Witching Hill/A Vicious Circle
A Vicious Circle
THE Berridges of Berylstow—a house near my office in the Witching Hill Road—were perhaps the very worthiest family on the whole Estate.
Old Mr. Berridge, by a lifetime of faithful service, had risen to a fine position in one of the oldest and most substantial assurance societies in the City of London. Mrs. Berridge, herself a woman of energetic character, devoted every minute that she could spare from household duties, punctiliously fulfilled, to the glorification of the local Vicar and the denunciation of modern ideas. There was a daughter, whose name of Beryl had inspired that of the house; she was her mother's miniature and echo, and had no desire to ride a bicycle or do anything else that Mrs. Berridge had not done before her. An only son, Guy, completed the partie carrée, and already made an admirable accountant under his father's eagle eye. He was about thirty years of age, had a mild face but a fierce moustache, was engaged to be married, and already picking up books and pictures for the new home.
As a bookman Guy Berridge stood alone.
"There's nothing like them for furnishing a house," said he; "and nowadays they're so cheap. There's that new series of Victorian Classics—one-and-tenpence-half-penny! And those Eighteenth Century Masterpieces—I don't know when I shall get time to read them, but they're worth the money for the binding alone—especially with everything peculiar taken out!"
Peculiar was a family epithet of the widest possible significance. It was peculiar of Guy, in the eyes of the other three, to be in such a hurry to leave their comfortable home for one of his own on a necessarily much smaller scale. Miss Hemming, the future Mrs. Guy, was by no means deficient in peculiarity from his people's point of view. She affected flowing fabrics of peculiar shades, and she had still more peculiar ideas of furnishing. On Saturday afternoons she would drag poor Guy into all the second-hand furniture shops in the neighbourhood—not even to save money, as Mrs. Berridge complained to her more intimate friends—but just to be peculiar. It seemed like a judgment when Guy fell so ill with influenza, obviously contracted in one of those highly peculiar shops, that he had to mortgage his summer holiday by going away for a complete change early in the New Year.
He went to country cousins of the suburban Hemmings; his own Miss Hemming went with him, and it was on their return that a difference was first noticed in the young couple. They no longer looked radiant together, much less when apart. The good young accountant would pass my window with a quite tragic face. And one morning, when we met outside, he told me that he had not slept a wink.
That evening I went to smoke a pipe with Uvo Delavoye, who happened to have brought me into these people's ken. And we were actually talking about Guy Berridge and his affairs when the maid showed him up into Uvo's room.
I never saw a man look quite so wretched. The mild face seemed to cower behind the truculent moustache; the eyes, bright and bloodshot, winced when one met them. I got up to go, feeling instinctively that he had come to confide in Uvo. But Berridge read me as quickly as I read him.
"Don't you go on my account," said he gloomily. "I've nothing to tell Delavoye that I can't tell you, especially after giving myself away to you once already to-day. I daresay three heads will be better than two, and I know I can trust you both."
"Is anything wrong?" asked Uvo, when preliminary solicitations had reminded me that his visitor neither smoked nor drank.
"Everything!" was the reply.
"Not with your engagement, I hope?"
"That's it," said Berridge, with his eyes on the carpet.
"It isn't—off?"
"Not yet."
"I don't want to ask more than I ought," said Uvo, after a pause, "but I always imagine that, between people who're engaged, the least little thing"
"It isn't a little thing."
And the accountant shook his downcast head.
"I only meant, my dear chap, if you'd had some disagreement"
"We've never had the least little word!"
"Has she changed?" asked Uvo Delavoye.
"Not that I know of," replied Berridge; but he looked up as though it were a new idea; and there was more life in his voice.
"She'd tell you," said Uvo, "if I know her."
"Do people tell each other?" eagerly inquired our friend.
"They certainly ought, and I think Miss Hemming would."
"Ah! it's easy enough for them!" cried the miserable young man. "Women are not liars and traitors because they happen to change their minds. Nobody thinks the worse of them for that; it's their privilege, isn't it? They can break off as many engagements as they like; but if I did such a thing I should never hold up my head again!"
He buried his hot face in his hands, and Delavoye looked at me for the first time. It was a sympathetic look enough; and yet there was something in it, a lift of the eyebrow, a light in the eye, that reminded me of the one point on which we always differed.
"Better hide your head than spoil her life," said he briskly. "But how long have you felt like doing either? I used to look on you as an ideal pair."
"So we were," said poor Berridge, readily. "It's most peculiar!"
I saw a twitch at the corners of Uvo's mouth; but he was not the man for sly glances over a bowed head.
"How long have you been engaged?" he asked.
"Ever since last September."
"You were here then, if I remember?"
"Yes; it was just after my holiday."
"In fact you've been here all the time?"
"Up to these last few weeks."
Delavoye looked round his room as a cross-examining counsel surveys the court to mark a point. I felt it about time to intervene on the other side.
"But you looked perfectly happy," said I, "all the autumn?"
"So I was, God knows!"
"Everything was all right until you went away?"
"Everything."
"Then," said I, "it looks to me like the mere mental effect of influenza, and nothing else."
But that was not the sense of the glance I could not help shooting at Delavoye. And my explanation was no comfort to Guy Berridge; he had thought of it before; but then he had never felt better than the last few days in the country, yet never had he been in such despair.
"I can't go through with it," he groaned in abject unreserve. "It's making my life a hell—a living lie. I don't know how to bear it—from one meeting to the next—I dread them so! Yet I've always a sort of hope that next time everything will suddenly become as it was before Christmas. Talk of forlorn hopes! Each time's worse than the last. I've come straight from her now. I don't know what you must think of me! It's not ten minutes since we said good-night." The big moustache trembled. "I felt a Judas," he whispered—"an absolute Judas!"
"I believe it's all nerves," said Delavoye, but with so little conviction that I loudly echoed the belief.
"But I don't go in for nerves," protested Berridge; "none of us do, in our family. We don't believe in them. We think they're a modern excuse for anything you like to do or say; that's what we think about nerves. I'm not going to start them just to make myself out better than I am. It's my heart that's rotten, not my nerves."
"I admire your attitude," said Delavoye, "but I don't agree with you. It'll all come back to you in the end—everything you think you've lost—and then you'll feel as though you'd awakened from a bad dream."
"But sometimes I do wake up, as it is!" cried Berridge, catching at the idea. "Nearly every morning, when I'm dressing, things look different. I feel my old self again—the luckiest fellow alive—engaged to the sweetest girl! She's always that, you know; don't imagine for one moment that I ever think less of Edith; she always was and would be a million times too good for me. If only she'd see it for herself, and chuck me up of her own accord! I've even tried to tell her what I feel; but she won't meet me half-way; the real truth never seems to enter her head. How to tell her outright I don't know. It would have been easy enough last year, when her people wouldn't let us be properly engaged. But they gave in at Christmas when I had my rise in screw; and now she's got her ring, and given me this one—how on earth can I go and give it her back?"
"May I see?" asked Delavoye, holding out his hand; and I for one was grateful to him for the diversion of the few seconds we spent inspecting an old enamelled ring with a white peacock on a crimson ground. Berridge asked us if we thought it a very peculiar ring, as they all did at Berylstow, and he babbled on about the circumstances of its purchase by his dear, sweet, open-handed Edith. It did him good to talk. A tinge of health returned to his cadaverous cheeks, and for a time his moustache looked less out of keeping and proportion.
But it was the mere reactionary surcease of prolonged pain, and the fit came on again in uglier guise before he left.
"It isn't so much that I don't want to marry her," declared the accountant with startling abruptness, "as the awful thoughts I have as to what may happen if I do. They're too awful to describe, even to you two fellows. Of course nothing could make you think worse of me than you must already, but you'd say I was mad if you could see inside my horrible mind. I don't think she'd be safe; honestly I don't! I feel as if I might do her some injury—or—or violence!"
He was swaying about the room with wild eyes staring from one to the other of us and twitching fingers feeling in his pockets. I got up myself and stood within reach of him, for now I felt certain that love or illness had turned his brain. But it was only a very small scrap of paper that he fished out of his waistcoat pocket, and handed first to Delavoye and then to me.
"I cut it out of a review of such a peculiar poem in my evening paper," said Berridge. "I never read reviews, or poems, but those lines hit me hard."
And I read:
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
"But you don't feel like that!" said Delavoye, laughing at him; and the laughter rang as false as his earlier consolation; but this time I had not the presence of mind to supplement it.
Guy Berridge nodded violently as he held out his hand for the verse. I could see that his eyes had filled with tears. But Uvo rolled the scrap of paper into a pellet, which he flung among the lumps of asbestos glowing in his grate, and took the outstretched hand in his. I never saw man so gentle with another. Hardly a word more passed. But the poor devil squeezed my fingers before Uvo led him out to see him home. And it was many minutes before he returned.
"I have had a time of it!" said he, putting his feet to the gas fire. "Not with that poor old thing, but his people, all three of them! I got him up straight to bed, and then they kept me when he thought I'd gone. Of course they know there's something wrong, and of course they blame the girl; one knew they would. It seems they've never really approved of her; she's a shocking instance of all-round peculiarity. They little know the apple of their own blind eyes—eh, Gilly?"
"I hardly knew him myself," said I. "He must be daft! I never thought to hear a grown man go on like that."
"And such a man!" cried Uvo. "It's not the talk so much as the talker that surprises me; and by the way, how well he talked, for him! He was less of a bore than I've ever known him; there was passion in the fellow, confound him! Red blood in that lump of road metal! He's not only sorry for himself. He's simply heart-broken about the girl. But this maggot of morbid introspection has got into his brain and—how did it get there, Gilly? It's no place for the little brute. What brain is there to feed it? What has he ever done, in all his dull days, to make that harmless mind a breeding-ground for every sort of degenerate idea? In mine they'd grow like mustard and cress. I'd feel just like that if I were engaged to the very nicest girl; the nicer she was, the worse I'd get; but then I'm a degenerate dog in any case. Oh, yes, I am, Gilly. But here's as faithful a hound as ever licked his lady's hand. Where's he got it from? Who's the poisoner?"
"I'm glad you ask," said I. "I was afraid you'd say you knew."
"Meaning my old man of the soil?"
"I made sure you'd put it on him."
Uvo laughed heartily.
"You don't know as much about him as I do, Gilly! He was the last old scoundrel to worry because he didn't love a woman as much as she deserved. It was quite the other way about, I can assure you."
"Yes; but what about those almost murderous inclinations?"
"I thought of them. But they only came on after our good friend had shaken this demoralising dust off his feet. As long as he stuck to Witching Hill he was as sound as a marriage bell! It's dead against my doctrine, Gillon, but I'm delighted to find that you share my disappointment."
"And I to hear you own it is one, Uvo!"
"There's another thing, now we're on the subject," he continued, for we had not been on it for weeks and months. "It seems that over at Hampton Court there's a portrait of my ignoble kinsman, by one Kneller. I only heard of it the other day, and I was rather wondering if you could get away to spin over with me and look him up. It needn't necessarily involve contentious topics, and we might lunch at the Mitre in that window looking down stream. But it ought to be to-morrow, if you could manage it, because the galleries don't open on Friday, and on Saturdays they're always crowded."
I could not manage it very well. I was supposed to spend my day on the Estate, and, though there was little doing thus early in the year, it might be the end of me if my Mr. Muskett came back before his usual time and did not find me at my post. And I was no longer indifferent as to the length of my days at Witching Hill. But I resolved to risk them for the man who had made the place what it was to me—a garden of friends—however otherwise he might people and spoil it for himself.
We started at my luncheon hour, which could not in any case count against me, and quite early in the afternoon we reckoned to be back. It was a very keen bright day, worthier of General January than his chief-of-staff. Ruts and puddles were firmly frozen; our bicycle bells rang out with a pleasing brilliance. In Bushey Park the black chestnuts stamped their filigree tops against a windless radiance. Under the trees a russet carpet still waited for March winds to take it up. The Diana pond was skinned with ice; goddess and golden nymphs caught every scintillation of cold sunlight as we trundled past. In a fine glow we entered the palace and climbed to the grim old galleries.
"Talk about haunted houses!" said Uvo Delavoye. "If our patron sinner takes such a fatherly interest in the humble material at his disposal, what about that gay dog Henry and the good ladies in these apartments? I should be sorry to trust living neck to what's left of the old lady-killer." It was the famous Holbein which had set him off. "But I say, Gilly, here's a far worse face than his. It may be my rude forefather; by Jove, and so it is!"
And he took off his cap with unction to a handsome, sinister creature, in a brown flowing wig and raiment as fine as any on the walls. There was a staggering peacock-blue surtout, lined with silk of an orange scarlet, the wide sleeves turned up with the same; and a creamy cascade of lace fell from the throat over a long cinnamon waistcoat piped with silk; for you could swear to the material at sight, and the colours might have been laid on that week. They lit up the gloomy chamber, and the eyes in the periwigged head lit them up. The dark eyes at my side were not more live and liquid than the painted pair. Not that Uvo's were cynical, voluptuous, or sly; but like these they reminded me of deep waters hidden from the sun. I refrained from comment on a resemblance that went no further. I was glad I alone had seen how far it went.
"Thank goodness those lips and nostrils don't sprout on our branch!" Uvo had put up his eyebrows in a humorous way of his. "We must keep a weather eye open for the evil that they did living after them on Witching Hill! You may well stare at his hands; they probably weren't his at all, but done from a model. I hope the old Turk hadn't quite such a ladylike"
He stopped short, as I knew he would when he saw what I was pointing out to him; for I had not been staring at the effeminate hand affectedly composed on the corner of a table, but at the enamelled ring painted like a miniature on the little finger.
"Good Lord!" cried Delavoye. "That's the very ring we saw last night!"
It was at least a perfect counterfeit; the narrow stem, the high, projecting, oval bezel—the white peacock enamelled on a crimson ground—one and all were there, as the painters of that period loved to put such things in.
"It must be the same, Gilly! There couldn't be two such utter oddities!"
"It looks like it, certainly; but how did Miss Hemming get hold of it?"
"Easily enough; she ferrets out all the old curiosity shops in the district, and didn't Berridge tell us she bought his ring in one? Obviously it's been lying there for the last century and a bit. Bear in mind that this bad old lot wasn't worth a bob towards the end; then you must see the whole thing's so plain, there's only one thing plainer."
"What's that?"
"The entire cause and origin of Guy Berridge's pangs and fears about his engagement. He never had one or the other before Christmas—when he got his ring. They've made his life a Hades ever since, every day of it and every hour of every day, except sometimes in the morning when he was getting up. Why not then? Because he took off his ring when he went to his bath! I'll go so far as to remind you that his only calm and rational moments last night were while you and I were looking at this ring and it was off his finger!"
Delavoye's strong excitement was attracting the attention of the old soldierly attendant near the window, and in a vague way that veteran attracted mine. I glanced past him, out and down into the formal grounds. Yew and cedar seemed unreal to me in the wintry sunlight; almost I wondered whether I was dreaming in my turn, and where on earth I was. It was as though a touch of the fantastic had rested for a moment even on my hard head. But I very soon shook it off, and mocked the vanquished weakness with a laugh.
"Good Lord!" cried Delavoye. "That's the very ring we saw last night!"
"Yes, my dear fellow, that's all very well. But"
"None of your blooming 'buts'!" cried Uvo, with almost delirious levity. "I should have thought this instance was concrete enough even for you. But we'll talk about it at the Mitre and consider what to do."
In that talk I joined, into those considerations I entered, without arguing at all. It did not commit me to a single article of a repugnant creed, but neither on the other hand did it impair the excellence of Delavoye's company at a hurried feast which still stands out in my recollection. I remember the long red wall of Hampton Court as the one warm feature of the hard-bitten landscape. I remember red wine in our glasses, a tinge of colour in the dusky face that leant toward mine, and a wondrous flow of eager talk, delightful as long as one did not take it too seriously. My own attitude I recapture most securely in Uvo's accusation that I smiled and smiled and was a sceptic. It was one of those characteristic remarks that stick for no other reason. Uvo Delavoye was not in those days at all widely read; but he had a large circle of quotations which were not altogether unfamiliar to me, and I eventually realised that he knew his Hamlet almost off by heart.
But as yet poor Berridge's "pangs and fears" was original Delavoye to my ruder culture; and the next time I saw him, on the Friday night, the pangs seemed keener and the fears even more enervating than before. Again he sat with us in Uvo's room; but he was oftener on his legs, striding up and down, muttering and gesticulating as he strode. In the end Uvo took a strong line with him. I was waiting for it. He had conceived the scheme at Hampton Court, and I was curious to see how it would be received.
"This can't go on, Berridge! I'll see you through—to the bitter end!"
Uvo was not an actor, yet here was a magnificent piece of acting, because it was more than half sincere.
"Will you really, Delavoye?" cried the accountant, shrinking a little from his luck.
"Rather! I'm not going to let you go stark mad under my nose. Give me that ring."
"My—her—ring?"
"Of course; it's your engagement ring, isn't it? And it's your duty, to yourself and her and everybody else, to break off that engagement with as little further delay as possible."
"But are you sure, Delavoye?"
"Certain. Give it to me."
"It seems such a frightful thing to do!"
"We'll see about that. Thank you; now you're your own man again."
And now I really did begin to open my eyes; for no sooner had the unfortunate accountant parted with his ring, than his ebbing affections rushed back in a miraculous flood, and he was begging for it again in five minutes, vowing that he had been mad but now was sane, and looking more himself into the bargain. But Delavoye was adamant to these hysterical entreaties. He plied Berridge with his own previous arguments against the marriage, and once at least he struck a responsive chord from those frayed nerves.
"Nobody but yourself," he pointed out, "ever said you didn't love her; but see what love makes of you! Can you dream of marriage in such a state? Is it fair to the girl, until you've really reconsidered the whole matter and learnt your own mind once for all? Could she be happy? Would she be—it was your own suggestion—but are you sure she would be even safe?"
Berridge wrung his hands in new despair; yes, he had forgotten that! Those awful instincts were the one unalterably awful feature. Not that he felt them still; but to recollect them as genuine impulses, or at best as irresistible thoughts, was to freeze his self-distrust into a cureless cancer.
"I was forgetting all that," he moaned. "And yet here in my pocket is the very book those hopeless lines are from. I bought it at Stoneham's this morning. It's the most peculiar poem I ever read. I can't quite make it out. But that bit was clear enough. Only hear how it goes on!"
And in a school-childish singsong, with no expression but that involuntarily imparted by his quavering voice, he read twelve lines aloud—
"Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because"
He shuddered horribly
"The dead so soon grow cold.
"Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die."
"It's all I'm fit for, death!" groaned Guy Berridge, trying to tug the fierce moustache out of his mild face. "The sooner the better, for me! And yet I did love her, God knows I did!" He turned upon Uvo Delavoye in a sudden blaze. "And so I do still—do you hear me? Then give me back my ring, I say, and don't encourage me in this madness—you—you devil!"
"It's all I'm fit for, death!" groaned Guy Berridge, trying to tug the fierce moustache out of his mild face
"Give it him back," I said. But Uvo set his teeth against us both, looking almost what he had just been called—looking abominably like that fine evil gentleman in Hampton Court—and I could stand the whole thing no longer. I rammed my own hand into Delavoye's pocket. And down and away out into the night, like a fiend let loose, went Guy Berridge and the ring with the peacock enamelled in white on a blood-red ground.
I turned again to Delavoye. His shoulders were up to his ears in wry good humour.
"You may be right, Gilly, but now I ought really to sit up with him all night. In any case I shall have it back in the morning, and then neither you nor he shall ever see that unclean bird again!"
But he went so far as to show it to me across my counter, not many minutes after young Berridge had shambled past, with bent head and unshaven cheeks, to catch his usual train next morning.
"I did sit up with him," said Uvo. "We sat up till he dropped off in his chair, and eventually I got him to bed more asleep than awake. But he's as bad as ever again this morning, and he has surrendered the infernal ring this time of his own accord. I'm to break matters to the girl by giving it back to her."
"You're a perfect hero to take it on!"
"I feel much more of a humbug, Gilly."
"When do you tackle her?"
"Never, my dear fellow! Can't you see the point? This white peacock's at the bottom of the whole thing. Neither of them shall ever set eyes on it again, and then you see if they don't marry and live happy ever after!"
"But are you going to throw the thing away?"
"Not if I can help it, Gilly. I'll tell you what I thought of doing. There's a little working jeweller, over at Richmond, who made me quite a good pin out of some heavy old studs that belonged to my father. I'm going to take him this ring to-day and see if he can turn out a duplicate for love or money."
"I'll go with you," I said, "if you can wait till the afternoon."
"We must be gone before Berridge has a chance of getting back," replied Uvo, doubtfully; "otherwise I shall have to begin all over again, because of course he'll come back cured and roaring for his ring. I haven't quite decided what to say to him, but I fancy my imagination will prove equal to the strain."
This seemed to me a rather cynical attitude to take, even in the best of causes, and it certainly was not like Uvo Delavoye. Only too capable, in my opinion, of deceiving himself, he was no impostor, if I knew him, and it was disappointing to see him take so kindly to the part. I preferred not to talk about it on the road to Richmond, which we took on foot in the small hours of the afternoon. A weeping thaw had reduced the frozen ruts to mere mud piping, of that consistency which grips a tyre like teeth. But it was impossible not to compare this heavy tramp with our sparkling spin through Bushey Park. And the hot and cold fits of poor Guy Berridge afforded an inevitable analogy.
"I can't understand him," I was saying. "I can understand a fellow falling in love and even falling out again. But Berridge flies from one extreme to the other like a ball in a hard rally."
"And it's not the way he's built, Gilly! That's what sticks with me. You may be quite sure he's not the first breeder of sinners who began by shivering on the brink of matrimony. It's a desperate plunge to take. I should be terrified myself; but then I'm not one of nature's faithful hounds. If it wasn't for the canine fidelity of this good Berridge, I shouldn't mind his thinking and shrinking like many a better man."
We were cutting off the last corner before Richmond by following the asphalt footpath behind St. Stephen's Church. Here we escaped the mud at last; the moist asphalt shone with a cleanly lustre; and our footsteps threw an echo ahead, between the two long walls, until it mixed with the tramp of approaching feet, and another couple advanced into view. They were man and girl; but I did not at first identify the radiant citizen in the glossy hat, with his arm thrust through the lady's, as Guy Berridge homeward bound with his once beloved. It was a groan from Uvo that made me look again, and next moment the four of us blocked the narrow gangway.
"The very man we were talking about!" cried Berridge without looking at me. His hat had been ironed, his weak chin burnished by a barber's shave, the strong moustache clipped and curled. But a sporadic glow marked either cheek-bone, and he had forgotten to return our salute.
"Yes, Mr. Delavoye!" said Miss Hemming with arch severity. "What have you been doing with my white peacock?"
She had a brown fringe, very crisply curled as a rule; but the damp air had softened and improved it; and perhaps her young gentleman's recovery had carried the good work deeper, for she was a girl who sometimes gave herself airs, but there seemed no room for any in her happy face.
"To tell you the truth," replied Uvo, unblushingly, "I was on my way to show it to a bit of a connoisseur at Richmond." He turned to Berridge, who met his glance eagerly. "That's really why I borrowed it, Guy. I believe it's more valuable than either of you realise."
"Not to me!" cried the accountant readily. "I don't know what I was doing to take it off. I hear it's a most unlucky thing to do."
It was easy to see from whom he had heard it. Miss Hemming said nothing, but looked all the more decided with her mouth quite shut. And Delavoye addressed his apologies to the proper quarter.
"I'm awfully sorry, Miss Hemming! Of course you're quite right; but I hope you'll show it to my man yourselves"
"If you don't mind," said Berridge, holding out his hand with a smile.
But Uvo had broken off of his own accord.
"I think you'll be glad"—he was feeling in all his pockets—"quite glad if you do—" and his voice died away as he began feeling again.
"Lucky I wired to you to meet me at Richmond, wasn't it, Edie? Otherwise we should have been too late," said the accountant densely.
"Perhaps you are!" poor Uvo had to cry outright. "I—the fact is I—can't find it anywhere."
"You may have left it behind," suggested Berridge.
"We can call for it, if you did," said the girl.
There was something in his sudden worry that appealed to their common fund of generosity.
"No, no! I told you why I was going to Richmond. I thought I had it in my ticket pocket. In fact, I know I had; but I went with my sister this morning to get some flowers at Kingston market, and I haven't had it out since. It's been taken from me, and that was where! I wish you'd feel in my pockets for me. I've had them picked—picked of the one thing that wasn't mine, and was of value—and now you'll neither of you ever forgive me, and I don't deserve to be forgiven!"
But they did forgive him, and that handsomely—so manifest was his distress—so great their recovered happiness. It was only I who could not follow their example, when they had gone on their way, and Delavoye and I were hurrying on ours, ostensibly to get the Richmond police to telephone at once to Kingston, as the first of all the energetic steps that we were going to take. For we were still in that asphalt passage, and the couple had scarcely quitted it at the other end, when Delavoye drew off his glove and showed me the missing ring upon his little finger.
I could hardly believe my eyes, or my ears either when he roundly defended his conduct. I need not go into his defence; it was the only one it could have been; but Uvo Delavoye was the only man in England who could and would have made it with a serious face. It was no mere trinket that he had "lifted," but a curse from two innocent heads. That end justified any means, to his wild thinking. But, over and above the ethical question, he had an inherited responsibility in the matter, and had only performed a duty which had been thrust upon him.
"Nor shall they be a bit the worse off," said Uvo warmly. "I still mean to have that duplicate made, off my own bat, and when I foist it on our friends I shall simply say it turned up in the lining of my overcoat."
"Man Uvo," said I, "there are two professions waiting for you; but it would take a judge of both to choose between your fiction and your acting."
"Acting!" he cried. "Why, a blog like Guy Berridge can act when he's put to it; he did just now, and took you in, evidently! It never struck you, I suppose, that he'd wired to me this morning to say nothing to the girl, probably at the same time that he wired to her to meet him? He carried it all off like a born actor just now, and yet you curse me for going and doing likewise to save the pair of them!"
It is always futile to try to slay the bee in another's bonnet; but for once I broke my rule of never arguing with Uvo Delavoye, if I could help it, on the particular point involved. I simply could not help it, on this occasion; and when Uvo lost his temper, and said a great deal more than I would have taken from anybody else, I would not have helped it if I could. So hot had been our interchange that it was at its height when we debouched from St. Stephen's Passage into the open cross-roads beyond.
With one hand he caught the offending urchin, and in the other I was horrified to see his stick, a heavy blackthorn, held in murderous poise
At that unlucky moment, one small suburban Arab, in full flight from another, dashed round the corner and butted into that part of Delavoye which the Egyptian climate had specially demoralised. I saw his dark face writhe with pain and fury. With one hand he caught the offending urchin, and in the other I was horrified to see his stick, a heavy blackthorn, held in murderous poise against the leaden sky, while the child was thrust out at arm's length to receive the blow. I hurled myself between them, and had such difficulty in wresting the blackthorn from the madman's grasp that his hand was bleeding, and something had tinkled on the pavement, when I tore it from him.
Panting, I looked to see what had become of the small boy. He had taken to his heels as though the foul fiend were at them; his late pursuer was now his companion in flight, and I was thankful to find we had the scene to ourselves. Delavoye was pointing to the little thing that had tinkled as it fell, and as he pointed the blood dripped from his hand, and he shuddered like a man recovering from a fit.
I had better admit plainly that the thing was that old ring with the white peacock set in red, and that Uvo Delavoye was once more as I had known him down to that hour.
"Don't touch the beastly thing!" he cried. "It's served me worse than it served poor Berridge! I shall have to think of a fresh lie to tell him—and it won't come so easy now—but I'd rather cut mine off than trust this on another human hand!"
He picked it up between his finger-nails. And there was blood on the white peacock when I saw it next on Richmond Bridge.
"Don't you worry about my hand," said Uvo as he glanced up and down the grey old bridge. "It's only a scratch from the black-thorn spikes, but I'd have given a finger to be shot of this devil!"
A flick of his wrist sent the old ring spinning; we saw it meet its own reflection in the glassy flood, like a salmon-fly beautifully thrown; and more rings came and widened on the waters, till they stirred the mirrored branches of the trees on Richmond Hill.