Chapter XXXIII: The Gods Decide

Rensslaer never spoke of Chris, but one night, when Carlton had gone back to town after spending the day at Elsinore, he said:

"Mr. Mackrell seems to dislike Captain Conant very much."

"Yes."

"Then he had better cut out Captain Conant, and marry Miss Lossie himself," said Rensslaer quietly.

Gay laughed.

These two always understand one another, almost as well, Gay thought, only differently, as she and Chris did. And Gay knew his story now, shyly suggested rather than told, a story of self-denial, of self-abnegation for the sake of one loved only too truly and well.

"They are admirably well suited to each other," said Rensslaer. "She adores _him_, and your coldness, and his male dislike of Captain Conant, are impelling him naturally towards her--a little push, and the thing is done."

Then they both laughed again, and Gay's spirits rose enormously.

"I will ask them down without Captain Conant," said Rensslaer, and he did, and somehow he and Gay managed to lose them in the park, and as it was some miles in length, and Carlton especially absent-minded that afternoon, this was not difficult.

"Gay looks ill," Carlton said abruptly, revealing the direction his thoughts had taken, when they turned to find their companions vanished.

"Of course," said Lossie, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Why of course?"

He spoke sharply, with an intense feeling of humiliation. Lossie, turning to look at him, thought a little cruelly of _her_ bitter hour; it was his turn now.

"Can't you see that she is utterly wretched," she said, "and thinks it her fault that Chris Hannen is trying to kill himself harder than ever?"

"It's the behaviour of a moral coward," said Carlton sternly; "but he was never half good enough for her."

"Oh," said Lossie, "it isn't what is good enough for us, but what we _want_, that matters!"

He turned to look at her--eyes, lips, hair, every bit of her, warm with--what? And he was cold, so cold, bleeding in his pride and self-esteem, it was Gay he wanted, but she had gone far to freeze out all the love that was in him....

"And is it George Conant you want so badly?" he said quietly, but with a sensation of stealing warmth in his veins to which they were of late unaccustomed.

"I am going to marry him," she said contemptuously, "and there will be five miserable people more in the world, including Chris!"

"Why should you be miserable?" he said, but his voice was not very steady, and his eyes were trying to force hers to meet them. "I'm sure Conant will not be."

"It is not _his_ happiness or mine, that counts with you, but only Gay's," said Lossie, quietly.

He did not deny it, and a pang ran through the girl. He would never love anyone but Gay; still, did that matter? Lossie had enough love for both--through suffering she had come to know that the fulness of joy is in loving, not in being loved.

Involuntarily both had stopped, and in the wintry afternoon, with skeleton trees all about them, they were looking in each other's faces--in that moment Carlton saw his way clear, saw the road that led to Gay's happiness, if not his own--and took it.

* * * * * * *

Lossie had never looked so lovely in her life, or Carlton so manly, if frightfully pale, than when, after an hour's absence, they came in, and Gay got Lossie up into her bedroom, shut the door, and turned round to remark:

"_Poor_ Conant!"

That she did not say "Poor Carlton!" was part of the tragedy of the whole thing--for him.

"Oh, Gay," cried Lossie, "I didn't ask him this time"--she blushed warmly--"but I've been doing pretty much the same thing in a different way."

"Poor Conant!" said Gay again. "As Chris would say, he'll be all top-boots and no grin!"

"Oh, he is young--he will get over it," said Lossie. "I never pretended to care for him, and as to suffering, haven't _I_ gone through enough?"

"And pray," said Gay, who felt a great desire to turn head over heels a great many times in rapid succession, just as she had done when she was a child, "when is Carlton going to tell me that he has--has"--she pretended to weep--"jilted me?"

For a moment Lossie turned away; already she was a better woman as she said:

"Gay, he knew that you loved Chris too much for there to be the smallest scrap of love in your heart left over for _him_. He said that life without love was like the sky without sun--that he had been a selfish brute to think he could make you happier than Chris could."

"He's quite right," said Gay, who had recovered all her good looks in a moment, and with them the old charm and _gaieté de cœur_ that had so distinguished her, "and if you'll get Mr. Rensslaer to show you his sculpture and medals presently, and leave Carlton and me together, I'll just tell him that he's a dear--and that I love him."

Gay never told Chris, nor Carlton Lossie, what was said during that brief interview in the Elsinore drawing-room; but Gay, to her shame, realised then, how consistently Carlton had played the game of love, how if he had been greedy once, he had sacrificed himself twice over for her, and tears fell from her eyes that night, before she dropped into the first dreamless slumber she had known for months.

The Professor was delighted that her home with him was to remain her home still, and everyone was happy except George Conant and Chris. The latter knew nothing of the change of partners, and went slogging away at his failures and successes, seemingly quite unable to break his neck, though he took every opportunity of trying to do so. Even when he _did_ hear the news, he made no comment, lowered his proud shield of reserve to no man or woman either. It was no affair of his, when Gay had "chucked" him; she had done it for once and all, and he did not go near her.

There was not an ounce of vice in Chris, but she had sent him further on the road to the devil than anyone but himself, and perhaps Mrs. Summers knew, and the devoted old woman waxed more bitter against Gay day by day. It did not require the removal of certain photographs from his rooms, to indicate who was responsible for the change in him.

"As if, knowing how he misses his mother, she oughtn't to stand by him through everything," said Mrs. Summers indignantly to herself, and tried hard to make it up to her dear Mr. Chris in extra attention. But it did not seem to do him much good; he was beginning to think that there was a curse upon him, and that is a fatal thing for a man, making him sometimes reckless, sometimes bad, but seldom mentally, morally, or physically better.

But he turned up at Mackrell's wedding in December, and if each man surprised in the other's eyes, a look that told how to both there might be many women, but only one Gay, and Chris suspected a supreme renunciation in Carlton's taking Lossie as the only way to Gay's happiness, he had no idea of screwing himself up a second time to the sacrifice of all he held most dear.

Gay made a delightful bridesmaid, and Chris was the smartest, most sought after man there. He had always the air, the gay address, the charm of one of Charles Lever's adventurous heroes, belonged more to past times than present ones, and Gay, defiantly flirting on her own account, was appalled to see how easily and naturally he could flirt also--with one very lovely young married woman in particular, who had long tried to annex him. If he took a savage delight in paying Gay back in her own coin, inflicting a little of the pain on her that she had inflicted on him, was it not very natural--though not natural to Chris?

The most lovable nature is the easiest ruined, the most unmalleable, when it has once turned against what it loves. Whether it were that having made his one grand renunciation in vain, Chris felt himself incapable of rising again to such heights of self-sacrifice, or that the capacity to love, as he had once loved, was forever scourged out of him by Gay's failure to him at a supreme moment, the fact remained that he could not, and never meant to forgive her. She had belonged to Carlton first; it was Carlton who had had the first kiss from her soft young lips, and many others. Chris could not know that all the kissing had been on one side only, and very little of that--the tactics Gay had practised when she desired to ward off Carlton's proposals, were equally successful in preventing his enjoying the privileges of an accepted suitor.

The world, looking on at the meeting between Chris and Gay, said that between two stools she had fallen to the ground, that she had been a fool to be cut out by her cousin, and what was worse, it pitied her....

She had made a complete failure of Trotting, (her horses were sold, and the sport was quite given up), of matrimony, of everything, said that same world, but Min Toplady rejoiced to see the light come back to her darling's eyes, the spring to her step, and the merry ring to her laugh, to know her prettier, happier than she had been for months past, her perpetual anxiety about Chris's precious neck notwithstanding.

Rensslaer too was satisfied. St. Swithin's still waited, the post he had offered Chris was open still--so was Gay's heart, and all would come right in time....

But months ran by, and it did not.

The Professor was still made exquisitely comfortable by his sister, and pursued the selfish tenor of his way. Lossie reigned, _quite_ good, and _quite_ happy, the triumphantly lovely mistress of the house in Norfolk Street, and divers other places, and Carlton, if not happy, was at least resigned, and very proud of her.

Rensslaer pursued his various hobbies with his usual quiet persistence, George Conant had started a racing stable, and was squandering the Elkins' thousands at a great rate, but all that Gay ever heard of Chris now, was gleaned from the papers. He had been devoted to Lavinia, as usual, when they met at the wedding, but had not since been near her, and she thought his keeping away a good sign, and a proof that he was ashamed of his own stiff-neckedness. But Gay knew that by her failure in courage at a critical moment of her life she had lost him, and that he would give her no second chance.

Oh, what was honour, what was duty, compared with love, when love had called her with Chris's voice as it had done that morning? There must be some coward blot in her, some bad strain of blood that prevented her being true to herself ... in pluck, in love, in loyalty alike, she had failed ... she had only to say to Carlton, "It is all a mistake; I accepted you in a fit of pique--under a misunderstanding," but she had humiliated Chris alike as a man and a lover in the presence of his rival, and a man of the most sensitive pride, he could not forgive her.

He had not turned his back on her when she committed her mad escapade, got herself talked about; angry as he was with her, he had not shown it, only remonstrated quietly with her, and in vain. He had put up with all her tempers without a murmur; his lovely disposition had never once been at fault, or broken down under the strain. Finally, he had been prepared to give up for her sake the profession he so deeply loved, and she had thrown his renunciation back in his face; if he met with a fatal accident, she alone would be responsible for it.

She held her head as high as ever, and only Carlton and Lavinia guessed what she suffered, but with the end of the steeplechase season, relief came, and she drew a free breath. For six months at least, Chris would be safe, and as in the nature of things, he was bound to be oftener in town, it was inevitable that sooner or later they must meet.

And at last they did. One day they passed each other close in Piccadilly, Gay driving herself, and Chris in a hansom with the Mrs. Guest who had been at Lossie's wedding. They produced a flashing impression of youth, gaiety, and good looks, and so completely wrapped up in each other were they, that they did not even see Gay, who drove on with the furies in her heart.

So _that_ was the reason that he could not forgive her, because another woman had taken her place in his heart... Jealousy, overpowering, terrible, racked poor Gay from then onwards--never had she loved Chris so much, never was it more impossible by look or word to try to call him back to her.

It was equally certain that Chris was resolute not to put himself within reach of such calling. In proportion to a man's love for a woman, is her power to influence him for good or evil, and Chris owed her a secret grudge for inflicting on him an injury that had done him no more good, morally, than Carlton's rejection of Lossie's love had once done her. The Mrs. Guest episode brought him little pleasure, and was not precisely of his own seeking--considerably to his surprise, too, his present existence did not satisfy him as it had done, and at odd times he thought of that other life which he could so pleasantly have lived at St. Swithin's.

He felt a brute to keep away from Lavinia, but in the frame of mind he then was, knew himself to be no fit company for her. Yet in the event, just as her life had been one long occasion of making opportunities for others, so by her death were the two hopelessly alienated people she loved best in the world, to be at last brought together.

In June came the cruel, mercifully brief illness that had threatened her so long, and Gay was constantly at hand to help her bear it, but it was to Chris she clung, who on his part plainly dreaded to be parted from her, realising too late, how lonely he would be, when the one woman who had so good an influence over him was gone. Had he been her own, the son that Lavinia had coveted, he could not have been more to her than he was, displaying qualities that made Gay admire and love him more with every hour. Watchful and devoted, the full tenderness and manliness of his nature were revealed with a fulness that only made the more marked his attitude towards Gay, to whom he remained cold, courteous, and completely indifferent always.

Once it half broke her heart to hear him, when he thought her absent, give Lavinia a message for his mother. Gay loved the simplicity of belief that never doubted the old friends would meet, suspected Chris's longing--who knows?--to be going himself to the one he so loved, and had never ceased to want.

"It will please her better that I can tell her you are very happy, Laddie," said Lavinia, who by a light invisible, saw what he did not. "And, you know, after all there is only one thing that matters, one first, last word--Love"--but he did not seem to hear her; there was a hard little kernel of bitterness in his heart against Gay, that nothing seemed able to remove.

* * * * * * *

Chris was standing in the sunny blue dining-room, staring straight before him, seeing nothing, when a slight sound at hand made him wheel suddenly, it was only a tired girl, weeping with bowed head on her hands ... how many nights and days had she been watching, and now needed to watch no more....

Something in his heart gave way, and with it all his fierce pride and unforgivingness towards her, as he uttered her name, she looked up...

Haggard they were, and sad and worn, as their eyes drew them together, with little of comeliness in their young faces, till love broke through, and flooded them with beauty ... perhaps it was of the message to his mother that Gay was thinking, as timidly she framed his face in her hands, and softly, as if she feared to bruise his lips, kissed him.

THE END

Miller, Son, & Compy., Ltd., Finsbury Circus Buildings, London, E.C.