Double Harness

He sat down opposite to her, and stared gloomily at the fire. Christine rather wondered that he did not turn to abuse of himself for having got into the bog, but she supposed that the speculative temper, which acknowledges only bad luck and never bad judgment, saved him from that.

He looked at her covertly once or twice; she saw, but pretended not to, and waited to hear what was in his mind: something, clearly, was there.

"No, I don't know where to turn--and I shall be hammered. After thirty years! and my father forty years before me! I never though of its coming to this." After a long pause he added: "I want another fifteen thousand, and I don't know where to turn." He smoked hard for a minute, then flung his cigar peevishly into the fire.

"I do wish I could help you, John!" she sighed.

"I'm afraid you can't, old lady." Again he hesitated. "Unless----" He broke off again.

Christine had some difficulty in keeping her nerves under control. When he spoke again it was abruptly, as though with a wrench.

"I say, do you ever see Caylesham now?"

A very slight, almost imperceptible, start ran over her.

"Lord Caylesham! Oh, I meet him about sometimes. He's at the Raymores'

now and then--and at other places of course."

"He never comes here now, does he?"

"Very seldom: to a party now and then." She answered without apparent embarra.s.sment, but her eyes were very sharply on the watch; she was on guard against the next blow.

"He was a good chap, and very fond of us. Lord, we had some fine old times with Caylesham!" He rose now and stood with his back to the fire.

"He must be devilish rich since he came into the property."

He looked at her inquiringly. She said nothing.

"He's a good chap too. I don't think he'd let a friend go to the wall.

What do you think? He was as much your friend as mine, you know."

"You'd ask him, John? Oh, I shouldn't do that!"

"Why not? He's got plenty."

"We see so little of him now; and it's such a lot to ask."

"It's not such a lot to him; and it's only accidental that we haven't met lately." He looked at her angrily. "You don't realise what the devil of a mess we're in. We've no choice, I tell you, but to get it from somewhere; and there's n.o.body else I know to ask. Why, he'll get his money back again,

Her screen was before her face now, so that he saw no more than her brow.

"I want you to go and ask him, Christine. That's what you can do for me.

You said you wanted to help. Well, go and ask Caylesham to lend me the money."

"I can't do that, John."

"Why not? Why can't you?"

"I should hate your asking him, and I simply couldn't ask him myself."

"Why do you hate my asking him? You said nothing against my asking Grantley, and we haven't known him any better."

She had no answer to that ready. The thrust was awkward.

"Anyhow I couldn't ask him--I really couldn't. Don't press me to do that. If you must ask him, do it yourself. Why should I do it?"

"Why, because he's more likely to give it to you."

"But that's--that's so unfair. To send a woman because it's harder to refuse her! Oh, that isn't fair, John!"

"Fair! Good heavens, can't you understand how we're situated? It's ruin if we don't get it--and I'm d.a.m.ned if I'll live to see it! There!"

She saw his pa.s.sion; his words confirmed her secret fear. She saw, too, how in the stress of danger he would not stand on scruples or be baulked by questions of taste or of social propriety. He saw possible salvation, and jumped at any path to it; and the responsibility of refusing to tread the path he put on her, with all it might mean.

"If I went and he said 'No,' you couldn't go afterwards. But you can go first, and you must go."

Christine raised her head and shook it.

"I can't go," she said.

"Why not? You're infernally odd about it! Why can't you go? Is it anything about Caylesham in particular?"

"No, no, nothing--nothing like that; but I--I hate to go."

"You must do it for me. I don't understand why you hate it so much as all that."

He was regarding her with an air at once angry and inquisitive. She dared hide her face no longer. She had to look at him calmly and steadily--with distress perhaps, but at all costs without fear or confusion.

"My good name depends on it, and all we have in the world; and--by G.o.d, yes!--my life too, if you like!" he exclaimed in rising pa.s.sion. "You shall go! No, no! I don't mean that--I don't want to be rough! But, for heaven's sake--if you've ever cared about me, old woman--for heaven's sake, go!"

She hesitated still, and at this his pa.s.sing touch of tenderness vanished; but it had moved her, and it worked with the fear that was on her.

"If you've a special reason, tell it me," he urged impatiently: "a special reason against asking Caylesham; somebody we must ask."

"I have no special reason against asking Lord Caylesham," she answered steadily.

"Then you'll go?"

A last struggle kept her silent a moment. Then she answered in a low voice:

"Yes, I'll go."

"There's a brave little woman!" he cried delightedly, and bent down as if he would kiss her; but she had slipped her screen up nearly to her eyes again, and seemed so unconscious of his purpose that he abandoned it. His spirits rose in a moment, as his sanguine mind, catching hold of the bare chance, twisted it into a good chance--almost into a certainty.

"Gad, I believe he'll give it you! You'll put it in such a fetching way.

Oh, his money's safe enough, of course! But--well, you'll make him see that better than I could. He liked you so much, you know. By Jove, I'm sure he'll do it for you, you know!"

Christine's pain-stricken eyes alone were visible above the screen.

Underneath it her lips were bent in an involuntary smile of most mocking bitterness. Conscience had not been at her without a purpose. At her husband's bidding she must go and ask Caylesham for money. She bowed to conscience now.