Part 95

"That must have proved a disappointment, I'm afraid. The romance was better than the hero."

"You may say romance!" she conceded heartily. "To be a lord and----!" She leant forward. "I say, how do you get your living now?"

"Gone into the building-trade," he answered.

"You surprise me!" The observation was evidently meant to be extremely civil. "But there, it isn't so much what your job is as having some job. That's what I say."

"I wish I always said--and thought--things as sensible;" and he took courage to offer her another glass of lager. She accepted with a slight recrudescence of primness; but her eyes did not leave him now. "I never did!" he heard her murmur as she raised her glass. "Well, here's luck to you, sir! (He had been a lord even if he were now a builder). You did the straight thing in the end."

"What?" asked Harry, a little startled.

"Well, some did say as you'd known it all along. Oh, I don't say so; some did."

Harry began to laugh. "It doesn't matter, does it, if I did the straight thing in the end?"

"I'm sure as I shouldn't blame you if you had been a bit tempted. I know what that is! Well, sir, I'll say good-evening."

"Good-evening, miss, and thank you very much," said Harry, rising as she rose. His manner had its old touch of lordliness. His friends criticised that sometimes; this young lady evidently approved.

"You've no cause to thank me," said she, with an admiring look.

"Yes, I have. As it happened, I believe I wanted somebody to remind me that I had done the straight thing in the end, and I'm much obliged to you for doing it."

"Well, I shall have something to tell the girls!" she said again in wondering tones, as she nodded to him and turned slowly away.

Harry was comforted. The stress of his pain was past. He sat on over his simple meal in a leisurely comfortable fashion. He was happy in the fact that his enemy had at least nothing with which she could reproach him, that he had no reason for not holding his head erect before her. And the girl's philosophy had been good. He had a job, and that was the great thing in this world. He felt confident that the struggle was won now, and that it would never have to be fought again in so severe a fashion. His self-respect was intact; if he had been beaten, he would never have forgiven himself.

He regained his rooms. A letter lay waiting for him on the table. He opened it and found that it was from Mina Zabriska.

"We are back here," she wrote. "I am staying at Blent till my uncle comes down. I must write and say good-by to you. I dare say we shall never meet again, or merely by chance. I am very unhappy about it all, but with two people like Cecily and you nothing else could have happened. I see that now, and I'm not going to try to interfere any more. I shan't ask you to forgive me for interfering, because you've made the result quite enough punishment for anything I did wrong. And now Cecily goes about looking just like you--hard and proud and grim; and she's begun to move things about and alter arrangements at Blent. That's what brings it home to me most of all. ('And to me,' interposed Harry as he read.) If I was the sort of woman you think me, I should go on writing to you. But I shan't write again. I am going to stay at Merrion through the winter, and since you won't come here, this is the last of me for a long time anyhow. Oh, you Tristrams! Good-by,

MINA ZABRISKA."

"Poor little Imp!" said Harry. "She's a very good sort; and she seems about right. It's the end of everything." He paused and looked round. "Except of these rooms--and my work--and, well, life at large, you know!" He laughed in the sudden realization of how much was left after there was an end of all--life to be lived, work to be done, enjoyments to be won. He could know this, although he could hardly yet feel it in any very genuine fashion. He could project his mind forward to a future appreciation of what he could not at the moment relish; and he saw that life would be full and rich with him, even although there were an end of all. "But I don't believe," he said to himself, slowly smiling, "that I should ever have come to understand that or to--to fulfil it unless I had--what did the girl say?--done the straight thing in the end, and come out of Blent. Well, old Blent, good-by!" He crumpled up Mina's letter, and flung it into the grate.

The maid-servant opened the door. "Two gentlemen to see you, sir," she said.

"Oh, say I'm busy----" he began.

"We must see you, please," insisted Mr Jenkinson Neeld, with unusual firmness. He turned to the man with him, saying: "Here is Mr Tristram, Colonel Edge."

XXV

THERE'S THE LADY TOO!

There was nothing very remarkable about Colonel Wilmot Edge. He was a slightly built, trim man, but his trimness was not distinctively military. He might have been anything, save that just now the tan on his face witnessed to an out-of-door life. His manner was cold, his method of speech leisurely and methodical. At first sight Harry saw nothing in him to modify the belief in which he had grown up--that the Edges were an unattractive race, unable to appreciate Tristrams, much less worthy to mate with them. He gave the Colonel a chair rather grudgingly, and turned to old Mr Neeld for an explanation of the visit.

Neeld had fussed himself into a seat already, and had drawn some sheets of paper covered with type-writing from his pocket. He spread them out, smoothed them down, cleared his throat, and answered Harry's look by a glance at Edge. Mr Neeld was in a fidget, a fidget of importance and expectancy.

"You will know," said Edge gravely, "that no ordinary matter has led me to call on you, Mr Tristram. However little we may be responsible for the past, we have to recognize it. I should not, under ordinary circumstances, have sought your acquaintance. You must consider this interview purely as one of a business kind. I have just returned to England. For two months I have been out of the way of receiving letters or newspapers. I went to the Imperium Club to-night--I arrived only this morning--and dined in Neeld's company. As it chanced, we spoke of you, and I learnt what has happened since I left England. I have lost no time in calling on you."

Neeld was listening and fidgeting with his sheets of paper. The Colonel's preamble excited little interest in Harry. The reaction of his struggle was on him; he was courteously but not keenly attentive.

"It is not agreeable to me to speak of my brother to you, Mr Tristram. Doubtless we should differ if we discussed his character and conduct. It is not necessary."