Old fires and Profitable Ghosts. Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
a bit to its hurt; though as conscious outsiders we could dare very little. For instance, the talk of our associates about women—and no doubt their thoughts, too—grew sensibly baser. The sanctity of gambling debts, on the other hand, we did nothing to impair: because we had money. I recall your virtuous indignation at the amount of paper floated by poor W—— towards the end of the great baccarat term. Poor devil! He paid up—or his father did—and took his name off the books. He's in Ceylon now, I believe. At length you have earned a partial right to sympathise: or would have if only you had paid up."
"Take care, Gervase."
"My good Sir, don't miss my point. Wasn't I just as indignant with W——? If I'd been warned off Newmarket Heath, if I'd been shown the door of the hell we're sitting in, shouldn't I feel just as you are feeling? Try to understand!"
"You forget Elaine, I think."
"No: I do not forget Elaine. We left College: I to add money to money in my father's office; you to display your accomplishments in spending what your father had earned. That was the extent of the difference. To both of us, money and the indulgence it buys meant everything in life. All I can boast of is the longer sight. The office-hours were a nuisance, I admit: but I was clever enough to keep my hold on the old set; and then, after office-hours, I met you constantly, and studied and hated you—studied you because I hated you. Elaine came between us. You fell in love with her. That I, too, should fall in love with her was no coincidence, but the severest of logic. Given such a woman and two such men, no other course of fate is conceivable. She made it necessary for me to put hate into practice. If she had not offered herself, why, then it would have been somebody else: that's all. Good Lord!" he rapped the table, and his voice rose for the first time above its level tone of exposition, "you don't suppose all my study—all my years of education—were to be wasted!"
He checked himself, eyed me again, and resumed in his old voice—
"You wanted money by this time. I was a solicitor—your old college friend—and you came to me. I knew you would come, as surely as I knew you would not fire that pistol just now. For years I had trained myself to look into your mind and anticipate its working. Don't I tell you that from the first you were the only real creature this world held for me? You were my only book, and I had to learn you: at first without fixed purpose, then deliberately. And when the time came I put into practice what I knew: just that and no more. My dear Reggie, you never had a chance."
"Elaine?" I muttered again.
"Elaine was the girl for you—or for me: just that again and no more."
"By George!" said I, letting out a laugh. "If I thought that!"
"What?"
"Why, that after ruining me, you have missed being happy!"
He sighed impatiently, and his eyes, though he kept them fastened on mine, seemed to be tiring. "I thought," he said, "I could time your intelligence over any fence. But to-night there's something wrong. Either I'm out of practice or your brain has been going to the deuce. What, man! You're shying at every bank! Is it drink, hey? Or hunger?"
"It might be a little of both," I answered. "But stay a moment and let me get things straight. I stood between you and Elaine—no, give me time—between you and your aims, whatever they were. Very well. You trod over me; or, rather, you pulled me up by the roots and pitched me into outer darkness to rot. And now it seems that, after all, you are not content. In the devil's name, why?"
"Why? Oh, cannot you see? … Take a look at these mirrors again—our world, I tell you. See—you and I—you and I—always you and I! Man, I pitched you into darkness as you say, and then I woke and knew the truth—that you were necessary to me."
"Hey?"
"I can't do without you!" It broke from him in a cry. "So help me God, Reggie, it is the truth!"
I stared in his face for half a minute maybe, and broke out laughing. "Jeshurun waxed fat and—turned sentimental! A nice copy-book job you make of it, too!
Oh, send my brother back to me—
I cannot play alone!
Perhaps you'd like me to buy a broom and hire the crossing in Lennox Gardens? Then you'd be able to contemplate me all day long, and nourish your fine fat soul with delicate eating. Pah! You make me sick."
"It's the truth," said he quietly.
"It may be. To me it looks a sight more like foie gras. Can't do without me, can't you? Well, I can jolly well do without you, and I'm going to."
"I warn you," he said: "I have done you an injury or two in my time, but by George if I stand up and let you shoot me—well, I hate you badly enough, but I won't let you do it without fair warning."
"I'll risk it anyway," said I.
"Very well." He stood up, and folded his arms. "Shoot, then, and be hanged!"
I put out my hand to the revolver, hesitated, and withdrew it.
"That's not the way," I said. "I've got my code, as I told you before."
"Does the code forbid suicide?" he asked.
"That's a different thing."
"Not at all. The man who commits suicide kills an unarmed man."
"But the unarmed man happens to be himself."
"Suppose that in this instance your distinction won't work? Look here," he went on, as I pushed back my chair impatiently, "I have one truth more for you. I swear I believe that what we have hated, we two, is not each other, but ourselves or our own likeness. I swear I believe we two have so shared natures in hate that no power can untwist and separate them to render each his own. But I swear also I believe that if you lift that revolver to kill, you will take aim, not at me, but by instinct at a worse enemy—yourself, vital in my heart."
"You have some pretty theories to-night," I sneered. "Perhaps you'll go on to tell me which of us two has been Elaine's husband, feeding daintily in Lennox Gardens, clothed in purple and fine linen, while the other——"
He interrupted me by picking up his revolver and striding to the fireplace again.
"So be it, since you will have it so. Kill me," he added, with a queer look, "and perhaps you may go back to Lennox Gardens and enjoy all these things in my place."
I took my station. Both revolvers were levelled now. I took sight along mine at his detested face. It was white but curiously eager—hopeful even. I lowered my arm, scanning his face still; and still scanning it, set my weapon down on the table.
"I believe you are mad," said I slowly. "But one thing I see—that, mad or not, you're in earnest. For some reason you want me to kill you; therefore that shall wait. For some reason it is torture to you to live and do without me: well, I'll try you with that. It will do me good to hurt you a bit." I slipped the revolver into my pocket and tapped it. "Though I don't understand them, I won't quarrel with your sentiments so long as you suffer from them. When that fails, I'll find another opportunity for this. Good night." I stepped to the door.
"Reggie!"
I shut the door on his cry: crossed the corridor, and climbing out through the window, let myself drop into the lane.
As my feet touched the snow a revolver-shot rang out in the room behind me.
I caught at the frozen sill to steady myself: and crouching there, listened. Surely the report must have alarmed the house! I waited for the sound of footsteps: waited for three minutes—perhaps longer. None came. To be sure, the room stood well apart from the house: but it was incredible that the report should have awakened no one! My own ears still rang with it.
Still no footsteps came. The horse in the stable close by was still shuffling his hoof on the cobbles. No other sound …
Very stealthily I hoisted myself up on the sill again, listened, dropped inside, and