"Four years ago tonight," Aynesworth said, looking round the club smoking room thoughtfully, "we bade you farewell in this same room!"Lovell, wan and hollow-eyed, his arm in a sling, his once burly frame gaunt and attenuated with disease, nodded.
"And I told you the story," he remarked, "of--the man who had been my friend.""Don't let us talk of Wingrave tonight!" Aynesworth exclaimed with sudden emphasis.
"Why not?" Lovell knocked the ashes from his pipe, and commenced leisurely to refill it. "Why not, indeed? I mean to go and see him as soon as I can get about a little better.""If your description of him," Aynesworth said, "was a faithful one, you will find him changed."Lovell laughed a little bitterly.
"The years leave their mark," he said, "upon us all--upon all of us, that is, who step out into the open where the winds of life are blowing. Look at me! Iweighed eighteen stone when I left England. I had the muscles of a prize fighter and nerves of steel. Today I turn the scale at ten stone and am afraid to be alone in the dark.""You will be yourself again in no time," Aynesworth declared cheerfully.
"I shall be better than I am now, I hope," Lovell answered, "but I shall never be the man I was. I have seen--God grant that I may some day forget what Ihave seen! No wonder that my nerves have gone! I saw a Russian correspondent, a strong brutal-looking man, go off into hysterics; I saw another run amuck through the camp, shooting right and left, and, finally, blow his own brains out. Many a night I sobbed myself to sleep. The men who live through tragedies, Aynesworth, age fast. I expect that I shall find Wingrave changed.""I would give a good deal," Aynesworth declared, "to have known him when you did."Lovell nodded.
"You should be able to judge of the past," he said, "by the present. Four years of--intimate companionship with any man should be enough!""Perhaps!" Aynesworth declared. "And yet I can assure you that I know no more of Wingrave today than when I was first attracted to him by your story and became his secretary. It is a humiliating confession, but it is the truth.""That is why you remain with him," Lovell remarked.
"I suppose so! I have often meant to leave, but somehow, when the time comes, I stay on. His life seems to be made up of brutalities, small and large. He ruins a man with as little compunction as one could fancy him, in his younger days, pulling the legs from a fly. I have never seen him do a kindly action.
And yet, all the time I find myself watching for it. A situation arises, and Isay to myself: Now I am going to see something different.' I never do, and yet I always expect it. Am I boring you, Lovell?""Not in the least!" Go on! Anything concerning Wingrave interests me.""It is four years ago, you know, since I went to him. My first glimpse of his character was the cold brutality with which he treated Lady Ruth when she went to see him. Then we went down to his country place in Cornwall. There was a small child there, whose father had been the organist of the village, and who had died penniless. There was no one to look after her, no one to save her from the charity schools and domestic service afterwards. The church was on Wingrave's estate, it should have been his duty to augment the ridiculous salary the dead man had received. Would you believe it, Wingrave refused to do a single thing for that child! He went down there like a vandal to sell the heirlooms and pictures which had belonged to his family for generations. He had no time, he told me coldly, for sentiment.""It sounds brutal enough," Lovell admitted. "What became of the child?""One of her father's relations turned up after all and took care of her,"Aynesworth said. "Wingrave knew nothing about that, though. Then on the voyage across the Atlantic, there was a silly, pretty little woman on board who was piqued by Wingrave's indifference and tried to flirt with him. In a few days she was his slave. She was going home to her husband, and you would have thought that any decent fellow would have told her that she was a little fool, and let her go. But not Wingrave! She was landing with him at New York, but someone amongst the passengers, who guessed what was up, sent a Marconigram to her husband, and he met us at the landing stage.""Nothing came of that, then?"
"No, but it wasn't Wingrave's fault. Then he began dealing with some shares in a mine--THE mine, you know. They were supposed to be worthless, and one boy, who was a little young to the game, sold him too many. Wingrave was bleeding these brokers for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the boy came and asked to be let off by paying his whole fortune to escape being hammered. Wingrave refused. I believe if the boy hadn't just been married, he'd have blown his brains out!"Lovell laughed.
