killary’s instinct was true and what he wished befell. There are much stranger psychic interweavings in this story than appear on the surface, and thoughts which I do not dare to suggest save to those who walk the Way of Power. For them they lie open and beautiful and need no more words of mine.