Richard Marsh - The Datchet Diamonds

Mr. Lawrence did excuse her. She and Mr Paxton returned together up the pier; he, directly Mr. Lawrence was out of hearing, putting to her the question which, though she dreaded, she knew was inevitable.

"Who's that?"

"That is Mr. Lawrence."

"Yes, you told me so much already; who is Mr. Lawrence?"

As she walked Miss Strong, looking down, tapped with the ferrule of her umbrella on the boards.

"Oh! he's a sort of acquaintance."

"You have not been long in Brighton, then, without making acquaintance?"

"Cyril! I have been here more than a month. Surely a girl can make an acquaintance in that time?"

"It depends, I fancy, on the girl, and on the circumstances in which she is placed. What is Mr. Lawrence?"

"I have not the faintest notion. I have a sort of general idea that, like yourself, he is something in the City. It seems to me that nowadays most men are."

"Who introduced him?"

"A shower of rain."

"An excellent guarantor of the man's eligibility, though, even for the average girl, one would scarcely have supposed that that would have been a sufficient introduction."

Miss Strong flushed.

"You have no right to talk to me like that. I did not know that you were coming to Brighton, or I would have met you at the station."

"I knew that I should meet you on the pier."

The lady stood still.

"What do you mean by that?"

The gentleman, confronting her, returned her glance for glance.

"I mean what I say. I knew that I should meet you on the pier-and I have."

The lady walked on again; whatever she might think of Mr. Paxton's inference, his actual statement was undeniable.

"You don't seem in the best of tempera, Cyril. How is Mr. Franklyn?"

"He was all right when I saw him last-a good deal better than I was or than I am."

"What is the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"Matter!" Mr. Paxton's tone was bitter. "What is likely to be the matter with the man who, after having had the luck which I have been having lately, to crown it all finds the woman he loves philandering with a stranger-the acquaintance of a shower of rain-on Brighton pier."

"You have no right to speak to me like that-not the slightest! I am perfectly free to do as I please, as you are. And, without condescending to dispute your inferences-though, as you very well know, they are quite unjust! – any attempt at criticism on your part will be resented by me in a manner which you may find unpleasant."

A pause followed the lady's words, which the gentleman did not seem altogether to relish.

"Still the fact remains that I do love you better than anything else in the world."

"Surely if that were so, Cyril, at this time of day you and I would not be situated as we are."

"By which you mean?"

"If you felt for me what you are always protesting that you feel, surely sometimes you would have done as I wished."

"Which being interpreted is equivalent to saying that I should have put my money into Goschens, and entered an office at a salary of a pound a week."

"If you had done so you would at any rate still have your money, and also, possibly, the prospect of a career."

They had reached the end of the pier, and were leaning over the side, looking towards the Worthing lights. Miss Strong's words were followed by an interval of silence. When the gentleman spoke again, in his voice there was the suspicion of a tremor.

"Daisy, don't be hard on me."

"I don't wish to be hard. It was you who began by being hard on me."

He seemed to pay no heed to her speech, continuing on a line of his own-

"Especially just now!"

She glanced at him.

"Why especially just now?"

"Well-" He stopped. The tremor in his voice became more pronounced. "Because I'm going for the gloves."

If the light had been clearer he might have seen that her face assumed a sudden tinge of pallor.

"What do you mean by you're going for the gloves?"

"I mean that probably by this time tomorrow I shall have either won you or lost you for ever."

"Cyril!" There was a catching in her breath. "I hope you are going to do nothing-wild."

"It depends upon the point of view." He turned to her with sudden passion. "I'm sick of things as they are-sick to death! I've made up my mind to know either the best or the worst."

"How do you propose to arrive at that state of knowledge?"

"I've gone a bull on Eries-a big bull. So big a bull that if they fall one I'm done."

"How done?"

"I shall be done, because it will be for reasons, good, strong, solid reasons, the last deal I shall ever make on the London Stock Exchange."

There was silence. Then she spoke again-

"You will lose. You always do lose!"

"Thanks."

"It will be almost better for you that you should lose. I am beginning to believe, Cyril, that you never will do any good till you have touched bottom, till you have lost all that you possibly can lose."

"Thank you, again."

She drew herself up, drawing herself away from the railing against which she had been leaning. She gave a gesture which was suggestive of weariness.

"I too am tired. This uncertainty is more than I can stand; you are so unstable, Cyril. Your ideas and mine on some points are wide apart. It seems to me that if a girl is worth winning, she is worth working for. As a profession for a man, I don't think that what you call 'punting' on the Stock Exchange is much better than pitch-and-toss."

"Well?"

The word was an interrogation. She had paused.

"It appears to me that the girl who marries a man who does nothing else but 'punt' is preparing for herself a long line of disappointments. Think how many times you have disappointed me. Think of the fortunes you were to have made. Think, Cyril, of the Trumpit Gold Mine-what great things were to come of that!"

"I am quite aware that I did invest every penny I could beg, borrow, or steal in the Trumpit Gold Mine, and that at present I am the fortunate possessor of a trunkful of shares which are not worth a shilling a-piece. The reminder is a pleasant one. Proceed-you seem wound up to go."

Her voice assumed a new touch of sharpness.

"The long and the short of it is, Cyril-it is better that we should understand each other! – if your present speculation turns out as disastrously as all your others have done, and it leaves you worse off than ever, the relations, such as they are, which exist between us must cease. We must be as strangers!"

"Which means that you don't care for me the value of a brass-headed pin."

"It means nothing of the kind, as you are well aware. It simply means that I decline to link my life with a man who appears incapable of keeping his own head above water. Because he insists on drowning himself, why should I allow him to drown me too?"

"I observe that you take the commercial, up-to-date view of marriage."

"What view do you take? Are you nearer to being able to marry me than ever you were? Are you not farther off? You have no regular income-and how many entanglements? What do you propose that we should live on-on the hundred and twenty pounds a year which mother left me?"

There came a considerable silence. He had not moved from the position he had taken up against the railing, and still looked across the waveless sea towards the glimmering lights of Worthing. When he did speak his tones were cold, and clear, and measured-perhaps the coldness was assumed to hide a warmer something underneath.

"Your methods are a little rough, but perhaps they are none the worse on that account. As you say so shall it be. Win or lose, to-morrow evening I will meet you again upon the pier-that is, if you will come."

"You know I'll come!"

"If I lose it will be to say goodbye. Next week I emigrate."

She was still, so he went on-