Hesba Stretton - The Ultimate Christmas Library - 100+ Authors, 200 Novels, Novellas, Stories, Poems and Carols

"What is your explanation, Dick?"

"Whisky and soda," said Dr. Dick, bravely. "You mixed it stiffer than you knew. I was dead beat, and had had no food. I have always been a fairly abstemious chap; in my profession we have to be: woe betide the man who isn't. But since I saw that chair standing on its four legs in the mirror, when it was lying broken on the floor in reality, I have not touched a drop of alcohol. There! I make you a present of that for your next temperance meeting. Now let's go out and buck Ronnie up. Remember, he'll feel jolly flat for a bit, with no temperature. Temperature is a thing you miss, when it has become a habit."

Ronnie saw Dick off by the mid-day train.

After the train had begun to move, Dick leaned from the window, and said suddenly: "Ronnie! talk to your wife about her Leipzig letter, and— the kid , you know."

Ronnie kept pace with the train long enough to say: "I wish you wouldn't call it the 'kid,' Dick; it is the 'Infant.' And Helen declines to talk of it."

Then he dropped behind, and Dick flung himself into a corner of his compartment, with a face of comic despair. "Merciful heavens," he said, "slay that Infant!"

Meanwhile Ronnie was saying to a porter: "When is the next train for town?"

"One fifty-five, sir."

"Then I have no chance now of catching the three o'clock from town, for Hollymead?"

"Not from town, sir. But there is a way, by changing twice, which gets you across country, and you pick up the three o'clock all right at Huntingford, four ten."

"Are you sure, my man? I was told there was no way across country."

"The one fifty-five is the only train in the day by which you can do it, sir. I happen to know, because I have a sister lives at Hollymead, so I've done it m'self. If trains aren't late, you hit off the three o'clock at Huntingford."

"Thanks," said Ronnie, noting down particulars. Then he walked rapidly back to the hotel.

"I can't stand it," he said. "I shall bolt! With me off her hands, she can go and have a jolly Christmas at the Dalmains. She is always welcome there. I must get away alone and think matters out. I know everything is all wrong, and yet I don't exactly know what has come between us. I only know I am wretched, and so is she. It is still the poison of the Upas. If I knew why she suddenly considered me utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish, I would do my level best to put it right. But I don't."

He found Helen in the hall, anxiously watching the door. She took up a paper, as he came in.

"Helen," he said, "do you mind if we lunch punctually at one o'clock? I am going out before two."

"Why, certainly we will," said Helen. "You must have had a very early breakfast, Ronnie. But don't overdo, darling. Remember what Dick said. Shall I come with you?"

"I would rather go alone," said Ronnie. "I want to think things over."

She rose and stood beside him.

"Ronnie dear, we seem to have lost all count of days. But, as a matter of fact, to-morrow is Christmas Day. Would you like to go home this afternoon? We can order a car for two o'clock, and be at the Grange for tea. Ronnie, wouldn't it be rather lovely? Think of the little cosy tea-table, and your own especial chair, and the soft lamp-light—"

She paused abruptly. The mental picture had recalled to both the evening on which they last stood together in that golden lamplight.

Ronnie hesitated, looking at the floor. Then he raised his eyes to Helen's. "I don't think I could bear it," he said, turned from her quickly, and went upstairs.

In his room he scribbled a note.

"My wife—I am awfully sorry, but I simply had to bolt. Don't be alarmed. I have gone home to the Grange. I believe, when I am by myself in the house where we spent the three years I thought so perfect and so happy, I shall find out what is the matter; I shall get to the very root of the Upas tree.

"I know I somehow hurt you horribly on the night I reached home, by asking you to come to the studio to hear me play my 'cello; but, before God, I haven't the faintest idea why!

"You would not have said what you did, had you known I was ill; but neither would you have said it, unless it had been true. If it was true then, it is true now. If it is true now, we can't spend Christmas Day together.

"I want you to go to the Dalmains by motor, as soon as you find this, and have a jolly, restful time with them. You look worn out.

"RONNIE."

"P.S.—I am obliged to leave this in my room. I hope you will find it there. I don't even know where your room is, Helen, in this beastly hotel."

Ronnie considered his postscript; then crossed out "beastly" and substituted "large." But "beastly" still showed, pathetically, beneath the line. And, by-and-by, the heart of Ronnie's wife, from which all clouds had suddenly rolled away, understood it, and wept over it, and kissed it; and thought "beastly" a dear word! It was so quaintly like Ronnie to substitute "large" for "beastly."

All clouds had rolled away, before Helen read the note; for this is what had happened.

Ronnie had excused himself when lunch was half over.

Helen let him go, trying to act on Dr. Dick's advice not to worry him by seeming to watch or follow him.

So she sat on alone, finishing luncheon, and thus did not see Ronnie walk out of the front door, carrying his bag.

Soon afterwards she passed into the hall, and sat dipping into the papers and thinking over her talk with Dick.

Presently a page stepped up to her with a letter on a salver.

Her heart stood still as she saw the stamp, the post-mark, and the writing. It was from Aubrey Treherne, forwarded from Hollymead.

Helen was sorely tempted for a moment to burn it unread. She had suffered so much through a former letter in that handwriting. She suddenly realised how cruelly Aubrey's words about Ronnie had, in the light of Ronnie's subsequent behaviour, eaten into her soul.

She looked at the fire. She rose and moved towards it, the letter in her hand.

Then better counsels prevailed.

She went slowly upstairs to her sitting-room, closed the door, sat down, and opened Aubrey's letter.

It contained a smaller envelope sealed, on which was written: "Read letter first."

She opened the folded sheets.

"DEAR HELEN,

"Yes, you are right about God's Word not returning void. Your own words, I admit, only hardened me; but those at the end of your letter broke me up. I am so very far removed from light and fellowship, love and forgiveness. I doubt if I can ever get back into the way of peace.

"But, anyhow, before the great Feast of Peace upon earth, goodwill toward men, I can take a first step by fully confessing the great wrong I did to you and to your husband rather more than a month ago, on the evening which he spent at my flat.

"Possibly you have found it out already; but possibly not, as I hear he has been very seriously ill.

"The evening he was here, he was more or less queer and light-headed, but he was full of you, and of his delight in going home. I suppose this all helped to madden me. No need to explain why. You know.

"He had found a letter from you at the Poste Restante ; but, rushing around to his publishers, etc., had not had time to read it.

"When he remembered it and found it in his pocket-book, he stood with his back to my stove, in great excitement, and tore it open; I sitting by.

"As he unfolded the large sheets of foreign paper, a note flew out from between them, and fell, unseen by him, to the floor.

"I put my foot on it. I gathered, from extracts he read me from the letter, that this note was of importance.

"When he found in a postscript that you mentioned an enclosure, he hunted everywhere for it; not thinking, of course, to look under my foot.