The Sphinx, Vol. 13, No. 189

              22
THE SPIITNX
January 20th
[all rights reserved.]
First or Second ?
By W. E. NORRIS,
Author of “ Heaps of Money,” “The Dancer in,. Yellow,” “Clarissa Furiosa,” “The Fight for the Crown,” “ Giles Ingilby. 'lie.
It was at the very beginning of the hunting season that Sir Philip Falconer, riding in his usual reckless fashion at a blind fence, met with an accident which proved almost instantaneously fatal, and it was not until after Christmas that his widow, sitting in the drawing-room of the house in Wilton-crescent whither she had removed to make way for >Sir Philip’s heir, told herself luAv iel.eved, how thankful, how overjoyed she was to bo a widow. As this was the lirst time that she had formulated such sentiments, even in the secrecy of her own heart, and as she had never been in the least in love with her late husband, it must be admitted that her honesty was not incon.pat.ble with due regard for conventional propriety.
For the lest, if the had never loved poor Philip she had never disliked that stalwart, good-humoured spoits.man, had never contemplated an event so improbable as his demise, and had done her best to make him happy during the two years of their married life. That the termination of their-married life filled her with a joyous, exhilarating sense of liberty was, perhaps, hardly her fault, nor was it her fault that she had the i best of reasons for longing to be once more deprived of that boon. Her reasons were of the best, and her conduct had been of the best, as had likewise been that of Ronald Shute, who, she knew, was in London ; for she had seen him in Piccadilly, although he had not seen her, on the previous day. Ronald and she had met too late immediately after her marriage, had speedily and avowedly recognised that they ought to have met sooner, and had parted, heroically rejecting less worthy alternatives. Yet it had been understood between them that what destiny had brought to pass w ould and must remain unalterable forever—which, to be sure, is rather a long word. Eighteen months, however, cannot be culled a very long time, nor had Ethel Falconer any misgivings as to her lover’s constancy. Only he had not, so far, called upon her or written to her, and she thought that he was, in all probability, waiting for a signal. What sort of a signal, she wondered, ought it to be '! She essayed several, beginning respectively with “ My ojmi dear Ronald," “Dearest Friend,” and “Dear Captain Shute,” but, not being quite satisfied with the words which followed -ny of these openings, tore them all up and finally despatched one of her cards to his club, merely inscribing upon it: “At home always between five and six o’clock.”
For a week—a while agitated, increasingly anxious week—die (lid remain at home between five and six o’clock every day without result : then, in a fit o. that restless, childish impatience wlnc-h so often, under such circumstances, prompts us to spite ourselves with a vague hope of disappointing our disappointers, she selected the hour that she had named to pay‘a visit to her dressmaker, and when she returned there, sure enough, was Captain Shute s card aw aiting her on the hall-table —a card, too, which bore beneath his name the ominous legend “P.P.O.” Her heart sank within her w hile she stared at those significant capitals. What Could he have meant :
“ Did this gentleman ask if I was at home i” she sharply inquired.
But the st.ipid, impassive butler “ reelly could not call to mind whether lie bad or not; so that she was left to form all manner of miserable, hesitating conjectures. Whither was he going ? Did lie expect her to write to him ? Was it. possible that he could wish to break with her ? The last of these questions she answer d for herself with a robust negative, remembering certain protestations which had been unmistakaolv those of a staunch arid truthful man. The first was answered for her on the following afternoon by a lady friend who chanced to call upon her, and who casually mentioned that Captain Shute had just sailed for the seat of war in South Africa with the corps of Imperial Yeomanry in which he had been so fortunate as to obtain a commission
at the last moment. What the lady did not know, and could not very well be asked, was whether—and, if so, w hy ? -Captain Shute had deferred bis application for employment on active service until the last moment.
Although Lady Falconer did not sleep very well that night, hope and faith came to her aid in the morning. To love is, or should be, to believe, and at a time when every able-bodied man of military training in England could not but feel ashamed to stay idly at home, it was only natural that Ronald should feel bound to go an 1 take part in his country’s battler Natural, also, perhaps, that on the eve of his departure he should have been too busy to transmit through the post what her own perversity had prevented him from Conveying to her by word of mouth. So she wrote him a long letter which was,and was meant to he, susceptible of the interpretation that it might please him to place upon it. Of course, in tile nature of things, she could expect no reply for a matter of two months: but that at the expiration of that time she would receive a reply of some sort seemed certain.
Nothing is certain save that we shall all eventually die, and that the joys and sorrows and heart-breaking anxieties which have belonged to our earthly sojourn w ill evaporate, leaving not a trace of their passage behind them. The spring of 1900, ever memorable to us who have lived through it, with its tidings of victory and irreparable loss, passed into summer. Pretoria was occupied, the struggle was (somewhat prematurely) declared to he at an end, and there was talk of the speedy return of war-worn warriors. But the warriors did not return, nor did successive South African mails bring any letter to Lady i Falconer, whose spirits fell and fell until she 1 found herself w ithin sight of despair. Nevertheless, she did not would not- altogether despair. Amongst her acquaintances were many and many who were situated as she was, though not precluded as she was from bewailing their deprivations. The postal service was notoriously irregular and inefficient. There were plenty of wives who had not heard a word of their husbands for months : plenty of mothers who knew nothing definite about their sons. It w as perfectly possible that a letter addressed to Captain Shut: had failed to reach its destination ; perfectly possible that a letter written by him had gone astray. Such reflections and such quasi-conclusions must he made to count for what the}- are worth by the constitutionally sanguine in default of better.
London, however, with its daily rumours, its continuous stream of visitors, and its unceasing demand upon outward equanimity; ended by becoming unenduiable. Early in July Lady Falconer flitted to a small country house in Kent which she hired for the summer months, and where she--thought it might be easier to do the very hardest thing that poor mortals can be.called upon to undertake—namely, to wait. She did not at first find it so. The days were long in that charming, bosky retreat; the dreadful mail days, when she advanced to the scrutiny of her correspondence with trepidation and thrills of momentary hope, w ere not less dreadful than they had been in Wilton-crescent. But after a time, as it fell out, she found solace in the society of an unexpected fellow-sufferer. This was a certain Miss A lfrey, whose mother, among other neighbouring residents, had called on Lady Falconer, and whose air of patient, subdued melancholy attracted the latter’s notice from the outset, Mrs. Allfrcy and the rest of the family were pleasant, commonplace sort of people, whose ci il-ities exacted no marked return from a stranger still in deep mourning ; but Gladys looked s if she might be worth cultivating, and was accordingly cultivated. The two young women (for Ethel Falconer was Gladys Allfrcy s senior only by a year or two), therefore, made friends, and confidences of a more or less reserved order were in due course exchanged between them. By a strange and uniting coincidence they were—so they mutually confessed to one another—in the same boat, inasmuch as each was miserably longing for a message from the scene of hostilities w hich had hitherto been vouchsafed to neither. There was, in addition, this point of similarity in their cases that both had taken the somewhat unusual step of imploring an explanation from their respective lovers.
Gladys’s story, which she first divulged on a mail day when she chanced to find her new friend in tears, was pathetic, but alas ! scarcely perplexing. It was only too obvious that the man who,
as she said, had unquestionably loved her, and had all but avowed his love, had bolted off to fight the Boers because, when things came to extremes, he had shrunk from taking the irrevocable step of marrying her. For, although she was pretty and her sad little face was enough to soften the hardest heart, she was not one of those women who are apt to make selfish men lose their ; heads. Eady Falconer kne,w this, hut did not say it. Nor did she blame her companion in sorrow for Slaving written to the defaulting swnii to implore an explanation of his inexplicable conduct. Had not she herself done the same thing, or something so like it as to amount virtually to the same ? She accounted for her tears by an avowal similar to that of which she had been made the recipient, and did not insist more than she could help upon the somewhat more solid position that she held by reason of her lover’s having in plain an 1 impassioned language proclaimed himself her lover.
Gladys di<l not see that that made any great difference. She was suie, although she had net been verbally assured, of the fugitive’s devotion ; she was sure that she had n >t been willingly abandoned. The only thing that puzzled her was his persistent, obstinate silence, 'that, with regard to herself, was precisely what puzzled Ethel Falconer. She could understand it easily enough in this poor little girl’s case, hut it would have surprised her a good dial to hear that the poor little girl w as able to fo: in an equally easy surmise respecting here. Of course, they did not tell one another w hat their mournful, compassionate fears were : but they had a good cry together, they embraced tenderly, and they agreed in the long run to throw all responsability upon the Postmaster-General. That their respective epistolary appeals should have been deliberately left unacknowledged was, they both felt, inconceivable.
Thus were they enabled to he of some comfort to one another, and thus were they drawn together during the long, weary summer days which had nothing but periodical renewals of disappointment in store for them. A certain reticent delicacy kept them from demanding or volunteering particulars. Thev were both profoundly w retched. Social exigencies required of both some outward show of cheerfulness. It sufficed them to know what other people did not appear to suspect, and their mutual affection was enhanced by mutual admiration. When autumn w ith gales and rains set leaves flying, and when Lady Falconer, not unwillingly, f irsook her Kentish retreat, she asked Gladys to accompany her to London, an invitation which was gladly accepted. They had by this time pretty well relinquished hope, so far as letters were concerned; yet they clung w ith touching tenacity to the faith that was in them.
“Have you written again?” Ethel asked her her friend one day, after they had established themselves for some little time in Wilton-crescent.
“No,” answered the girl, “I haven’t. Have you
Lady Falconer shook her head. “I don’t think I could have helped writing if he had been wounded or ill ; hut his name has never appeared in the lists of casualties, arid 1 feel as if I must leave it to him to make the next mo\e, convinced though 1 am that there is a misunderstanding which will be cleared up some day.
“That is just how 1 feci. Gladys returned. “So long as be is safe and sound I < an t quite bring myself to ask him a second time what is the matter, but in my heart I am as sure cf him as I am of my own existence. So would you he if you knew him,” she added quickly, for it seemed to her that she detected a suggestion of pity and incredulity in the other’s eyes.
Had site been in her hostess’s bedroin on the following morning when the news; apers arrived,
; she would have seen soft brown organs of vision illumined by other and more turbulent emotions, for amongst the names of sundry invalided officers l who had just disembarked at Southampton was reported one the sight of which brought Lady Falconer’s heart into her mouth. Ronald had returned, then, neither wounded nor very ill, since it was stated that the invalids, with a few specified exceptions,had benefited greatly from the voyage. He had returned, and would doubtless be soon within reach. At any rate, a note addressed to his club would certainly he delivered to him. Should she despatch that note or should she forbear? The question might have been referred to Gladys, only that young lady, who was an early riser, had already gone out