“There’s always,” she took him up, “somebody or other to go for?”
He considered her, while he smoked, with more confidence; as if she might after all understand. “The enemy, yes--everywhere in force. I went for _him_: misery and ignorance and vice--injustice and privilege and wrong. Such as you see me----”
“You’re a rabid reformer?”--she understood beautifully. “I wish we had you at Missoura Top!”
He literally, for a moment, in the light of her beauty and familiarity, appeared to measure his possible use there; then, looking round him again, announced with a sigh that, predicament for predicament, his own would do. “I fear my work is nearer home. I hope,” he continued, “since you’re so good as to seem to care, to perform a part of that work in the next House of Commons. My electors have wanted me----”
“And you’ve wanted _them_,” she lucidly put in, “and that has been why you couldn’t come down.”
“Yes, for all this last time. And before that, from my childhood up, there was another reason.” He took a few steps away and brought it out as rather a shabby one. “A family feud.”
She proved to be quite delighted with it. “Oh, I’m so glad--I _hoped_ I’d strike a ‘feud’! That rounds it off, and spices it up, and, for the heartbreak with which I take leave of you, just neatly completes the fracture!” Her reference to her going seemed suddenly, on this, to bring her back to a sense of proportion and propriety, and she glanced about once more for some wrap or reticule. This, in turn, however, was another recall. “Must I really wait--to go up?”
He had watched her movement, had changed colour, had shifted his place, had tossed away, plainly unwitting, a cigarette but half smoked; and now he stood in her path to the staircase as if, still unsatisfied, he abruptly sought a way to turn the tables. “Only till you tell me this: if you absolutely meant, awhile ago, that this old thing is so precious.”
She met his doubt with amazement and his density with compassion. “Do you literally need I should _say_ it? Can you stand here and not feel it?” If he had the misfortune of bandaged eyes, she could at least rejoice in her own vision, which grew intenser with her having to speak for it. She spoke as with a new rush of her impression. “It’s a place to love----” Yet to say the whole thing was not easy.
“To love----?” he impatiently insisted.
“Well, as you’d love a person!” If that was saying the whole thing, saying the whole thing could only be to go. A sound from the “party up” came down at that moment, and she took it so clearly as a call that, for a sign of separation, she passed straight to the stairs. “Good-bye!”
The young man let her reach the foot, but then, though the greatest width of the hall now divided them, spoke, anxiously and nervously, as if the point she had just made brought them still more together. “I think I ‘feel’ it, you know; but it’s simply you--your presence, as I may say, and the remarkable way you put it--that make me. I’m afraid that in your absence----” He struck a match to smoke again.
It gave her time apparently to make out something to pause for. “In my absence?”
He lit his cigarette. “I may come back----”
“Come back?” she took him almost sharply up. “I should like to see you _not_!”
He smoked a moment. “I mean to my old idea----”
She had quite turned round on him now. “Your old idea----?”
He faced her over the width still between them. “Well--that one _could_ give it up.”
Her stare, at this, fairly filled the space. “Give up Covering? How in the world--or why?”
“Because I can’t afford to keep it.”
It brought her straight back, but only half-way: she pulled up short as at a flash. “Can’t you let it?”
Again he smoked before answering. “Let it to _you_?”
She gave a laugh, and her laugh brought her nearer. “I’d take it in a minute!”
Clement Yule remained grave. “I shouldn’t have the face to charge you a rent that would make it worth one’s while, and I think even you, dear lady”--his voice just trembled as he risked that address--“wouldn’t have the face to offer me one.” He paused, but something in his aspect and manner checked in her now any impulse to read his meaning too soon. “My lovely inheritance is Dead Sea fruit. It’s mortgaged for all it’s worth and I haven’t the means to pay the interest. If by a miracle I could scrape the money together, it would leave me without a penny to live on.” He puffed his cigarette profusely. “So if I find the old home at last--I lose it by the same luck!”
Mrs. Gracedew had hung upon his words, and she seemed still to wait, in visible horror, for something that would improve on them. But when she had to take them for his last, “I never heard of anything so awful!” she broke out. “Do you mean to say you can’t arrange----?”
“Oh, yes,” he promptly replied, “an arrangement--if that be the name to give it--has been definitely proposed to me.”
“What’s the matter, then?”--she had dropped into relief. “For heaven’s sake, you poor thing, definitely accept it!”
He laughed, though with little joy, at her sweet simplifications. “I’ve made up my mind in the last quarter of an hour that I can’t. It’s such a peculiar case.”
Mrs. Gracedew frankly wondered; her bias was clearly sceptical. “_How_ peculiar----?”
He found the measure difficult to give. “Well--more peculiar than most cases.”
Still she was not satisfied. “More peculiar than mine?”
“Than yours?”--Clement Yule knew nothing about that.
Something, at this, in his tone, his face--it might have been his “British” density--seemed to pull her up. “I forgot--you don’t know mine. No matter. What _is_ yours?”
He took a few steps in thought. “Well, the fact that I’m asked to change.”
“To change what?”
He wondered how he could put it; then at last, on his own side, simplified. “My attitude.”
“Is that all?”--she was relieved again. “Well, you’re not a statue.”
“No, I’m not a statue; but on the other hand, don’t you see? I’m not a windmill.” There was good-humour, none the less, in his rigour. “The mortgages I speak of have all found their way, like gregarious silly sheep, into the hands of one person--a devouring wolf, a very rich, a very sharp man of money. He holds me in this manner at his mercy. He consents to make things comfortable for me, but he requires that, in return, I shall do something for him that--don’t you know?--rather sticks in my crop.”
It appeared on this light showing to stick for a moment even in Mrs. Gracedew’s. “Do you mean something wrong?”
He had not a moment’s hesitation. “Exceedingly so!”
She turned it over as if pricing a Greek Aldus. “Anything immoral?”
“Yes--I may literally call it immoral.”
She courted, however, frankly enough, the strict truth. “Too bad to tell?”
He indulged in another pensive fidget, then left her to judge. “He wants me to give up----” Yet again he faltered.
“To give up what?” What could it be, she appeared to ask, that was barely nameable?
He quite blushed to her indeed as he came to the point. “My fundamental views.”
She was disappointed--she had waited for more. “Nothing but _them_?”
He met her with astonishment. “Surely they’re quite enough, when one has unfortunately”--he rather ruefully smiled--“so very many!”
She laughed aloud; this was frankly so odd a plea. “Well, _I’ve_ a neat collection too, but I’d ‘swap,’ as they say in the West, the whole set----!” She looked about the hall for something of equivalent price; after which she pointed, as it caught her eye, to the great cave of the fireplace. “I’d take _that_ set!”
The young man scarcely followed. “The fire-irons?”
“For the whole fundamental lot!” She gazed with real yearning at the antique group. “_They’re_ three hundred years old. Do you mean to tell me your wretched ‘views’----?”
“Have anything like that age? No, thank God,” Clement Yule laughed, “my views--wretched as you please!--are quite in their prime! They’re a hungry little family that has got to be fed. They keep me awake at night.”
“Then you must make up your sleep!” Her impatience grew with her interest. “Listen to _me_!”
“That would scarce be the way!” he returned. But he added more sincerely: “You must surely see a fellow can’t chuck his politics.”
“‘Chuck’ them----?”
“Well--sacrifice them.”
“I’d sacrifice mine,” she cried, “for that old fire-back with your arms!” He glanced at the object in question, but with such a want of intelligence that she visibly resented it. “See how it has stood!”
“See how _I’ve_ stood!” he answered with spirit. “I’ve glowed with a hotter fire than anything in any chimney, and the warmth and light I diffuse have attracted no little attention. How can I consent to reduce them to the state of that desolate hearth?”
His companion, freshly struck with the fine details of the desolation, had walked over to the chimney-corner, where, lost in her deeper impression, she lingered and observed. At last she turned away with her impatience controlled. “It’s magnificent!”
“The fire-back?”
“Everything--everywhere. I don’t understand your haggling.”
He hesitated. “That’s because you’re ignorant.” Then seeing in the light of her eye that he had applied to her the word in the language she least liked, he hastened to attenuate. “I mean of what’s behind my reserves.”