The God in the Car: A Novel

With her going went Ruston's smile. He bent his head, and said in a low voice,

"You are the only woman whom I could have left like that, and the only one whom I could have found it hard to leave. Was it very hard for you?"

"It was just the truth for me," she answered.

"Of course you were angry and hurt. I was afraid you would be," he said.

She looked at him with a curious smile.

"But then," he continued, "you saw how I was placed. Do you think I didn't suffer in going? I've never had such a wrench in my life. Won't you forgive me, Maggie?"

"Forgive! What's the use of talking like that? What's the use of my 'forgiving' you for being what you are?"

"You talk as if you'd found me out in something."

She turned to him, saying very low,

"And haven't you found me out, too? We are face to face now, Willie."

He did not fully understand her. Half in justification, half in apology, he said doggedly,

"I simply had to go."

"Yes, you simply had to go. There was the railway. Oh, what's the use of talking about it?"

"I was afraid you meant to have nothing more to do with me."

"Or you wished it?" she asked quickly.

He started. She had discerned the thoughts that came into his mind in his solitary walks.

"Don't be afraid. I've wished it," she added.

There was a pause; then he, not denying her charge, whispered,

"I can't wish it now – not when I'm with you."

"To have nothing more to do with you! Ah, Willie, I have nothing to do with anything but you."

A swift glance from him told her that her appeal touched him.

"What else is left me? Can I live as I am living?"

"What are we to do?" he asked. "We shall see one another sometimes now. I can't come to your house, you know. But sometimes – "

"At a party – here and there! And the rest of the time I must live at – at home! Home!"

He bent to her, whispering,

"We must arrange – "

"No, no," she replied, passionately. "Don't you see?"

"What?" he asked, puzzled.

"Oh, you don't understand! It's not that. It's not that I can't live without you."

"I never said that," he interposed quickly.

"And yet I suppose it is that. But it's something more. Willie, I can't live with him."

"Does he suspect?" he asked in an eager whisper.

"I don't know. I really don't know. It's worse if he doesn't. Oh, if you knew what I feel when he looks at me and asks – "

"Asks what?"

"Nothing – nothing in words; but, Willie, everything, everything. I shall go mad, if I stay. And then don't you see – ?" She stopped, going on again a moment later. "I've borne it till I could see you. But I can't go on bearing it."

He glanced at her.

"We can't talk about it here," he said. "Everybody will see how agitated you are."

For answer she schooled her face to rigidity, and her hands to motionlessness.

"You must talk about it – here and now," she said. "It's the only time I've seen you since – Dieppe. What are you going to do, Willie?"

He looked round. Then, with a smile, he offered his arm.

"I must take you to have something," he said. "Come, we must walk through the room."

She rose and took his arm. Bowing and smiling, she turned to greet her acquaintances. She stopped to speak to Lord Detchmore, and exchanged a word with her host.

"Yes. What are you going to do?" she asked again, aloud.

They had reached the room where the buffet stood. Mrs. Dennison, after a few words to Lady Valentine, who was still there, sat down on a chair a little remote from the crowd. Ruston brought her a cup of coffee, and stood in front of her, with the half-conscious intention of shielding her from notice. She drank the coffee hastily; its heat brought a slight glow to her face.

"You're going as you planned?" she asked.

He answered in low, dry tones, emptied of all emotion.

"Yes," said he, "I'm going."

She stretched out her hand towards him imploringly.

"Willie, you must take me with you," she said.

He looked down with startled face.

"My God, Maggie!" he exclaimed.

"I can't stay here. I can't stay with him."

Her lips quivered; he took her cup from her (he feared that she would let it fall), and set it on the table. Behind them he heard merry voices; Semingham's was loud among them. The voices were coming near them.

"I must think," he whispered. "We can't talk now. I must see you again."

"Where?" she asked helplessly.

"Carlin's. Come up to-morrow. I can arrange it. For heaven's sake, begin to talk about something."

She looked up in his face.

"I could stand here and tell it to the room," she said, "sooner than live as I live now."

He had no time to answer. Semingham's arm was on his shoulder. Lord Detchmore stood by his side.

"I want," said Semingham, "to introduce Lord Detchmore to you, Mrs. Dennison. It's not at all disinterested of me. You must persuade him – you know what about."

"No, no," laughed the Minister, "I mustn't be talked to; it's highly improper, and I distrust my virtue."

"I'll be bound now that you were talking about Omofaga this very minute," pursued Semingham.

"Of course we were," said Ruston.

"You're a great enthusiast, Mrs. Dennison," smiled Detchmore. "You ought to go out, you know. Can't you persuade your husband to lend you to the expedition?"

Ruston could have killed the man for his malapropos jesting. Maggie Dennison seemed unable to answer it. Semingham broke in lightly,

"It would be a fine chance for proving the quality – and the equality – of women," said he. "I always told Mrs. Dennison that she ought to be Queen of Omofaga."

"And I hope," said Detchmore, with a significant smile, "that there'll soon be a railway to take you there."

Even at that moment, the light of triumph came suddenly gleaming into Ruston's eyes. He looked at Detchmore, who laughed and nodded.

"I think so. I think I shall be able to manage it," he said.

"That's an end to all our troubles," said Semingham. "Come, we'll drink to it."

He signed to a waiter, who brought champagne. Lord Detchmore gallantly pressed a glass on Mrs. Dennison. She shook her head, but took it.

"Long life to Omofaga, and death to its enemies!" cried Semingham in burlesque heroics, and, with a laugh – that was, as his laughs so often were, as much at himself as at the rest of the world – he made a mock obeisance to Willie Ruston, adding, "Moriamur pro rege nostro!" and draining the glass.

Maggie Dennison's eyes sparkled. Behind the mockery in Semingham's jest, behind the only half make-believe homage which Detchmore's humorous glance at Ruston showed, she saw the reality of deference, the acknowledgment of power in the man she loved. For a brief moment she tasted the troubled joy which she had paid so high to win. For a moment her eyes rested on Willie Ruston as a woman's eyes rest on a man who is the world's as well as hers, but also hers as he is not the world's. She sipped the champagne, echoing in her low rich voice, so that the men but just caught the words, "Moriamur pro rege nostro" and gave the glass into Ruston's hand.

A sudden seriousness fell upon them. Detchmore glanced at Semingham, and thence, curiously, at Willie Ruston, whose face was pale and marked with a deep-lined frown. Mrs. Dennison had sunk back in her chair, and her heart rose and fell in agitated breathings. Then Willie Ruston spoke in cool deliberate tones.

"The King there was a Queen," he said. "You've drunk to the wrong person, Semingham. I'll drink it right," and, bowing to Maggie Dennison, he drained his glass. Looking up, he found Detchmore's eyes on him in overpowering wonder.

"If I tell you a story, Lord Detchmore," said he, "you'll understand," and, yielding his place by Maggie Dennison, he took Detchmore with him, and they walked away in talk.

It was an hour later when Lord Detchmore took leave of his host.

"Well, did you hear the story?" asked Semingham.

"Yes; I heard it," said Detchmore, "about the telegram, wasn't it?"

"Yes, and of course, you see, it explains the toast."

"That sounds like a question, Semingham."

"Oh, no. The note of interrogation was – a printer's error."

"It's a remarkable story."

"It really is," said Semingham.

"And – is it the whole story?"

"Well, isn't it enough to justify the toast?"

"It – and she – are enough," said Detchmore. "But, Semingham – "

Lord Semingham, however, took him by the arm, walked him into the hall, got his hat and coat for him, helped him on with them, and wished him good-night. Detchmore submitted without resistance. Just at the last, however, as he fitted his hat on his head, he said,

"You're unusually explicit, Semingham. He goes to Omofaga soon, don't he?"

"Yes, thank God," said Semingham, almost cheerfully.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE CUTTING OF THE KNOT

"You can manage it for me?" asked Willie Ruston.

"I suppose I can," answered Carlin; "but it's rather queer, isn't it, Willie?"

"I don't know whether it's queer or not; but I must talk to her for half-an-hour."

"Why not at Curzon Street?"

Ruston laughed a short little laugh.

"Do you really want the reason stated?" he inquired.

Carlin shook his head gloomily, but he attempted no remonstrance. He confined himself to saying,

"I hope the deuce you're not getting yourself into a mess!"

"She'll be here about five. You must be here, you know, and you must leave me with her. Look here, Carlin, I only want a word with her."

"But my wife – "

"Send your wife somewhere – to the theatre with the children, or somewhere. Mind you're here to receive her."

He issued his orders and walked away. He hated making arrangements of this sort, but there was (he told himself) no help for it. Anything was better than talking to Maggie Dennison before the world in a drawing-room. And it was for the last time. Removed from her presence, he felt clear about that. The knot must be cut; the thing must be finished. His approaching departure made a natural and inevitable end to it; and her mad suggestion of coming with him shewed in its real enormity as he mused on it in his solitary thoughts. For a moment she had carried him away. The picture of her pale eloquent face, and the gleam of her eager eyes had almost led him to self-betrayal; the idea of her in such a mood beside him in his work and his triumphs had seemed for the moment irresistible. She could double his strength and make joy of his toil. But it could not be so; and for it to be so, if it could be, he must stand revealed as a traitor to his friend, and be banned for an outlaw by his acquaintance. He had been a traitor, of course, but he need not persist. They – she and he – must not stereotype a passing madness, nor refuse the rescue chance had given them. There was time to draw back, to set matters right again – at least, to trammel up the consequence of wrong.

When she came, and Carlin, frowning perplexedly, had, with awkward excuses, taken himself away, he said all this to her in stumbling speech. From the exaltation of the evening before they fell pitiably. They had soared then in vaulting imagination over the bristling barriers; to-day they could rise to no such height. Reality pressed hard upon them, crushing their romance into crime, their passion to the vulgarity of an everyday intrigue. This secret backstairs meeting seemed to stamp all that passed at it with its own degrading sign; their high-wrought defiance of the world and the right dwindled before their eyes to a mean and sly evasiveness. So felt Willie Ruston; and Maggie Dennison sat silent while he painted for her what he felt. She did not interrupt him; now and again a shiver or a quick motion shewed that she heard him. At last he had said his say, and stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, looking down on her. Then, without glancing up, she asked,

"And what's to become of me, Willie?"

The sudden simple question revealed him to himself. Put in plain English, his rigmarole meant, "Go your way and I'll go mine." What he had said might be right – might be best – might be duty – might be religion – might be anything you would. But a man may forfeit the right to do right.

"Of you?" he stammered.

"I can't live as I am," she said.

He began to pace up and down the room. She sat almost listlessly in her chair. There was an air of helplessness about her. But she was slowly thinking over what he had said and realising its purport.

"You mean we're never to meet again?" she asked.

"Not that!" he cried, with a sudden heat that amazed himself. "Not that, Maggie. Why that?"

"Why that?" she repeated in wondering tones. "What else do you mean? You don't mean we should go on like this?"

He did not dare to answer either way. The one was now impossible – had swiftly, as he looked at her, come to seem impossible; the other was to treat her as not even he could treat her. She was not of the stuff to live a life like that.

There was silence while he waged with himself that strange preposterous struggle, where evil seemed good, and good a treachery not to be committed; wherein his brain seemed to invite to meanness, and his passion, for once, to point the better way.

"I wish to God we had never – " he began; but her despairing eyes stifled the feeble useless sentence on his lips.

At last he came near to her; the lines were deep on his forehead, and his mouth quivered under a forced smile. He laid his hand on her shoulder. She looked up questioningly.

"You know what you're asking?" he said.

She nodded her head.

"Then so be it," said he; and he went again and leant against the mantelpiece.

He felt that he had paid a debt with his life, but knew not whether the payment were too high.

It seemed to him long before she spoke – long enough for him to repeat again to himself what he had done – how that he, of all men, had made a burden that would break his shoulders, and had fettered his limbs for all his life's race – yet to be glad, too, that he had not shrunk from carrying what he had made, and had escaped coupling the craven with his other part.

"What do you mean?" she asked at last; and there was surprise in her tone.

"It shall be as you wish," he answered. "We'll go through with it together."

Though he was giving what she asked, she seemed hardly to understand.

"I can't let you go," he said; "and I suppose you can't let me go."

"But – but what'll happen?"

"God knows," said he. "We shall be a long way off, anyhow."

"In Omofaga, Willie?"

"Yes."

After a pause she rose and moved a step towards him.

"Why are you doing it?" she asked, searching his eyes with hers. "Is it just because I ask? Because you're sorry for me?"

She was standing near him, and he looked on her face. Then he sprang forward, catching her hands.

"It's because you're more to me than I ever thought any woman could be."

She let her hands lie in his.

"But you came here," she said, "meaning to send me away."

"I was a fool," he said, grimly, between his teeth.

She drew her hands away, and then whispered,

"And, Willie – Harry?"

Again he had nothing to answer. She stood looking at him with a wistful longing for a word of comfort. He gave none. She passed her hand across her eyes, and burst into sudden sobs.

"How miserable I am!" she sobbed. "I wish I was dead!"

He made as though to take her hand again, but she shrank, and he fell back. With one hand over her eyes, she felt her way back to her chair.

For five minutes or more she sat crying. Ruston did not move. He had nothing wherewith to console her, and he dared not touch her. Then she looked up.

"If I were dead?" she said.

"Hush! hush! You'd break my heart," he answered in low tones.

In the midst of her weeping, for an instant she smiled.

"Ah, Willie, Willie!" she said; and he knew that she read him through and through, so that he was ashamed to protest again.

She did not believe in that from him.

Presently her sobs ceased, and she crushed her handkerchief into a ball in her hand.

"Well, Maggie?" said he in hard even tones.

She rose again to her feet and came to him.

"Kiss me, Willie," she said; "I'm going back home."

He took her in his arms and kissed her. She released herself, and gazed long in his face.

"Why?" he asked. "You can't bear it; you know you can't. Come with me, Maggie. I don't understand you."

"No; I don't understand myself. I came here meaning to go with you. I came here thinking I could never bear to go back. Ah, you don't know what it is to live there now. But I must go back. Ah, how I hate it!"

She laid her hand on his arm.

"Think – if I came with you! Think, Willie!"

"Yes," he said, as though it had been wrung from him, "I know. But come all the same, Maggie," and with a sudden gust of passion he began to beseech her, declaring that he could not live without her.

"No, no," she cried; "it's not true, Willie, or you're not the man I loved. Go on, dear; go on. I shall hear about you. I shall watch you."

"But you'll be here – with him," he muttered in grim anger.

"Ah, Willie, are you still – still jealous? Even now?"

A silence fell between them.

"You shall come," he said at last. "What do I care for him or the rest of them? I care for nothing but you."

"I will not come, Willie. I dare not come. Willie, in a week – in a day – Willie, my dear, in an hour you will be glad that I would not come."

As she spoke, her voice grew louder. The words sounded like a sentence on him.

"Is that why?" he asked, regarding her with moody eyes.

She hesitated before she answered, in bewildered despair.

"Yes. I don't know. In part it is. And I daren't think of Harry. Let me think, Willie, that it's a little bit because of Harry and the children. I know I can't expect you to believe it, but it is a little, though it's more because of you."

"Of me? – for my sake, do you mean?"

"No; not altogether for your sake; because of you."

"And, Maggie, if he suspects?"

"He won't suspect," she said. "He would take my word against the world."

"They suspect – some of them – that woman Mrs. Cormack. And – does Marjory?"

"It is nothing. He won't believe. Marjory will not say a word."

"You'll persuade him that there was nothing – ?"

"Yes; I'll persuade him," she answered.

She began to pull a glove on to her hand.

"I must go," she said. "It's nearly an hour since I came."

He took a step towards her.

"You won't come, Maggie?" he urged, and there was still eagerness in his voice.

"Not again, Willie. I can't stand it again. Good-bye. I've given you everything, Willie. And you'll think of me now and then?"

He was unmanned. He could not answer her, but turned towards the wall and covered his face with his hand.

"I shan't think of you like that," she said, a note of wondering reproach in her voice. "I shall think of you conquering. I like the hard look that they blame you for. Well, you'll have it soon again, Willie."

She moved towards the door. He did not turn. She waited an instant looking at him. A smile was on her lips, and a tear trickled down her cheeks.

"It's like shutting the door on life, Willie," she said.

He sprang forward, but she raised her hand to stay him.

"No. It is – settled," said she; and she opened the door of the room and walked out into the little entrance-hall.

It was a wet evening, and the rain pattered on the roof of the projecting porch. They stood there a moment, till her cabman, who had taken refuge in the lee of the garden wall, brought his vehicle up to the door. They heard a step creak behind them in the hall, and then recede. Carlin was treading on tip-toe away.

Maggie Dennison put out her hand and met Ruston's. She pressed his hand with strength more than her own, and she said, very low,

"I am dying now – this way – for my king, Willie," and she stepped out into the rain, and climbed into the cab.

"Back to where you brought me from," she called to the man, and leaning forward, where the cab lamps caught her face, so that it gleamed like the face of some marble statue, she looked on Willie Ruston. Her lips moved, but he heard no word. The wheels turned and the lamps flashed, and she was carried away.

Willie started forward a step or two, then ran to the gate and, leaning on it, watched the red lights as they fled away; and long after they were gone, he stood there, bareheaded, in the drenching rain. He did not think; he still saw her, still heard her voice, and watched her broad low brow. She still stood before him, not the fairest of women, but the woman who was for him. And the rumble of retreating wheels sounded again in his ears. She was gone.

How long he stood he did not know. Presently he felt an arm passed through his, and he was led back to the house.

Old Carlin took him through the hall into his own little study, where a bright fire blazed, and gave him brandy, which he drank, and helped him off with his wet coat, and put a cricketing jacket on him, and pushed him into an arm-chair, and hunted for a pair of slippers for him.

All this while neither spoke; and at last Carlin, his tasks done, stood and warmed himself at the fire, looking steadily in front of him, and never at his friend.

"You dear old fool," said Willie Ruston.

"Ah, well, well, you mustn't take cold. If you were laid up now, what the deuce would become of Omofaga?"

His small, sharp, shrewd eyes blinked as he spoke, and he glanced at Willie Ruston as he named Omofaga.

Willie sprang to his feet with an oath.

"My God!" he cried, "why do you do this for me? Who'll do anything for her?"

Carlin blinked again, keeping his gaze aloof. Then he held out his hand, and Willie seized it, saying,

"I'm – I'm precious hard hit, old man."

The other nodded and, as Willie sank back in his chair, stole quietly out of the room, shutting the door close behind him.

Willie Ruston drew his chair nearer the fire, and spread out his hands to the blaze. And as the heat warmed his frame, the stupor of his mind passed, and he saw some of what was true – a glimpse of his naked self thrown up against the light of the love that others found for him. And he turned away his eyes, for it seemed to him that he could not look long and endure to live. And he groaned that he had won love and made for himself so mighty an accuser of debts that it lay not in him to pay. For even then, while he cursed himself, and cursed the nature that would not be changed in him; even while the words of his love were in his ears, and her presence near with him; even while life seemed naught for the emptiness her going made, and himself nothing but longing for her; even then, behind regret, behind remorse, behind agony, behind self-contempt and self-disgust, lay hidden, and deeper hidden as he thrust it down, the knowledge that he was glad – glad that his life was his own again, to lead and make and shape; wherein to take and hold, to play and win, to fasten on what was his, and to beat down his enemies before his face. That no man could rob him of, and the woman who could would not. So, as Maggie Dennison had said, in the passing of an hour he was glad; and in the passing of a week he had learnt to look in the face of the gladness which he had and loathed.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE RETURN OF A FRIEND

About a week later, Tom Loring sat at work in his rooms. The table was strewn with books of blue and of less alarming colours. Tom was smoking a short pipe, and when he paused for a fresh idea, the smoke welled out of his mouth, aye, and out of his nose, thick and fast. For a while he wrote busily; then a dash of his pen proclaimed a finished task, and he lay back in the luxury of accomplishment. Presently he pushed back his chair, knocked out his pipe, refilled it, and stretched himself on the sofa. After the day's work came the day's dream; and the day's dream dwelt on the coming of the evening hour, when Tom was to take tea with Adela Ferrars at half-past five. When he had an appointment like that, it coloured his whole day, and made his hard labour pass lightly. Also it helped him to forget what there was in his own life and his friends' to trouble him; and he nursed with quiet patience a love that did not expect, that hardly hoped for, any issue. As he had been content to be Harry Dennison's secretary, so he seemed satisfied to be an undeclared lover; finding enough for his modesty in what most men would have felt only a spur to urge them to press further.