Chapter XIV The Wisdom of Dr. Clack
That night, despite the heavy snow, and not averse from a struggle with the weather, Myles set out, after supper, for Little Silver, three-quarters of a mile distant, in the valley beneath Bear Down. Progress was difficult, but though snow already stood above Stapledon’s knees in the drifts, he found strength more than sufficient for the battle, and presently brought a blast of cold air and a snow wreath into the small dwelling of Doctor Clack, as he entered without formal announcement. Courteney Clack—deeply immersed in packing for his departure—marvelled at the advent of any visitor on such a night and abandoned his labours.
“Get out of that coat and come to the fire,” he said. “I’m afraid this means something serious, or you wouldn’t have turned out in such a tempest. Who’s ill, and what’s amiss?”
“Nobody—nothing. I wanted this wild weather against my face to give me a buffet. I also want a talk with you—if I can trespass on your time.”
The physician was much relieved to learn that it would not be necessary for him to go out of doors.
“I sail on Thursday,” he said, “but, until that date, I am, as usual, at the beck and call of all the world. Sit down and I’ll get the necessary ingredients. Need I say that I refer to a glass of punch?”
“In six weeks,” began Myles abruptly, “you’ll be seeing Christopher Yeoland.”
“God willing, that pleasure is in store for me.”
Stapledon took out his pipe, and began to fill it mechanically.
“I want you to do a very delicate thing,” he said. “The task will need even all your tact and skill, doctor. Yet it happens that if I had to pick a man out of England, I should have chosen you.”
“Now that must be flattery—a mere country apothecary.”
“No, it’s true—for particular reasons. You are Yeoland’s best friend.”
“A proud privilege. I have his word for it.”
“And, therefore, the man of all others to tackle him. Yet it’s not to your personal interest either. I’ll be frank. That is only fair to you. In the first place, what was the position between Miss Endicott and your friend when he finally left here?”
“Well, Stapledon, I suppose you’ve the right to ask, if anybody has; and not being blind, I can’t speak the truth, perhaps, without hurting you. The rupture was pretty complete, I fancy—final in fact. I didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. Miss Honor is a girl who wants a tight hand over her. I say it quite respectfully, for her good—and yours.”
“Don’t drag me in, Clack. The point is that she still loves Yeoland. That’s what I came here to explain to you. It is right that he should know it, and you are the man to tell him. The information must come from yourself, remember—from nobody else. The point is, how are you to be furnished with proofs?”
“Are you sure there exist proofs? Is it true?”
“She told me so herself.”
Doctor Clack had little difficulty in guessing at the nature of the conversation wherein such a confession had made a part. He was impulsive, and now did a thing that a moment’s reflection had left undone. He stretched out his hand and gripped Stapledon’s.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You have my sincere sympathy. Forgive me if I offend.”
Myles flushed, and as the other had been surprised into sudden speech, so now was he. Indeed he answered most unexpectedly, on the spur of the moment, stung thereto by this assault on self-esteem.
“You mistake!” he answered. “She loves me also.”
Doctor Clack whistled.
“How spacious! These times are really too cramped for such a girl. This is the sort of knot that could be cut so easily in mediæval days; but now the problem is most difficult. You want to drop out of the running in favour of Christo? Carlyle says that the heroic slumbers in every heart. It woke in Yeoland’s when he turned his back on Little Silver and everything that made life worth living for him. Now it wakes in you.”
“I do not want her life to be made a lonely, wretched thing by any act of mine.”
“Of course not.”
“We must save her from herself.”
“Ah, that means that she has announced a determination not to marry at all.”
“Yes. We are both so much to her that she cannot marry either.”
The doctor smothered a smile—not at Stapledon’s speech, but before the monumental sternness with which he uttered it.
“How characteristic!”
“Against that, however, I have the assurance that she does not know her own mind. Women, I think, if I may say so without disrespect and upon slight experience, are very contradictory. Miss Endicott has not been in the habit of analysing her emotions. Not that she is not lucidity itself. But—well, if he were here and I—if I were out of the way—I only want her happiness. It seems to lie there. He must come back to her. I can’t say all I feel about this, but you understand.”
“You’re set on her happiness. Very altruistic and all the rest; but I’m afraid she’s not built for it. To get happiness into her life will be difficult. Too humorous to be happy, don’t you think? Omar al Khattab remarks, very wisely, that four things come not back to man or woman. They are the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. She sent Yeoland about his business. Now there is a sort of love that won’t brook cruelty of that pattern.”
“Cruelty’s too big a word for it. She called it a lover’s quarrel herself. Eliminate me, and judge whether the spoken word might not be retrieved and forgotten if he came back to her again.”
“Of course improbability’s the only certainty with a woman. Don’t fancy I’m letting my own interest stand in the way. I, too, in common with all human clay, contain the germ of the heroical. I’ll tell Christo everything; that he still has half—is it half or a lesser or greater fraction?—of Miss Honor Endicott’s heart. Here we are—three able-bodied men: you, Christo, and myself. Well, surely with a little expenditure of brain tissue we can—eh? Of course. One of you chaps is the obstacle to the other. You pull her heart different ways. She is suspended between your negative and positive attractions like a celestial body, or a donkey between two bundles of hay. So you both go free. Now, if one of you heroes could only find comfort in another woman such a circumstance might determine—you follow me?”
“Her happiness?”
“Not so much her happiness as her destination. Well, I’ll urge upon Yeoland the advisability of coming home; I’ll tell him how things stand, and of course keep you out of it.”
“She would be happier with him than with me: that’s the point.”
“Say rather: that’s the question. He may not think so. I don’t want to flatter you, but I don’t think so myself. There is that in Christo not usually associated with the domestic virtues. He and I are bachelors by instinct—natural, unsophisticated beasts, in no sense educated up to the desirable and blessed, but extremely artificial, state of matrimony. You, on the contrary, are a highly trained creature with all your emotions under your own control, and capable of a consistent unselfishness in the affairs of life which is extremely rare in the male animal. No; merely considered as a husband, Christo would not have a look in with you—could hardly expect to get a vote—certainly not mine.”
“He might make a better husband for Honor.”
“Not for any woman.”
“Don’t tell him so, if you think it.”
“Leave me to do what I deem wise. Like you, I’m solely actuated with a desire to brighten Miss Endicott’s life. But you must not dictate my line of action. My judgment is not wont to be at fault.”
“I know that very well. This great cause is safe in your hands. Put it first. Put it first, before everything. You can’t feel as I do, and as Yeoland must; but you’re a man of very wide sympathy—that’s to say a man of genius more or less. And you’re his first friend—Yeoland’s, I mean; so for his sake—and hers——”
“And yours—yes. I shall glory in bringing this matter to an issue—happy for choice, but definite at any rate—if only to prove all your compliments are not vain. Light your pipe and drink, and fill your glass again.”
“No more—perfect punch—perfect and very warming to the blood.”
“Your punch-maker, like your poet, is born. The hereditary theory of crime, you know.”
“Now I must get up the hill. And thank you, Clack. You’ve lightened my anxiety, I think. We shall meet again before you go?”
“Certainly—unless you are all snowed up at Bear Down. Good-night! Gad! I hope nobody will want me! Not my weather at all.”
The storm screamed out of the darkness. Beyond a narrow halo of light from Courteney Clack’s open door all was whirling snow and gloom; and through it, his head down, Stapledon struggled slowly back to the farm.
The significance of his own position, the bitterness of his defeat, the nature of his loss, and the gnawing sting of suffering had yet to come. This effort to ameliorate the lonely life of Honor by bringing Yeoland back into it was indeed laudable; but mere consciousness of right has no power to diminish the force of great blows or obliterate the awful meaning of a reverse in love. His future stretched desolate as the weather before Myles Stapledon, and these physical exercises under the storm, together with his attempts on behalf of others, might serve to postpone, but could not diminish by one pang, the personal misery in store for him.