Friday was the night of the incident in the library between Bob Chater and Mary; Saturday the exchange of love in the Park between Mary and her George; Saturday evening the writing of Mary's letter; upon Monday George read it.
Now it was Monday morning, and precisely at ten o'clock three persons set out for the same seat in Regent's Park—the mind of each filled with one of the others, empty of all thought of the third.
Mary—accompanied by David and Angela—carried towards the seat the image of her George, but had no heed of Mr. Bob Chater's existence; she was the magnet that drew Bob, ignorant of George; George sped to his Mary and had no thought of Bob.
Our young men were handicapped in point of distance. Mary, with but a short half-mile to go, must easily be first to make the seat; Bob, coming to town from a week-end up the river, would occupy little short of an hour. George from Herons' Holt to that dear seat, allowed full seventy-five minutes.
Upon the whole, Mr. Bob Chater had not enjoyed his week-end; ideally circumstanced, for once the attractions it offered had failed to allure.
Mr. Lemmy Moss, in the tiny riparian cottage he rented for the summer months, was the most excellent of hosts; Claude Avinger was widely known as a rattling good sort; the three young ladies who came down early on Sunday morning and had no foolish objections to staying indecorously late, were in face, figure and morals all that Bob, Lemmy, and Claude could desire. Yet throughout that day in the cushioned punt Bob won more pouts than smiles from the lady who fell to his guardianship.
Disgustedly she remarked to her friends on the home journey, “Fairly chucked myself at him, the deadhead “—wherein, I apprehend, lay her mistake. For whether a man's assault upon a woman be dictated by love or desire, its vehemence is damped by acquiescence, spurred by rebuff. Doubtless for our lusty forefathers one-half the fascination of obtaining to wife the naked ladies who caught their eye lay in the tremendous excitement of snatching them from their tribes; while for the ladies, the joy of capture comprised a great proportion of the amorous delights.
The characteristics remain. Maidens are more decorously won to-day; their tribes do not defend them; but they do the fighting for themselves. The sturdier the defence they are able to make, the greater the joy of at length being won; while, for the suitor, the more pains he hath endured in process of conquest the more keenly doth he relish his captive.
So with Bob. The young lady fairly chucking herself at him in the punt he could not forbear to contrast with the enticing reserve of Mary. The more playfully (or desperately, poor girl) she chucked herself at him, the more did her charms cloy as against those of that other prize who so stoutly kept him at arm's-length. Nay, the more strenuously did she seek to entice his good offices, the more troubled was he to imagine why another of her sex should so slightingly regard him.
Thus, as the day wore on, was Bob thrice impelled towards Mary—by initial attraction of her beauty; by natural instinct to show himself master where, till now, he had been bested; and by the stabbings of his wounded vanity.
On Monday morning, then, he caught the ten o'clock train to town, hot in the determination immediately to see her and instantly to press his suit. He would try, he told himself, a new strategy. Bold assault had been proved ill-advised; for frontal attack must be substituted an advance more crafty. Its plan required no seeking. He would play—and, to a certain extent, would sincerely play—the part of penitent. He would apologise for Friday's lapse; would explain it to have been the outcome of sheer despair of ever winning her good graces.
As to where he would find her he had no doubts. Dozing one day over a book, he had not driven David and Angela from the room until they had forced upon him a wearisome account of the secluded seat they had discovered in Regent's Park. His patience in listening was an example of the profit of casting one's bread upon the waters; for, making without hesitation for the seat, he discovered Mary.
The children, as he approached, were standing before her. David had scratched his finger, and the three were breathlessly examining the wounded hand for traces of the disaster. Brightly Mary was explaining that the place of the wound was over the home of very big drops of “blug,” which could not possibly squeeze out of so tiny a window; when Angela, turning at footsteps, exclaimed: “Oh, dear, oh, dear, what shall we do? Here's Bob!”
Alarm drummed in Mary's heart: fluttered upon her cheeks. She had felt, as she told her George, so certain that from Bob she had now not even acknowledgment to fear, that this deliberate intrusion set her mind bounding into disordered apprehensions—stumbling among them, terrified, out of breath.
When he had raised his hat, bade her good morning, she could but sit dumbly staring at him-questioning, incapable of speech.
It was Angela that answered his salutation: “Oh, why have you come here? You spoil everything.”
“Hook!” said Bob.
David asked: “What's hook?”
“Run away.”
“Why?”
“Because I tell you to.”
“Why?”
Bob exclaimed: “Hasn't mother told you not to say 'Why' like that? Run away and play. I want to speak to Miss Humfray.”
David swallowed the rising interrogation; substituted instead an observant poke: “Miss Humfray doesn't want to speak to you. She hates you.”
The uncompromising directness of these brats, their gross ill-mannerliness, was a matter of which Bob made constant complaint to his mother. The belief that he observed a twitch at the corner of Mary's mouth served further to harden his tones.
He said: “Look here, you run away when I tell you, or I'll see you don't come out here any more.”
“Why?”
Bob swallowed. It was necessary before he spoke to clear his tongue of the emotions that surged upon it.
Angela, in the pause, entreated David: “Oh, don't keep saying 'Why?', David,” and before he could ask the reason she addressed Bob: “We won't go for you. If Miss Humf'ay tells us to go, then we will go.”
Bob looked at Mary. “I only want to speak to you for a minute.”
Amongst the slippery apprehensions in which she had taken flight Mary had struggled to the comfortable rock that Bob's appearance must have been chance, not deliberate—how should he have known where to seek them? Sure ground, too, was made by the belief that it were well to take the apology with which doubtless he had come—well to be on good terms.
Encouraged by these supports, “Shoo!” she cried to her charges. “Don't you hear what your brother asks?”
“Do you want us to go?”
“Oh, shoo! shoo!”
Laughing, they shoo'd.
Bob let them from earshot. “I want to say how sorry I am about Friday night.”
“I have forgotten all that.”
“I want to know that you have forgiven me.”
“I tell you I have forgotten it.”
“That is not enough. You can't have forgotten it.” He took a seat beside her; repeated: “You can't have forgotten it. How can you have forgotten a thing that only happened three days ago?”
“In the sense that I have wiped it out—I do not choose to remember it.”
“Well, I remember it. I cannot forget it. I behaved very badly. I want to know that you forgive me.”
She told him: “Yes, then—oh yes, yes.” His persistence alarmed her, set her again to flight among her apprehensions.
“Not when you say it like that.”
Her breath came in jerks, responsive to the unsteady flutters of her heart. She made an effort for control; for the first time turned to him: “Mr. Chater, please go.”
Her words pricked every force that had him there—desire, obstinacy, wounded vanity.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“You happened to be passing—”
“Nothing of the kind,” he told her.
“You have come purposely?” One foothold that seemed safe was proving false.
“Of course. I tell you—why won't you believe me?—that I have been ashamed of myself ever since that night. At the first opportunity I have come straight to tell you so, I ought to be in the City. I could not rest until I had made my apology.”
“Well, you have made it—I don't mean to say that sharply. I think—I think it is very nice of you to be so anxious, and I freely accept your apology. But don't you see that you are harming me by staying here? I beg you to go.”
“How am I harming you? Am I so distasteful to you that you can't bear me near you?”
This was the personal note that of all her apprehensions had given Mary greatest alarm. “Surely you see that you are harming me—I mean hurting me—I mean, yes, getting me into trouble by staying like this with me. Mrs. Chater might have turned me off on Saturday—”
“I spoke for you.”
“Yes.” The words choked her, but she spoke them—“I am grateful to you for that. But if she found me talking to you again—especially if she knew you came here to see me, she would send me away at once. She told me so.”
“How is she to know?”
“The children—”
“I'll take care of that.”
“You can't prevent it. In any case—”
Bob said bitterly: “In any case! Yes, that's it. In any case you hate the sight of me.”
She cried: “Oh, why will you speak like that? I mean that in any case it is not right. I promised.”
Bob laughed. “If that's all, it is all right. You didn't promise for me.”
“It makes no difference. You say you are sorry—I believe you are sorry. You can only show it one way. Mr. Chater, please leave me alone.”
Her pretty appeal was fatal to her desire. It enhanced her graces. In both phrase and tone it was different from similar request in the petulant mouths of those ladies amongst whom Bob purchased his way. Dissatisfied, they would have said “Oh, chuck it! Do!” But “Mr. Chater, please leave me alone!”—that had the effect of moving Mr. Chater a degree closer along the seat.
He said: “You shan't have cause to blame me. Look here, you haven't asked me to explain my conduct on Friday.”
“I don't wish you to.”
“Don't you want to know?”
She shook her head.
“Aren't you curious?” His voice was low with a note of intensity. This was love-making, as he knew the pursuit.
He went on: “I'm sure you're curious. Look here, I'm going to tell you.”
“I'm going,” she said; made to rise.
He caught her hand where it lay on her lap; pressed her down. “You're not. If you do I shall follow—but I won't let you,” and he pressed again in advertisement.
Now she was alarmed—not for the result of this interview, but for its very present perils. Fear strangled her voice, but she said, “Let me go.”
“You must hear me, then.”
“I wish to go.”
“You must stay to hear me.” He believed a fierce assault would now win the heights. He released her hand; but she was still his prisoner, and he leant towards her averted head.
“I'm going to tell you why I behaved like that that night. It was because I could not contain myself any longer. You had always been so icy to me; kept me at arm's-length, barely let me speak to you; and all the time I was burning to tell you that I loved you—there, you know it now. On that night you were still cold when you might have been only barely civil and I could have contained myself. But you would not give me a word, and at last all that was in me for you burst out and I could not hold myself. It was unkind; it was frightening to you, perhaps; but was it a crime?—is it a crime to love?”
His flow checked, waiting an impulse from her.
She was but capable of a little “Oh!”—the crest of a gasp.
He misread her emotion. “Has it all been pretence, your keeping me from you like this? I believe it has. But now that you know you will be kind. Tell me. Speak.”
Encouraged by her silence he took her hand.
That touch acted as a cold blast upon her fevered emotions. Now she was calm.
She shook off his hand. “Have you done?”
The tone more than the question warned him.
“Well?” he said; sullen wrath gathering.
“Well, never speak to me again.”
“You won't be friends?”
“Friends! With you!”
Her meaning—that he had lost—stung him; her tone—that she despised him—was a finger in the wound.
He gripped her arm. “You little fool! How are you going to choose? If I want to be friends with you, how are you going to stop it? By God, if you want to be enemies it will be the worse for you. If I can't be friends with you at home, I'll get you turned out and I'll make you be friends outside.”
She was trying to twist her arm from his grasp.
He gripped closer. “No, I don't mean that. I love you—that's why I talk so when you rebuff me. I'll not hurt you. We shall—I will be friends.”
His right arm held her. He slipped his left around her, drew her to him, and with his lips had brushed her cheek before she was aware of his intention.
The insult swept her free of every thought but its memory. By a sudden motion she slipped from his grasp and to her feet; faced him.
“You beast!” she cried. “You beast!”
He half rose; made a half grab at her.
She stepped back a pace; something in her action reminded him of that stinging blow she had dealt him in the library; he dropped back to his seat and she turned and fled up the path whither Angela and David had toddled.
It was while Bob sat gazing after her, indeterminate, that he felt a hand from behind the seat upon his shoulder; looked up to see a tall young man, fresh faced, but fury-browed, regarding him.
“What's your name?” asked George.
“What the devil's that to do with you?”
The tone of the first question had been of passion restrained. The passion broke now from between George's clenched teeth, flamed in his eyes.
He tightened his grip upon the other's shoulder so that he pinched the flesh.
“A lot to do with me,” he cried. “Is it Chater?”
“What if it is? Let me go, damn you!”
“Let you go! I've been itching for you for weeks! What have you been saying to Miss Humfray?”
“Damn you! Take off your hand! She's a friend of yours, is she?”
My furious George choked: “Engaged to me.” Further bit upon his passion he could not brook. He brought his free hand down with a crash upon the face twisted up at him; relaxed his hold; ran round the seat—those brown hands clenched.
If Bob Chater at no time had aching desire for a brawl, he was at least no coward: here the events he had suffered well sufficed to whip his blood to action. He sprang to his feet, was upon them as George, sideways to him, came round the arm of the seat; lunged furiously and landed a crack upon the cheekbone that spun George staggering up the path.
It was a good blow, a lusty blow—straight from the shoulder and with body and leg work behind it; a blow that, happier placed, might well have won the battle.
A ring upon Bob's finger cut the flesh he struck, and he gave a savage “Ha!” of triumph as he saw George go spinning and the red trickle come breaking down his cheek.
A great ridge in the gravel marked the thrust of foot with which George stayed his stagger, from which he impelled the savage spring that brought him within striking distance.
There was no science. This was no calmly prepared fight with cool brains directing attack, searching weak points, husbanding strength, deft in defence. Here was only the animal instinct to get close and wound; to grapple and wound again.
George it was that provoked this spirit. Till now he had not seen this flushed face before him. But he had for many days conjured it up in his fancy—sharpening upon it the edge of his wrath, bruising himself against the wall of wise conduct that kept him from meeting and visiting upon it the distress his Mary had endured.
Now that he saw it in the flesh (and it was not unlike his conception), he came at it with the impulse of one who, straining against a rope, rushes headlong forward when a knife parts the bond.
The impulse thus given more than countered the greater bulk and reach that should have told in Bob's scale. Bob felt his wits and his courage simultaneously deserting him before the pell-mell of blows that came raining against his guard. Whensoever he effected a savage smash that momentarily checked the fury, it served but to bring back this seemingly demented young man with a new rush and ardour.
Bob gave step by step, struck short-arm, felt the faint saltness of blood upon his lips, staggered back before a tremendous hit between the eyes, stumbled, tripped, fell.
“Get up!” George bellowed; waited till Bob came rushing, and sent him reeling again with a broken tooth that cut the brown knuckles.
Bob lacked not courage and had proved it, for he was sorely battered. But the pluck in him was whipped and now venom alone bade him make what hurt he could.
His heavy stick was leaning against the seat. He seized it; swung it high; crashed a blow that must have split the head it aimed.
George slipped aside; the blow missed. He poised himself as Bob, following the impulse, went staggering by; put all his weight behind a crashing hit and sent him spinning prone with a blow that was fittingly final to the exhibition of lusty knocks.
Bob propped himself on one arm, rose to his feet; glared; hesitated—then fell to brushing his knees.
It was a masterly white flag.
“Had enough?” George panted. “Had enough? Are you whipped, you swine?”
Bob assiduously brushed.
“When you're better, let me know,” George cried; turned and hurried up the path whither Mary had disappeared.
The forced draught of fury, pain, and exertion sent Bob's breath roaring in and out in noisy blasts—now long and laboured, now spasmodic quick.
He examined his bill of health and damage. Face everywhere tender to the touch; clothes dust-covered and torn; both knees of trousers rent; silk hat stove in when in a backward rush he had set his foot upon it. His tongue discovered a broken tooth, his handkerchief a bleeding nose, his fingers blood upon his chin, trickling to his shirt front.
So well as might be he brushed his person; straightened his hat; clapped handkerchief to his mouth; past staring eyes, grinning faces, hurried out of the Park to bury himself in a cab.
From a window Mrs. Chater saw the bruised figure of her darling boy alight; with palpitating heart rushed to greet him.
“Bob! My boy! My boy! What has happened?”
Her boy brushed past; bounded to his room. Laboriously, sick with fear, the devoted mother toiled in pursuit—found him in his room tearing off his coat.
“My boy! My boy!”
Her boy bellowed: “Hot water!”
Can a mother's tender care cease towards the child she bare?
Oh! needless to ask such a question, you for whom is pictured this devoted woman plunging at breakneck speed for the bathroom, screaming as she runs: “Susan! Kate! Jane! Jane! Kate! Susan!”
Doors slammed, cries echoed, stairs shook, as trembling servants rushed responsive.
Crashing of cans, rushing of water, called them to the bathroom.
“Oh, m'am! What is it?”
Water flew in sprays as the agonised mother tested its temperature with her hands; cans rattled as she kicked them from where, in dragging one from the shelf, the others had clattered about her feet.
Jane, Kate, and Susan clustered in alarm about the door: “Oh, m'am! M'am! Whatever is it?”
Mrs. Chater gave no reply. Her can full, she plunged through them. This way and that they dodged to give her passage; dodge for dodge, demented, hysterical, she gave them—slopping boiling water on to agonised toes; bursting through at last; thundering up the stairs.
The three plunged after her: “Oh, m'am! M'am! Whatever is it?”
The devoted woman paused at the head of the stairs; screamed down orders: “Sticking-plaster! Lint! Cotton-wool! Mr. Bob has had an accident! Hot-water bottles! Ice! Doctor! Go for the doctor, one of you!”
A figure with battered face above vest and pants bounded from its room. “No!” Bob roared. “No!”
“No!” Mrs. Chater echoed, not knowing to what the negative applied, but hysterically commanding it.
“No!” screamed the agitated servants, one to another.
“No! no doctor!” bellowed Bob; grabbed the can from his mother; shot back to his room.
“No doctor!” Mrs. Chater screamed to the white-faced pack upon the stairs; fled after him.
“My boy! Tell me!”
Her boy raised his dripping face from the basin. “For God's sake shut the door!” he roared.
She did. “Tell me!” she trembled.
“It's that damned girl.”
“That girl?”
“Miss Humfray!”
“Miss Humfray! Done that to you! Oh, your poor face! Your poor face!”
“No!—no! Do be quiet, mother! Some infernal man she goes about with in the Park! I spoke to him and he set on me!”
“The infamous creature! The wicked, infamous girl! A bad girl, I knew it!—”
Agitated tapping at the door: “The cotton-wool m'am.” “Sticking-plaster, m'am.” “'Ot bottle, m'am.”
“Go away!” roared Bob. “Go away! O-oo, my face!” He hopped in wrath and pain. “Send those damned women away!”
Mrs. Chater rushed to the door. Passing, she for the first time caught full sight of her son's face now that the hot water had exposed its wreck. “Oh, your eyes! Your poor eyes! They're closing up!”
Bob staggered to the mirror; discovered the full horror of his marred beauty. “Curse it!” he groaned and gave an order.
Mrs. Chater flew to the telephone.
In the office of Mr. Samuel Hock, purveyor of meat, by appointment, to the Prince of Wales, the telephone bell sharply rang. Mr. Hock stepped to the receiver, listened, then bellowed an order into the shop:
“One of beefsteak to 14 Palace Gardens, sharp!”
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