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TOO LATE.
I must now go back a little. After my suspicions had been aroused as to
the state of Charley's feelings, I hesitated for a long time before I
finally made up my mind to tell him the part Clara had had in the loss
of my sword. But while I was thus restrained by dread of the effect the
disclosure would have upon him if my suspicions were correct, those
very suspicions formed the strongest reason for acquainting him with
her duplicity; and, although I was always too ready to put off the evil
day so long as doubt supplied excuse for procrastination, I could not
have let so much time slip by and nothing said but for my absorption in
Mary.
At length, however, I had now resolved, and one evening, as we sat
together, I took my pipe from my mouth, and, shivering bodily, thus
began:
'Charley,' I said, 'I have had for a good while something on my mind,
which I cannot keep from you longer.'
He looked alarmed instantly. I went on.
'I have not been quite open with you about that affair of the sword.'
He looked yet more dismayed; but I must go on, though it tore my very
heart. When I came to the point of my overhearing Clara talking to
Brotherton, he started up, and, without waiting to know the subject of
their conversation, came close up to me, and, his face distorted with
the effort to keep himself quiet, said, in a voice hollow and still and
far-off, like what one fancies of the voice of the dead:
'Wilfrid, you said Brotherton, I think?'
'I did, Charley.'
'She never told me that!'
'How could she when she was betraying your friend?'
'No no!' he cried, with a strange mixture of command and entreaty;
'don't say that. There is some explanation. There must be.'
'She told me she hated him,' I said.
'_I know_ she hates him. What was she saying to him?'
'I tell you she was betraying me, your friend, who had never done her
any wrong, to the man she had told me she hated, and whom I had heard
her ridicule.'
'What do you mean by betraying you?'
I recounted what I had overheard. He listened with clenched teeth and
trembling white lips; then burst into a forced laugh. 'What a fool I
am! Distrust her! I will not. There is some explanation! There
must be!'
The dew of agony lay thick on his forehead. I was greatly alarmed at
what I had done, but I could not blame myself.
'Do be calm, Charley,' I entreated.
'I am as calm as death,' he replied, striding up and down the room with
long strides.
He stopped and came up to me again.
'Wilfrid,' he said, 'I am a damned fool. I am going now. Don't be
frightened--I am perfectly calm. I will come and explain it all to you
to-morrow--no--the next day--or the next at latest. She had some reason
for hiding it from me, but I shall have it all the moment I ask her.
She is not what you think her. I don't for a moment blame you--but--are
you sure it was--Clara's--voice you heard?' he added with forced
calmness and slow utterance.
'A man is not likely to mistake the voice of a woman he ever fancied
himself in love with.'
'Don't talk like that, Wilfrid. You'll drive me mad. How should she
know you had taken the sword?'
'She was always urging me to take it. There lies the main sting of the
treachery. But I never told you where I found the sword.'
'What can that have to do with it?'
'I found it on my bed that same morning when I woke. It could not have
been there when I lay down.'
'Well?'
'Charley, I believe she laid it there.'
He leaped at me like a tiger. Startled, I jumped to my feet. He laid
hold of me by the throat, and griped me with a quivering grasp.
Recovering my self-possession, I stood perfectly still, making no
effort even to remove his hand, although it was all but choking me. In
a moment or two he relaxed his hold, burst into tears, took up his hat,
and walked to the door.
'Charley! Charley! you must not leave me so,' I cried, starting
forwards.
'To-morrow, Wilfrid; to-morrow,' he said, and was gone.
He was back before I could think what to do next. Opening the door half
way, he said--as if a griping hand had been on his throat--
'I--I--I--don't believe it, Wilfrid. You only said you believed it. I
don't. Good night. I'm all right now. Mind, I don't believe it.'
He, shut the door. Why did I not follow him?
But if I had followed him, what could I have said or done? In every
man's life come awful moments when he must meet his fate--dree his
weird--alone. Alone, I say, if he have no God--for man or woman cannot
aid him, cannot touch him, cannot come near him. Charley was now in one
of those crises, and I could not help him. Death is counted an awful
thing: it seems to me that life is an infinitely more awful thing.
In the morning I received the following letter:--
'Dear Mr Cumbermede,
'You will be surprised at receiving a note from me--still more at its
contents. I am most anxious to see you--so much so that I venture to
ask you to meet me where we can have a little quiet talk. I am in
London, and for a day or two sufficiently my own mistress to leave the
choice of time and place with you--only let it be when and where we
shall not be interrupted. I presume on old friendship in making this
extraordinary request, but I do not presume in my confidence that you
will not misunderstand my motives. One thing only I beg--that you
will not inform C.O. of the petition I make.
'Your old friend,
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