don't know anything about it,” he said. “What are the doings of this silly world, of our makeshift appearances, to the essentials? Antics—filling up time! You speak as if she gave Ingram everything, and lost it. She did, but he never knew it—so never had it. Ingram had what he was fitted to receive. Her impulse, her impulsion were divine. She has lost nothing—and he has gained nothing.”
“If you talk philosophy I'm done,” cried Mr. Chevenix. “Well, I say to you, my boy, Go and see her. She's so far human that she's got a tongue, and likes to wag it, I suppose. I don't say that there's trouble, and I don't say there's not. But there are the makings of it. She's alone, and may be moped. I don't know. You'd better judge for yourself.”
Senhouse, trembling from his recent fire, turned away his face. “I don't know that I dare. If she's unhappy, I shall be in the worst place I ever was in my life. I don't know what I shall do.”
“That's the first time you ever said that, I'll go bail,” Chevenix interrupted him. But Senhouse did not hear him.
“I did everything I could at the time. I nearly made her quarrel with me—I dared do that. I went up to Wanless and saw Ingram. I hated the fellow, I disapproved of him, feared him. He was the last man in the world I could have tackled with a view to redemption. He was almost hopelessly bad, according to my view of things. Fed by slaves from the cradle, hag-ridden by his vices; a purple young bully, a product of filthy sloth, scabbed with privilege. I saw just how things were. She pitied him, and thought it was her business to save him. She did nobly. She gave herself for pity; and if she mistook that for love, the splendid generosity of her is enough to take the breath away. The world ought to have gone down on its knees to her—but it picked up its skirts for fear she might touch them. What a country! What a race! Well, feeling towards her as I did, and loathing him, I urged him to marry her—to make her his property for life. Dead against my conviction, mind you, but what else could I do? God help me, I played the renegade to what I sincerely believed. I couldn't see her done to death by a world of satyrs.”
“Of course you couldn't, my dear man,” cried Chevenix. “Girls of her sort must be married, you know.”
“I don't know anything of the kind,” replied Senhouse, fiercely; “but I loved her. You may put it that I funked. I did—and to no purpose.”
“If you were to see her now,” Chevenix put in, “you could do some good. She'll be pretty lonely up there.” Senhouse got up.
“I'll see her,” he said. “Whatever happens.”
“Right,” said Chevenix. “That's a good man. That's what I wanted of you. I'll tell her that you're coming. Now I'm going to do the civil to Mrs. Germain.”
Senhouse had turned away, and was leaning over the bulwarks, lost in his thoughts. He remained there until the passage was over.
Mr. Chevenix, having approached the lady with all forms observed, made himself happy in her company, as, indeed, he did in all. “Now this is very jolly, Mrs. Germain, I must say. I'm a companionable beggar, I believe; and here I was in a ship where I didn't know a living soul until I met you and Senhouse. Didn't even know that you knew Senhouse. Queer fish, eh? Oh, the queerest fish in the sea! But you know all that, of course.”
Mrs. Germain, a brunette with the power of glowing, coloured becomingly, and veiled her fine eyes with somewhat heavy and heavily-fringed eye-lids. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I have known him for a long time.”
“Met him abroad, I suppose—tinkering round, as he does. The everlasting loafer, artist, tinker, poet, gardener. 'Pon my soul, he's like the game we used to do with cherry-stones round the pudding plate. Don't you know? Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, and all the rest. He's all those things, and has two pair of bags to his name, and lives in a cart, and's a gentleman. Not a doubt about that, mind you, Mrs. Germain.”
She smiled upon him kindly. “None at all,” she said. “I like him extremely.”
“You would, you know,” said Chevenix, his tones rich in sympathy. “All women do. You couldn't help it. You've got such a kind heart. All women have. Now, I've known Senhouse himself five or six years, but I've known about him for at least eight. I used to hear about him from morn to dewy eve, once upon a time, from one—of—the—loveliest and most charming girls you ever met in your life. Did you know her? A Miss Percival—Sanchia Percival. We used to call her Sancie. Thought you might have met her, perhaps. No? Well, this chap Senhouse would have gone through the fire for her. He would have said his prayers to her. Did you ever see his poems about her? My word! He published 'em after the row, you know. He as good as identified her with—well, we won't mention names, Mrs. Germain, but he identified her with a certain holy lady not a hundred miles from the Kingdom of Heaven. Blasphemous old chap—he did, though.”
Mrs. Germain, toying with her scent-bottle, was interested. “I never heard him speak about a Miss Percival,” she said. She used a careless tone, but her flickering eyelids betrayed her.
“You wouldn't, you know,” he told her with the same sympathetic earnestness. “There was too much of a row. He was cut all to pieces. I thought he'd go under; but he's not that sort. Who called somebody—some political johnny—the Sea-green Incorruptible? Oh, ask me another! You might call old Senhouse the Green-tea Irrepressible; for that was his drink (to keep himself awake all night, writin' poems), and there never was a cork that would hold him down—not even Sancie Percival. No, no, out he must come—fizzling.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Germain, still looking at her fingers in her lap. “I'm very much interested. You mean that he was very much—that he paid her a great deal of attention?”
Chevenix stared roundly about him. “Attention! Oh, heavens! Why, three of his letters to her would fill The Times for a week—and he kept it up for years! She used to get three a week—budgets! blue-books! For simple years! Attentions!” He shook his head. “The word's no good. He paid nobody anything at all when she was in the same county. He used to sit listening to her thrilling the waves of air. He used to hear her voice in the wind—and when it changed, he used to fire off his answers!”
Mrs. Germain laughed—whether at Chevenix or his preposterous hero is not to be known. “You are rather absurd,” she said. “Mr. Senhouse never gave me the idea of that sort of person. Why did they never—?”
Chevenix narrowed his eyes to the merest slats. “Marry?” he said, in an awed whisper. “Is that what you mean?”
Mrs. Germain showed him her soft brown orbs, which for two seasons had been said to be the finest pair of dark eyes in London. “Yes,” she said, “I do mean that. How clever of you to guess!”
Chevenix bowed to her. “Not at all,” he said. “I'm quite good at that kind of thing. You have to be, if you knock about. Besides, that's the whole point. Bless you! He would just as soon have married Diana of the Ephesians. He said so. I heard him. He would have thought it an insult to hint at it. Didn't I tell you that he was a poet?”
“Yes,” the lady said quickly. “You did. But I suppose poets occasionally marry.”
“Not that sort,” Chevenix pronounced, with a shake of the head. “At least, they don't marry the right person. They never do. Or there are two or three persons. Look at Shelley. Look at Dante. I happen to know all about both of 'em. Senhouse drank 'em up—and gave 'em out like steam. He thought no end of Dante and Shelley. As a matter of fact, he didn't believe in marriage, as a game—as a kind of institution, you know. He thought it devilish wrong—and said so—and that's where the trouble was. Marry Sancie! I wish to heaven he had. There'd have been no trouble at all. They were made for each other. She loved his fun—and was easy with him, you see. She was queerish, too—a shy young bird; but she was quite at home with him. No, no. The trouble really began with him putting her out of conceit with marriage. And then she didn't care for him in that sort of way, then. And then—well, the less said the better.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Germain, absorbed by the devolutions of