Henry Seton Merriman

“ He would not have paused to reason that in anything like a struggle he would stand no chance against the sinewy, dark-eyed soldier who stood watching him. For there are moments even in this age of self-suppression when we do not pause to think, when he who cannot swim will leap into deep water to save another.
This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. ”

“ There was a little pause. The two women looked out on to the quiet lawn. They seemed singularly anxious to avoid looking at each other.
“But that might come, dear; I think it would come.”
“I know it would not,” replied Dora quietly. There was a dreaminess in her voice, as if she were repeating something she had heard or said before.
Suddenly Mrs. Glynde rose from her chair, and going towards her daughter, she knelt on the soft carpet, still afraid to look at her face. There was something suggestive and strange in the attitude, for the elder woman was crouching at the feet of the younger. ”

“ Unconsciously Sister Cecilia was doing the very best thing possible for Dora, She was arousing in her the spirit of antagonism—hardening a stricken heart, as it were, by a fresh challenge. She was teaching Dora to fight for what we learn to deem most sacred—namely, the right to monopolise our own thoughts and feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of further details. ”

“ Dora detected the odour of a serious talk in the atmosphere, and she found that something had taken away the awe which such conversations had hitherto inspired. It may have been the season in town, but it was more probably that confidence which comes from the knowledge of the world. There were things in life of which she consciously knew more than her father, and one of these was sorrow. There is nothing that gives so much confidence as the knowledge that the worst possible has happened. It raises one above the petty worries of daily existence. ”

“ Sister Cecilia was just saying the other day that I ought to go away to Brighton or somewhere—that I owed it to Arthur.”
“I don't see why you should not pay it to yourself, whoever you owe it to,” said Dora. “This is an age of going away for changes. Life is like old Martin's trousers—so patched up with changes that the original pattern has disappeared.”
“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Agar, with a vague laugh. In conversation with Dora she invariably felt clumsy and unable to protect herself, like a stout fencer conscious of many vulnerable outlying points. ”

“ Agar had uttered, every silence, every glance had gone to confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law. And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. ”

“ Glynde went on, speaking perhaps out of her own experience, “that now it must seem that there is nothing left. I know that It can never come to you, but something else may—a sort of alleviation; something that is a little stronger than resignation, and many people think that it is love. It is not love; never believe that! But it is surely sent because so many women have—to go through life—without that—which makes life worth living.”
“Hush, dear!” said Dora; and Mrs. Glynde paused as if to collect herself. ”

“ There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the evening shades.
“I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if there were any one else—?”
Silence again.
“I dare say,” added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer to her implied question, “that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in favour of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence.”
“I cannot help feeling,” replied Dora quietly, “that we are all best employed when we mind our own business.” ”

“ It is as if the bottom suddenly fell out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all, a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that moment on the word of an untrustworthy man.
Before morning he had determined to telegraph from Malta to Seymour Michael to meet him at Plymouth on the arrival of the Mahanaddy at that port. ”

“ Dora winced. She was looking through the trees across the peaceful evening river.
“Yes,” she answered gently. “I suppose so.”
Arthur Agar had been brought up in an atmosphere of futile discussion, but he had never wanted anything in vain. There are women—fools—who dare to bring up children thus in a world where wanting in vain is the chief characteristic of daily life. Arthur was ready enough to go on discussing his future thus, but never doubted that it would all come to his desire in the end. He was like a woman in so much as he failed to understand an argument which he could not meet. ”

“ This was the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once—years before—she had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic passion which had as suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circumstances could such a love have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does fail in this respect, her failure is more complete, more miserable than the failure of men, inconstant as they are. ”

“ There was a little pause. Dora glanced at Jem Agar, and something made him say:
“All right. I'll try.”
“Who knows?” said the Rector, with a smile of indulgent affection. “There may be great literary capacity lying dormant in Jem. The worst of a diary is that one may come to look at it in after years, when one finds a very different story has been written from what one intended to write.”
“Oh,” said Dora, lightly skipping over the chasm of gravity, “that is Providence. We must blame Providence for these little contretemps. Some one must be blamed, and Providence obviously does not mind.” ”

“ For when Nature joins her sadness to the sad libretto of life she usually breaks a heart or two. Fortunately for us we mostly act our tragedies in the wrong scenery—the scenery that was painted for a comedy.
“I don't understand it,” said the girl at length.
“I suppose it is in order to save money for Arthur.”
“If I don't, go,” replied Jem, “it will be a question of letting Stagholme.”
Dora knew of the ancient horror of such a necessity, handed down from one Agar to another, like a family tradition. Moreover, women seem to respect men who have some simple creed and hold to it simply. ”

“ Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?”
“Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you,” said the well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally misunderstood.
“I have no doubt of that,” returned Dora, with an equanimity which was again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. “But in future you will be consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on my behalf at all.”
“As you will, dear; as you will,” in the hopeless tone of age, experience, and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush headlong down the hill. ”

“ True, it was Dora, whom he held apart from the rest of her sex; but still he was left wondering. He felt as if he had been found walking in a holy place with shoes upon his feet—those gross shoes of Self with which most of us tramp through the world, not heeding where we tread or what we crush.
One of the hardest things we have to bear is the helpless standing by while one dear to us must suffer. When Mrs. Glynde turned round and came towards her husband she had become an old woman. ”

“ Seymour Michael was puzzled. He was not afraid of this boy. He knew himself to be stronger—capable of over-mastering him entirely. But for the first time in his life he felt awkward and ill at ease.
Arthur Agar only wanted this man to go. He felt that he could forego the news which he must undoubtedly be in a position to give if only he could be rid of this hated presence. At moments the loathing came to him again, like a cold hand laid upon his heart.
“Were you with him,” inquired the undergraduate, “at the time of his—death?” ”

“ A man with an unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
It was Seymour Michael who spoke first. True to his mixed blood, he sought to make himself safe.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but Edith Mazerod did not mention your name; may I ask it?”
“Dora Glynde!”
She saw him start. She saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in another man she would have set down to fear. ”

“ But Anna Agar's revenge began from that moment. To a man of his nature, in whose veins ran the taint of a semi-superstitious Oriental blood, there was a nameless terror in the hatred of a human being, however helpless. Surely the hell of the coward will be a twilight land of vague shadowy dangers ever approaching and receding.
In such a land Seymour Michael moved for some months, until he returned to India; and there, in the daily round of a new life, he gradually learnt to shake off the past. The world is very large despite chance meetings. ”

“ His vengeance was to allow her to rejoice—almost openly, as she did—in the stroke of fortune by which her own son, Arthur, had become possessed of Stagholme. He knew the woman well enough to foresee that in a hundred ways she would heap up ignominy, meanness, deception, which would crumble in one vast wreck about her head when Jem Agar returned.
It was a vengeance worthy of the man, and spiteful enough to be fully comprehended by its victim. But, like others handling petards, Seymour Michael grew somewhat careless, and forgot that the wrong man is sometimes hoist. ”

“ Truly women are strange—one can never tell how a thing will present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all—that minute particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully absorbed by the exhausted blotting-paper.
“Sunday, egad!” he muttered, leaning his arms on the cunning table, and gazing out across the pine-clad valley that lay below him in a deep blue haze. ”

“ Jem Agar crossed the room and stood in front of her. Dora, from the background, was pleading with her eyes for this woman. There were the makings of a very hard man in James Edward Makerstone Agar, and seven years of the grimmest soldiering of modern days had done nothing to soften him. He was strictly just; but it is not justice that women want. To all men there comes a time when they recognise the fact that all their time and all their energies are required for the taking care of one woman, and that all the rest must take care of themselves. ”

“ Even at the time of hearing them, spoken in that voice which did not seem to belong to Anna Hethbridge at all, he turned pale. For all the hatred that burnt within her like a fire smouldered in the deliberate tones of her voice. Hatred and love can teach us more in a moment than the experience of a lifetime; for through either of them we see ourselves face to face. This hatred made Anna Agar in twenty-four hours, and the woman thus created went through a lifetime unchanged. ”