A few inches of pasteboard,it became the battlefield on which the souls of Leonard and his wife contended.Why did he not say,"A lady took my umbrella,another gave me this that I might call for my umbrella"?
Because Jacky would have disbelieved him?Partly,but chiefly because he was sentimental.No affection gathered round the card,but it symbolized the life of culture,that Jacky should never spoil.At night he would say to himself,"Well,at all events,she doesn't know about that card.Yah!done her there!"Poor Jacky!she was not a bad sort,and had a great deal to bear.She drew her own conclusion--she was only capable of drawing one conclusion--and in the fulness of time she acted upon it.
All the Friday Leonard had refused to speak to her,and had spent the evening observing the stars.On the Saturday he went up,as usual,to town,but he came not back Saturday night nor Sunday morning,nor Sunday afternoon.
The inconvenience grew intolerable,and though she was now of a retiring habit,and shy of women,she went up to Wickham Place.Leonard returned in her absence.The card,the fatal card,was gone from the pages of Ruskin,and he guessed what had happened.
"Well?"he had exclaimed,greeting her with peals of laughter."I know where you've been,but you don't know where I've been."Jacky sighed,said,"Len,I do think you might explain,"and resumed domesticity.
Explanations were difficult at this stage,and Leonard was too silly--or it is tempting to write,too sound a chap to attempt them.His reticence was not entirely the shoddy article that a business life promotes,the reticence that pretends that nothing is something,and hides behind the Daily Telegraph .The adventurer,also,is reticent,and it is an adventure for a clerk to walk for a few hours in darkness.You may laugh at him,you who have slept nights on the veldt,with your rifle beside you and all the atmosphere of adventure past.
And you also may laugh who think adventures silly.But do not be surprised if Leonard is shy whenever he meets you,and if the Schlegels rather than Jacky hear about the dawn.
That the Schlegels had not thought him foolish became a permanent joy.He was at his best when he thought of them.
It buoyed him as he journeyed home beneath fading heavens.Somehow the barriers of wealth had fallen,and there had been--he could not phrase it--a general assertion of the wonder of the world."My conviction,"says the mystic,"gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it,"and they had agreed that there was something beyond life's daily grey.He took off his top-hat and smoothed it thoughtfully.
He had hitherto supposed the unknown to be books,literature,clever conversation,culture.One raised oneself by study,and got upsides with the world.
But in that quick interchange a new light dawned.Was that something"walking in the dark among the surburban hills?
He discovered that he was going bareheaded down Regent Street.London came back with a rush.Few were about at this hour,but all whom he passed looked at him with a hostility that was the more impressive because it was unconscious.He put his hat on.It was too big;his head disappeared like a pudding into a basin,the ears bending outwards at the touch of the curly brim.He wore it a little backwards,and its effect was greatly to elongate the face and to bring out the distance between the eyes and the moustache.
Thus equipped,he escaped criticism.No one felt uneasy as he titupped along the pavements,the heart of a man ticking fast in his chest.
