Chapter XXVII: The Impossible

"Say, Jake, are you going to spend the night downstairs?" Bunny's thin, eager face peered round the door with the words. He slipped into the room clad in pyjamas, his hair all ruffled on his forehead.

Jake was sitting before a burnt-out fire. He looked round at Bunny with heavy eyes.

"Were you asleep?" said Bunny.

"No." He got up stiffly. "Just--thinking. What have you come down for?"

Bunny glanced at the clock. "Why, you said you'd come and see me in bed, and it's long past midnight. I've been lying awake for ages." He pressed close to Jake, reproach mingling with a touch of apprehension in his eyes. "Fact is,--I--wanted to tell you something. But I've got cold now. I don't know that I shall, after all."

Jake put a hand on his shoulder. "I shouldn't, my son," he said. "I should cut back to bed if I were you. I give you a free pardon, whatever it is. There! Good night!"

But Bunny refused to be dismissed thus perfunctorily. "You treat me like a child, Jake," he grumbled. "It's not fair. I'd sooner be pitched into than that."

Jake smiled faintly. "Well, what's the matter?" he said.

Bunny's eyes gleamed a little. "It's just this. I expect you'll be savage, but you've got to know. Maud knows all about the Stud and everything. She was bound to know sooner or later, so I don't see that it greatly matters. But I'd no right to tell her. And I did."

He ended on a note of defiance. His penitence had plainly not survived his long-drawn-out suspense.

But Jake heard him without any sign of displeasure. "Betrayed my confidence, eh?" he said. "Well, I reckon that's a matter for your conscience, not mine."

Bunny bit his lip. "You ought to have told her yourself, Jake," he said.

Jake nodded. He seemed to be past all feeling that night. "I know that. But she had plenty to think of without worrying herself about my affairs. Anyway she knows now."

"Yes. Knows you're thinking of going to America, Jake." Eagerly Bunny broke in. "And she's jolly sick about it, I can tell you. She doesn't want you to go."

"Oh, doesn't she?" said Jake.

Bunny seized his arm and shook it. "Jake, surely you won't go! She's rich enough to keep us all. She wants to share everything with you."

"Oh, yes." Jake's voice was dead level. His eyes looked at Bunny, but they saw beyond him. "I know all about that. I know--just what she wants. She wants a watchdog, one that'll fetch and carry and accept all benefits with humility. She's lonely now; but she won't be lonely long. She'll have a crowd round her--a set of fashionable, gibbering monkeys, who will sneer at the watch-dog, the meek and patient hanger-on, the adjunct at every party, who lives on his mistress's smile and doesn't object to her kick. That's what she wants. And that, my son, is the one thing she's not going to get."

"But what on earth do you want, Jake?" burst from Bunny, half-startled, half-exasperated. "You needn't be that. You never could be that. Her idea was to make you independent."

"Oh yes, I know." Jake's mouth twisted a little. "She is mighty generous. She figured to hand over half her fortune by deed of gift."

"And you wouldn't have it?" Bunny almost gasped.

"I wouldn't touch it," Jake said, with a sound that was oddly like a suppressed laugh in his throat.

"But why in wonder not?" Bunny stared at him as if he thought he had gone suddenly mad. "We've taken oceans of things from you."

"That's different," said Jake.

"How different? Make me understand, Jake! I've a right to understand." Bunny's voice was imperious.

Jake looked at him. There was actually a smile in his eyes, but it was a smile of self-ridicule. "You asked me just now what I wanted," he said. "I'll tell you. I want a woman who loves me well enough to chuck up everything--everything, mind you--and follow me barefoot to the other end of the world." He broke into a laugh that seemed to hurt him. "And that," he said, "is the one thing I'm not going to get. Now do you understand?"

"Not quite, Jake. Not quite." Bunny spoke almost diffidently. He looked back at Jake with awe in his eyes. "You think she doesn't love you well enough. Is that it?"

Jake nodded, still with that smile of self-mockery about his mouth. "You've hit it, my son," he said. "We're not a pair, that's the trouble. She means to be kind, but I'd sooner go empty than be fed on husks. I didn't offer either of you that. It was the real thing I gave you. But she--she hasn't the real thing to offer. And so--I'll do without."

He turned squarely to put out the waning lamp as though the discussion were ended, but Bunny stayed him with a nervous hand.

"Jake, suppose you're wrong, old boy? Suppose she does care--care badly?" His voice quivered with earnestness. "Women are queer fishes, you know, Jake. Suppose you've made a mistake?"

"Where's the use of supposing the impossible?" asked Jake sombrely. Yet he paused, his hand rubbing the boy's rough head caressingly.

"Ah, but just for a moment," Bunny insisted. "If she loved you, Jake, you wouldn't refuse then to--to do what she wanted?"

"If she loved me," Jake said, and stopped suddenly. He moved abruptly to the lamp and extinguished it. Then in the dim light that filtered through the blinds from a full moon of frosty radiance, he spoke, deeply, slowly, solemnly. "If she loved me, I would accept anything under the sun from her. Everything she had would be mine. Everything of mine would be hers. And--before God--I would make her happy--if she loved me." He drew a great breath that seemed to burst from the very heart of him. Then in a moment he turned aside. "But that's the impossible, Bunny," he said. "And now good night!"

They went upstairs together, and parted in the passage. Bunny seemed too awed for speech. Only he hugged Jake hard for a moment before he went to his own room.

Jake passed on to his. Utter silence reigned there. He lighted a candle, and went softly to the door that led into his wife's room. It was shut. Softly he turned the handle, pressed a little; softly he turned it back. The door was locked.

Then he threw off his clothes, blew out the candle, and lay down alone.

And all through the night he was listening to words uttered over and over above his head, like evil spirits whispering together.

"I can't pretend to love you. You see--I don't."

He realized now that she had been right. It was better not to pretend! It was better not to pretend!