Captain Desmond, V.C. Part 69

"So have I," Desmond answered gruffly, "that's the deuce of it all.

But it doesn't make a man less unworthy----"

"If it comes to that," urged the diplomatist, "are any of us worthy?"

Desmond flung up his head with an odd laugh.

"Possibly not! But there happen to be degrees of unfitness--yours and mine for instance, you blind old bat! Go along now, and enjoy the good you deserve. As for me--I have sinned and must take the consequences without whining."

"There is a radical difference, Theo," Paul remarked quietly, "between temptation and sin."

"Casuist!" was all the answer vouchsafed to him; and baffled--but not yet defeated--he went out into the May sunlight, quite determined, for once in his life, to take by storm the citadel that seemed proof against capitulation.

Before reaching his destination he had devised a plan so simple and obvious that it might have occurred to a child; and like a child he gloried in his unaided achievement. The fact that it involved leading them both blindfold to the verge of mutual discovery troubled him not a whit. Heart and conscience alike a.s.serted that in this case the end justified the means; and it needed but the veiled light in Honor's eyes at mention of Theo's name to set the seal on his decision.

For near an hour they talked, with that effortless ease and intimacy which is the hail-mark of a genuine friends.h.i.+p; and at the end of it Honor realised that, without any conscious intention on her part, Theo--and little else but Theo--had been their topic as a matter of course. Never dreaming of design on the part of Paul, she merely blessed him for a devotion that almost equalled her own, and accepted, with unfeigned alacrity, his suggestion that they should meet next morning at the Diploma Gallery.

"I've not been there for a hundred years!" she declared with more of her old lightness than he had yet seen in her: "It will take me back to bread-and-b.u.t.ter days! And I believe they have added some really good pictures since then."

Paul exulted as an angler exults when he feels his first salmon tug at the line; but his tone was casual and composed. "Come early," he said.

"Then we shall pretty well have the place to ourselves. Eleven?

Half-past?"

"Somewhere between the two."

"Good."

And Paul Wyndham--the devout lover, who had trampled pa.s.sion underfoot to some purpose--walked back to Piccadilly like a man reprieved. Honor was secure. Remained the capture of Theo--a more difficult feat; but, in his present mood, he refused to contemplate the possibility of failure.

A morning of unclouded brilliance found Desmond frankly bored with tactics and topography; the more so, perhaps, because Paul with simple craft took his industry for granted.

Soon after eleven, he put aside the inevitable pipe and newspaper and took up his hat. "Well, Theo," said he, "you won't be needing me till after lunch I suppose?--I'm off."

"Where to, old man?" Desmond yawned extensively as he spoke, and pushed aside his little pile of red books with a promising gesture of distaste. "What's your dissipated programme?"

"An hour in the Diploma Gallery, and a stroll in the Park," Paul replied with admirable unconcern. "D'you feel like coming?"

"I feel like chucking all these into the waste-paper basket! When England takes it into her capricious head to do this sort of thing in May, how the devil can a human man keep his nose to the grindstone?

Come on!"

Paul's heart beat fast as they stepped into the street; faster still as he glanced at Theo striding briskly beside him, head in air all unconscious that he was faring toward a tryst far more in tune with the season and the new life astir in his blood than his late abnormal zeal in pursuit of promotion.

To Paul it seemed that the heavens themselves were in league with him.

Overhead, scattered ranks of chimneypots were bitten out of a sky scarcely less blue and ardent than Italy's own. In every open s.p.a.ce young leaves flashed, golden-green, on soot-blackened branches of chestnut, plane, and lime. And there were flowers everywhere--in squares and window-boxes and parks; in florists' and milliners'

windows; in the baskets of flower-sellers and in women's hats. The paper-boy--blackbird of the London streets--whistled a livelier stave.

Girls hurried past smiling at nothing in particular. They were glad to be alive--that was all.

And Theo?

He too was glad to be alive, to be free, at last, from the conquering shadow of memory and self-reproach. If penance were required of him, surely that black year must suffice. Now the living claimed him; and that claim could no longer be ignored. With a heart too full for speech he walked beside his friend; and halting at last, on the steps of Burlington House, he bared his head to the sunlight and drew a deep breath of content.

"I vote we don't waste much of this divine morning on pictures, Paul,"

he said suddenly. "Why bother about them at all?"

Wyndham started visibly; but in less than a minute he was master of himself and the situation.

"Well, as we're here, we may as well look in," he answered casually; and without waiting further objection, turned to enter the building.

Desmond, following, laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Anything to please you, old man," said he smiling.

"G.o.d knows you've danced attendance on _my_ whims long enough!"

No sign of Honor in the cloistered coolness of the first room; only a small group of people in earnest talk before one of the pictures, and an artist, with stool and easel, making a conscientious copy of another.

Desmond made a cursory tour of the walls and pa.s.sed on into the second room. Paul, increasingly anxious every moment, lagged behind and consulted his watch. It was twenty-five minutes past eleven. Would she never come?

The second room was empty, and there Desmond's aimless wandering had been checked by a battle picture; a vigorous and tragic presentment of Sir John Moore's retreat from Corunna.

"Here you are, Paul. Here's something worth looking at," said he as Wyndham joined him; and, soldier-like, they soon fell to discussing the event rather than the picture. Desmond--his head full of tactics and military history--held forth fluently quite in his old vein; while Paul--who heard scarce one word in six--nodded sagely at appropriate intervals.

Hope died hard in him. A clock outside, chiming the half-hour, rang its knell with derisive strokes that seemed to beat upon his heart. It was just his luck. She would never turn up. A hundred contingencies might arise to prevent her--a street accident, a headache, bad news of her father----

Sudden silence from Theo cut short the dismal list; and one glance at him told Paul that his hour was come indeed. For Desmond stood rigid, a dull flush burning through his tan; and his eyes looked over Paul's shoulder towards the entrance into Room Number One.

"My G.o.d!" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely, "Here's Honor!"

Without a word Paul turned on his heel and saw how she, too, stood spellbound, there by the doorway, her cheeks aflame, her eyes more eloquent than she knew. Taken completely unawares, each had surprised the other's secret, even as Paul had foreseen. In that lightning flash of mutual recognition, the end he had wrought for, and agonised for, was achieved. Obviously they had no further need of his services--and, unnoticed by either, he pa.s.sed quietly out of the room.

For one measureless minute they remained confronting each other; scarcely daring to breathe lest they break the spell of that pa.s.sionate unspoken avowal. Then Honor came forward slowly, like one walking in her sleep--and the spell was gone. In two strides Desmond had reached her and grasped her outstretched hand.

No attempt at conventional futilities marred their supreme moment.

Words seemed an impertinence in view of the overwhelming fact that he stood before her thus--his face transfigured and illumined by love unutterable, by a discovery scarcely realised even now.

There was so much to tell, and again, so little after all, that there seemed no need to tell it. Yet Honor could not choose but long for the sound of his voice; and to that end she tried very gently to withdraw her hand.

Desmond--suddenly aware that they were alone--tightened his grasp.

"No--no," he protested under his breath, "unless--you wish it. _Do_ you--Honor?"

"I don't wish it," she answered very low, and her eyes, resting on his, had a subdued radiance as of sunlight seen through mist.

Haloed in that radiance Desmond beheld the "infernal chap" he had been cursing for weeks; realised instantaneously all that the recognition implied; and, capturing both her hands, crushed them between his own.

"Honor--my splendid Honor!"

He still spoke under his breath; and still his eyes held hers in a gaze so compelling that it seemed as though he were drawing her very soul into his own with a force that she had neither will nor power to resist.