Читать книгу Splendid Joy - Marguerite Williams - Страница 7

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THE days and weeks that had been generously restoring health and hope to Clare—that had been filled with an irritable dissatisfaction and unacknowledged loneliness for Martyn—had been dark and leaden for Wilfred Cavendish.

When he came to himself by the moonlit lake, he seemed to rise another, weaker, personality. He imagined that life had been despoiled. He was so young that he thought a blow had power to shatter a world. Yet in spite of his misery he realized that in the society to which he had returned appearances must be kept up, though the love of years should have been destroyed in a moment. He managed to get away from Lord Alwyn’s without attracting comment. As he drove his car through the moonlit roads and lanes the brief untimely passion lay consumed. There burned in his brain only anger and remorse.

When at last he turned into the drive of the long low house—where twelve-year-old Jim was surely sleeping—Wilfred felt thankful that there was no one about who had the right to question him. Painton—the elderly, correct butler, who had been in the family longer than Wilfred—kept his place. His wife reigned supreme in her own domain. She mothered the motherless Jim; she did not intrude upon his brother.

For a moment Wilfred’s bitter thoughts were caught into another channel. He must never let Jim know what had happened; for Jim loved Martyn too, and he could not hurt Jim. Then his thoughts circled narrowly again—shutting life’s splendors outside.

He sat for a time alone, brooding. There was no wise friend to show him:—How good it is to live! How good to feel the tugging of the leash as manhood’s awakening forces show their power: how good—when one is young, and strong for battle. No friend—for Wilfred was alone.

Through a long night he tossed wakeful on his bed. Again and again he pressed his hands over his burning eyes in an effort to shut out the vision of Martyn’s face as he had seen it before the blow fell. Presently, as that vision continued to haunt him, there flamed in the boy’s heart a fierce hatred that scorched; but it was not Martyn whom he hated—Martyn who was his friend, and whom he had wronged—but Iva, the woman who had tempted him with her beauty, and who was too limited to understand the passion she had roused.

Life had been a peaceful, wholesome, beautiful thing to Wilfred Cavendish. A strenuous out-door existence had helped him through the years of earliest manhood. His mind had been kept healthy by work, and by the honest thought-provoking books that he had read—often at Martyn’s suggestion. Then, in a moment, his accumulated strength had failed him, his loyalty had slipped away, and—crowning deception—the passion that wrought the havoc had itself fallen dead; taking into forgetfulness the momentary bitter-sweet delight.

Still Martyn remained—but Martyn turned into an enemy.

Early the next day Wilfred motored over to see Martyn. Whatever it cost him, he must find his friend again. He had no thought now for Iva Charteris—he cared only for Martyn. But he could not reach him. Mr. Royce was “not at home.” Wilfred interpreted the statement by the darkness of his own bitterness.

Again and again he tried—always with the same result. He wrote, but his letters were unanswered. A telegram was returned to him with a line—“Mr. Royce is away. We do not know his address.”

Wilfred avoided his friends; he broke his engagements. This was his first great trouble and it filled all his thoughts. It made him an egotist and played havoc with his self-control. He put all his nervous energy into discovering where Martyn was; he left none for the joy of living. His days were burdened with one idea—how to find Martyn—how to win back his friend.

At last, on the morning when Clare entered upon a new world of sunshine by way of a small sailing boat, Wilfred succeeded in discovering the bungalow. When Martyn returned after leaving Clare at the cottage, he saw Wilfred’s car at his gate. As he entered the lounge the eyes that had smiled happily into Clare’s were hard—as Clare could not have imagined them.

Wilfred had been standing at the window. He turned as Martyn entered. His sensitive mouth twitched—his dark eyes showed hours of sleepless brooding. Martyn closed the door and crossed the room.

“Why have you come?” he said curtly.

“Martyn”—faltered the boy brokenly, and he held out his hand.

Royce took no notice of it.

“Why have you come?” he demanded again; and Wilfred’s desperate hope shrivelled. He tried to hold on to it, but it had no life.

“I wanted to tell you that I am more sorry than I can say.” His hand dropped to his side. His eyes sought the hard ones before him, trying to find in them a glimpse of the friend he had lost.

“Your sorrow doesn’t interest me in the least,” Martyn said coldly, taking a cigarette from his case and lighting it.

“Martyn,” pleaded the boy, “why are you so hard? I would give worlds to undo it.”

“That’s childish! You know that you can’t.” Royce strode across the room and threw the burnt match into a pot of fragrant mignonette. “You’d better go,” he added.

“You ought at least to give me a hearing. You never answered my letters.”

“I didn’t read them.”

Cavendish turned to the open window. His lips were trembling. He was feeling impotent. But he must hold on to his self-control. Suddenly he remembered the woman. “You are not being fair to Iva,” he said shakily—trying to gain time. “It wasn’t her fault.”

Martyn’s eyes were cruel.

“Not fair!” he echoed. “That’s splendid from you. If you have come as advocate for Miss Charteris you may just as well understand at once that her opinion of my fairness or anything else of mine is a matter of absolute indifference to me.”

“I’ve never seen her since that night,” Wilfred retorted bitterly. “I’m not her advocate. It’s for myself I’ve come.”

“And I have shown you pretty plainly that you’re not wanted.”

“You mean you’ll never forget?”

Royce shrugged his shoulders.

“Are you going?” he demanded.

Then the pain—the morbid brooding of the past weeks—the love that had been given and was now thrown aside—the passion of the moment that had fallen dead—all were forgotten, and in their place there rose that ugly, poisonous thing that takes the joy from life, that keeps wounds open, that bars all roads to peace.

“Yes, I’m going,” Wilfred said passionately. “Probably to the devil, but that won’t matter to you! You are brutally strong, but you’re not infallible. When your strength gives out, I hope there’ll be no one by to help you on to your feet again!”

“I suppose you prefer to walk out,” suggested Royce.

For a moment Wilfred looked into the hard eyes, with hatred in his own, then he went—banging the door behind him.

Once in his car he recklessly broke all speed limits. The glory of the gorse and the heather mocked him. Houses and trees and hedgerows flew madly past in a dazzling sunlight. The shadows lengthened—night fell; but for him there came no mists to shut out the world—the night was blindingly bright, cruelly beautiful. Across the broad open moonlit plain the car sped at fifty miles an hour. Rabbits, fascinated by the brilliant glare of the lamps, rushed from their safe resting places and could not get back. Wilfred laughed at each jolt that told him that a tiny dead body was left behind on the road.

It was long past midnight when he at last reached home. Painton appeared in the hall as his master’s key sounded in the lock.

“What can I get you, sir?” he asked, as he took Wilfred’s hat and coat.

“Bring me some whisky,” the boy ordered; and he walked unsteadily into the morning room where a fire was burning.

Painton hesitated. Then he obeyed.

“I shan’t want anything else. Don’t bother me again.... Confound it man—what are you fiddling with! I’ll move that lamp if I want it. Do for heaven’s sake leave me alone.”

Painton, who did not know this new Cavendish, went quietly out of the room; but he did not go to bed.

Wilfred poured out whisky—and heard demons laughing.

Presently Painton returned. A half empty tumbler stood on the table at the boy’s side. Without comment the butler took the decanter from the table. Wilfred turned a flushed face towards him and laid a trembling hand on the glass.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to get gloriously drunk?” he stuttered, with a foolish laugh. “There’s nothing like it. Wonderful stuff! Have some, man?”

Painton put down the decanter out of reach.

“Confound your interference! I’ve a perfect right to go to the devil if I want to. Bring that back!”

“Oh, no, you haven’t sir,” contradicted the butler quietly. “You don’t belong to yourself.”

“You canting old Methodist! I’ll do as I darned well choose.” Wilfred lifted the tumbler and drained it, then his head fell forward.

“Painton,” he muttered thickly, “you—can’t—keep—the—devil—away.” Then with sudden fierceness: “I hope he’ll curse Martyn, too.” He began to sob.

While Wilfred was cursing and Clare blessing him, Martyn Royce was equally forgetful of both. He had spent a strenuous afternoon writing—his sole anodyne for every pain. He did not know that he had steeped his pen in gall—until the worst of the bitterness had been exhausted.

If Martyn had never cared for Wilfred—never been so sure of his loyalty—he would never have been so brutally hard. It was not because he had lost the woman, but because he had lost faith in the man, that he was unforgiving.

He had given little thought to Iva; her feelings were of no moment. He had seen her face in the moonlight before Wilfred’s mad kisses had been pressed upon her lips, and in that moment he had known that he had been lured by a mirage; it could charm him no longer.

After Wilfred went he worked—to forget. He was not weak enough to be sorry. He was not great enough to forgive.

Had Royce lived in the middle ages, he might have died as a martyr—not because of his faith in a creed, but because of his faith in himself; but he would have jeered at his tormentors as they racked him—they would not have seen his pain....

When twilight fell, he went out into the mists. He walked for miles—fixing his thoughts on the book that he was writing, and banishing human passions by the effort of his strong will.

But into the midst of his leashed-in thoughts there flashed uninvited the picture of Wilfred’s brother Jim—the plucky little lad with the true blue eyes, and the tossed wealth of golden hair. Jim was far more fragile, yet far, far stronger, than Wilfred had ever been. As Martyn thought of Jim, he felt sorry at last. He hoped that Jim would never know.

Suddenly his sombre thoughts took flight, banished by a new interest. From somewhere away to his right came the long, mournful howl of a dog. In an instant everything else was forgotten. No animal ever appealed to Martyn in vain. He took his electric torch from his pocket and, guided by its light, made his way across the mist-mapped fields in the direction of the sound.

In a few minutes he had discovered the Aberdeen terrier whose cry demanded his help. As he stooped down to find the cause of her trouble, the dog, mad with pain, turned and bit his hand. Martyn caught her lower jaw firmly, and holding her trembling body against his side with his arm, he gently and skilfully freed her paw from the cruel trap that had imprisoned it. Then kneeling down in the mud, the dog’s damp body still pressed against his own, the mist enfolding them both, by the limited light of his torch he bound his handkerchief tightly round the wound, while he quieted the trembling of the frightened creature—soothing her with a tone that she could understand.

The address on the collar told him that her owner lived about two miles away. Royce lifted the dog, put the torch back in his pocket, then tramped those miles through mud and mist, the dog under his arm, her rough head against his breast.

Wilfred Cavendish—making for home, reckless of speed limits—was trying to curse that man who had been his friend; Clare had fallen into a peaceful sleep, a blessing for him on her lips; the shaggy wire-haired terrier tucked under his arm endeavored to turn her head that she might lick the hand that she had wounded; but Martyn strode on grimly—indifferent to curse and blessing and penitence alike.