Ruby M. Ayres

"I fought with my friend last night.

And it was not with honest swords;

No steel sprang out to gleam and bite

We fought with poor, mean words."

THERE was a moment's silence, then Feathers went forward. The riotous blood in his veins had quieted and he felt a little cold and breathless.

"Hullo!" he said.

Chris looked up.

"Hullo! I thought I'd wait till you came in as they said you'd only just gone out."

"Yes . . . yes . . . I went down to the end of the road, that's all."

He poured out two whiskies with a hand that shook badly, and pushed one across to Chris.

"Have a drink?"

Chris tasted it and made a wry face.

"Lord! That's a strong dose," he said. He added more soda to it, but Feathers drained his at a gulp.

"Well, how goes it?" he asked. He sat down on the other side of the table, so that his face was out of the light. The room to him seemed filled with Marie's presence. It was so real that he wondered Chris did not guess she had been here.

Chris stood up, his shoulders against the mantelshelf.

His handsome eyes met his friend's with haggard pain.

"I've got something to tell you," he said. "I'm telling you because you've always been—been my best friend."

There was a little silence, then:

"Yes," said Feathers hoarsely. Chris told his story abruptly.

"Mrs. Heriot went to our place two days ago. You know Miss Webber 267 and I were golfing with them the day before."

"Yes."

Chris flushed and his eyes wavered.

"A damnable incident happened when we were down there—Miss Webber . . ." He could not go on.

Feathers nodded.

"I know. Don't trouble to explain. I could see it in Scotland. She thinks she is in love with you—is that it? and told you so? Mrs. Heriot overheard, or saw, and told . . . your wife . . . Go on."

Chris looked relieved.

"That's it, more or less. I swear to you that there was nothing in it on my side at all! I've never given the girl a thought, beyond to play golf with her; you know that!"

"Yes, go on!" There was a long silence.

"Marie won't believe me——" Chris said then brokenly. "She won't even let me explain. Miss Webber's brother died unexpectedly, and I took her back home. I only went because Marie and Aunt Madge both seemed to think I ought to. I never spoke a dozen words to the wretched girl the whole way; I didn't want to go with her. I stayed at an inn in Chester that night—her home is in Chester—and came back as soon as I could the next morning, and this is what I got! . . ." He dropped back into his chair despairingly. "She's done with me," he said hoarsely.

Feathers stared at his friend with strained eyes, and after a moment Chris started up once more.

"I'll kill that Heriot woman if I ever see her again," he broke out passionately. "I loathe women! They're cruel devils to each other! Why did she want to go and hurt Marie Celeste like that? We were getting on better together—things would have been all right, and then that hell-cat must needs come in and ruin everything . . ." His voice was choked and broken.

"She said she hated me—Marie said so," he stumbled on. "She looked as if she meant it, too . . . My God, you don't know what it was like, to have to stand there and listen! I think I went mad—I 268 know I hurt her, but I didn't know what I was doing . . . I'd give my soul to undo the past three months and start again. It's all been my fault!" He brought his clenched fist down on the table with a crash. "Blind, insensate fool that I am! I never knew that she was more to me than anything on earth . . ."

Feathers closed his eyes, and for a moment there was absolute silence. He had never heard Chris speak with such passionate despair before; had not believed him to be capable of so much feeling, and it drove home to him with brutal force the terrible tragedy upon the brink of which they now stood.

It was not merely his own happiness, or Marie's that was involved, but that of his friend as well, for Feathers knew with unerring instinct that Chris had only spoken the simple truth when he said that he loved his wife. He had been slow to realize it perhaps, but now it had come Feathers knew him sufficiently well to know that it would be deep and lasting.

He braced himself for the thing which he knew was yet to come, and a terrible feeling of enmity rose in his heart against this friend of his, who had never discovered that he loved Marie until the fact that he stood in great danger of losing her, had been driven home to him.

Half an hour ago Feathers had told himself that he must give her up, but now he had forgotten that, and all his love and strength rose in defense of her. She was his—he would hold her against all the world.

Chris was pacing the room agitatedly, and after a moment he broke out again:

"That isn't all—it isn't the worst—" he swung round looking at Feathers with haggard eyes. "How would you feel," he demanded hoarsely, "if your own wife told you that she cared for another man?"

There was a poignant silence, and as their eyes held one another, the realization came home to Feathers with overwhelming shock, that in spite of everything he had heard, in spite of what Marie herself had told him, Chris still trusted him and believed in him. He tried to find his voice, but it seemed to have deserted him, and as he 269 cast desperately about for words, Chris turned away and flung himself down into a chair, his face buried in his hands.

There was a long silence, then he said in a dreary, muffled voice:

"It's only what I deserve, I know—but . . ." He could not go on. He was up again, pacing the room in a frenzy of impotence.

Feathers watched him for a moment with beaten eyes, then he said jerkily:

"You didn't—didn't care for her when you were married, Chris? I thought—wasn't it—just to get the money?"

Chris turned his haggard face.

"To get what money?" he asked vaguely.

Feathers tried to explain.

"I was told—I understood—that the money was left to your wife—to your wife alone I mean, unless she consented to marry you, and that then . . . then you divided it."

Chris laughed mirthlessly.

"Good lord, it was the other way about," he said in a hard voice. "Her father was always a crank, and he never forgave her for not being a boy—that was why he adopted me. He left every farthing to me—and I knew how proud she was—knew she'd never take a shilling if she was told the truth about the will, so . . . so I married her to settle it! It seemed the best way out at the time," he added hopelessly. "I thought I was being rather clever . . . I know now what a damned fool I was."

Feathers got up slowly and, walking across to Chris, put his hands heavily on his shoulders, looking at him with desperate eyes.

"Is that the truth?" he asked hoarsely. "Will you swear that it's the truth?"

Chris stared at him in blank amazement.

"What on earth do you mean? Of course it's the truth. Ask Miss Chester if you don't believe me—she's known about it all along. It was she who first suggested keeping it from Marie . . . Here, I 270 say, what's the matter?"

"Nothing . . . I wish I'd known before, that's all." He laughed grimly. "Aston Knight told me a very different yarn," he broke out with violence after a moment. "He said that the money had been left to your wife, which was why you had married her—and I believed him! My God, what a fool!"

Chris was watching him with angry mystification.

"I don't know what you're driving at," he said shortly. "But I'm much obliged to you for the compliment, I'm sure. Marie hadn't a farthing when I married her—but I settled half of everything on her on our wedding day."

Feathers turned his white face.

"Why didn't you tell her the truth?" he asked with difficulty. "No good ever comes of lying and subterfuge and deceit . . ." He laughed grimly at his own words! He was a fine one to get up in the pulpit and preach when in another twenty-four hours he would have broken every code of honor and friendship.

It was trembling on his lips to tell Chris the whole truth, to keep back nothing from that first moment in the hotel lounge, when his too-ready tongue had started all the mischief.

But for him and his blundering, Chris and his wife would have been happy enough now. He seemed to see it all as plainly as if it were a picture unraveled before his eyes.

Marie had turned against Chris from the moment when she had overheard what he had said to Atkins. All her pride had been up in arms and had gone on increasing from that day until to-night, when in her desperation and unhappiness she had come to him.

"I don't know that it matters about not telling her," Chris said wretchedly. "She told me afterwards that she had known all the time, though God alone knows who told her."

There was a little silence; then:

"I did," said Feathers quietly.

271 "You!" The blood rushed to Chris' face. He swung round and stared at his friend with hot eyes.

"You!" he said again.

"Yes; I was talking to Atkins in the lounge the first night you were married. I repeated to him what Aston Knight had told me—that you had married your wife for her money . . . and she overheard."

He looked at Chris' incredulous face.

"It's the truth," he said. "I never knew until weeks afterwards that she had overheard, until she told me herself, and even then I believed that I had only repeated what was true."

He smiled painfully. "Go on, curse me to all eternity; I deserve it; I've been at the bottom of all the mischief."

There was a terrible silence. Chris understood well enough now without further explanations, and for a moment he saw the world red. He broke out savagely:

"Then it's you I've got to thank! You, with your damned humbugging pretense of friendship trying to steal my wife——"

He raised his fist in blind passion, and Feathers broke out in an agony:

"Chris! for God's sake . . ."

There was something so tragic in his ugly face, that Chris' hand fell limply, and he turned away, leaning his arms on the mantelshelf and hiding his face.

"It's absurd to say I'm sorry," Feathers said after a moment dully. "One can't find adequate words for—for a thing like this . . . There's only one reparation I can make, Chris . . . to tell—your wife."

Chris did not answer, and he went on. "I should like to feel that you still trust me sufficiently to—to allow me to tell her."

Chris flung up his head.

"Nothing will do any good. She hates the sight of me—and I don't wonder—if that is what she thought." There was something like a sob in his voice, and Feathers winced.

The delirium of that hour with Marie seemed like a dream. What madness had possessed him? Her love had been given to Chris and no 272 one else. It was only in her unhappiness that she had turned to him, as a sick child will often turn to a stranger away from the one it really loves best in all the world.

The thought hurt unbearably, but he knew it was the truth—knew that his only reparation was to give her back to Chris.

Chris turned suddenly, his young face aged by pain and despair.

"She told me that she hated me." he said again. It seemed as if the fact was engraved on his heart and mind, to the exclusion of everything else. He broke off, breathing hard, as if he were choking. "She told me that she loved you—you who ruined my happiness and set her against me . . . Curse you, I say! Curse you to all eternity . . ."

"Chris, for God's sake!"

Chris turned away. He was shaking with passion, and for a long time neither of them spoke.

Then Feathers got up from the table and laid a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Marie has never loved anyone but you," he said slowly. "She's been desperately unhappy, and when—when a woman is unhappy, she turns to the first friend who will listen to her! . . . Your wife turned to me . . . If I had been any other man, she would have done just the same. Will you believe me when I tell you that I know things are going to be all right? . . . Chris, for God's sake, believe me."

Chris shook his hand off impatiently.

"But when? How? You can't take away hatred with words." he said. "And she meant what she said . . . She's never looked at me like that in her life before . . ."

Feathers walked over to the window and looked out into the darkness. The stars seemed to be watching him with sympathetic eyes—the stars that were as far removed from him as was the woman he loved.

Chris spoke again presently:

"I'll get off. If I talk till Doomsday nothing can be done." He turned to the door. "Good-night." he said gruffly.

273 Feathers held out his hand, but Chris would not see it, and he went out, shutting the door hard behind him.

Feathers stood at the window and listened to his steps dying away down the street. It was the end of their friendship, he knew, and the knowledge cut him to the heart.

He sat up all night, trying to make some sort of order out of his tangled thoughts. He would never see Marie again! He would write to her and explain.

But he knew she would be unconvinced by a letter, and, after all, what could he say that he would give her back her lost happiness, poor child!

He waited till ten o'clock the following morning and rang Chris on the 'phone.

The servant who answered it said that Mr. Lawless had gone out. "And—Mrs. Lawless?" Feathers asked.

"She has gone out, too—for the day," she said.

"With—with her husband?"

"Oh, no, sir!"

The surprise in the girl's voice was like a knife in his heart. So the servants knew how seldom Chris and his wife went about together; and it was all his doing!

Marie had gone out for the day! He knew only too well what that meant—that she had already left home forever, to join her life with his.

It was impossible to stop her now. He would have to go and meet her, as they had arranged last night.

He had told her to meet him at a little inn on the Oxford road. He had arranged to drive the car down in the evening and take her away!

Last night it had sounded like sense! But this morning . . .

Madness!—utter madness!

Twice during the morning he rang Chris again, but each time he was still out, and finally Feathers wrote to him.

He sent the note by a boy who lived in the house, and went round to the garage to fetch his car.

If Marie had gone to the inn earlier than he had told her, there was still time to tell her the truth and take her back home.

274 It was afternoon then; an unusually hot day for September, with a curiously humid feeling in the air.

Feathers drove like a man in a dream. Everything seemed so unreal and impossible. He wondered what the end of it all would be.

It was only four o'clock when he reached the inn, but Marie was not there. He supposed he could hardly have expected her to be, seeing that he had not told her to meet him until eight that evening.

He remembered how he had calculated that it would be dark and that they could make their escape under cover of the friendly night. His whole soul writhed now as he thought of it. The shame of what he had done overwhelmed him.

He never knew how he got through the long hours. He could not keep still for a moment. In and out he wandered, looking up and down the long road by which she must come.

It seemed to get dark early. The river flowed close to the inn, and a curious gray mist rose from the fields and the water till almost a fog lay over the countryside.

Feathers suffered the tortures of the damned. His heart was sick with mingled dread and longing. One moment he was praying that she would not come, that at the last moment she would change her mind and not dare to face it, and the next his soul was in agony lest he should never see her again. A thousand times he went into the quiet little inn parlor and looked at the clock. It was five minutes to eight, and he had told Chris to be there at half-past seven! It had seemed the only way! If Chris came, between them they could tell her the whole story, but the clock struck the hour and there was no sign of Chris, no sign of Marie.

Feathers went to the door again. He was shaking as if with ague and his lips were like ice.

Had anything happened to her? He thought he should go mad with dread. He paced back into the inn again. Perhaps the clock was wrong—perhaps . . .

"Mr. Dakers," said a timid voice, and he turned slowly to find Marie beside him.

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