by Bram Stoker
“MY DEAR MISS HAYES:
“Thank you very much for your most kind letter and for all that you have said and left unsaid. I too had a dull journey from New York and found London duller still. As a town it seems to have fallen off; but it will brighten up again I am sure before long! I am glad you are all well. I suppose your party will re-unite after Mrs. Ogilvie’s cure has been completed. It is strange how we are all taking to motor cars. I am myself getting one, and I hope in the early summer to have some lovely drives. I am looking out for a companion. But it is a difficult thing to get exactly the one you want, and without such it is lonely work. Even going the utmost pace possible could not keep one’s mind away from the want When I went to America that time I was feeling lonely and dull; and I have felt lonelier and duller ever since. But when I get my motor I hope all that will shortly cease. I hope that when you arrive — if you and Mrs. Ogilvie do come over — that you will honour my car by riding in it I shall hope to have some one with me whom you must like very much — you seem to like nice people and nice people seem to be fond of you. I greatly fear it will not be possible for me to see Colonel Ogilvie in London, for I have to be away very shortly on some business, and I probably shall not be back in time; but I am going up North in a few weeks in my new car if it is ready — and I shall hope to see my friends. Perhaps Colonel Ogilvie and some of his friends will come for a drive with me. Won’t you let me know where he will be staying after he leaves London. Please give, if occasion serves, my warm remembrance to all. I have not forgotten that delightful conversation we had before tea the day I called. Tell Miss Joy that I wish we could renew and continue it Miss Ogilvie must be a very happy girl to have, in addition to such nice parents who love her so much, an aunt like you so much her own age, so sympathetic, so understanding. I cannot tell you how much I am obliged to you for writing. I look eagerly for another letter.
Believe me, “Yours very sincerely.”
There he hesitated. He had meant never to write again the name Richard Hardy. Here the letter seemed to demand it. He had already thought the matter over in all ways and from all points of view and had, he thought, made up his mind to go through with the fraud as long as it was absolutely necessary. There was no other way. But now when he had to write out the lie — as it appeared to him to be — his very soul revolted at it. It seemed somehow to dishonour Joy. Since he had looked into the depth of her eyes, scruples had come to him which had not ever before troubled him. It was unworthy of her, and of himself, to continue a lie. And so with him began again the endless circle of reasoning on a basis of what was false.
A lie, little or big, seems gifted with immortality. At its creation it seems to receive that vitality which belongs to noxious things. The germs which preserve disease survive the quick lime of the plague-pit and continue after the seething mass of corruption has settled into earthly dust; and when the very bones have been resolved into their elements the waiting germs come forth on disturbance of the soil strong and baneful as ever.
Sometimes Athlyne grumbled to himself of the hardness of his lot. It was too bad that from such a little thing as taking another name, and merely for the purpose of a self-protective investigation of a lie, he should find himself involved in such a net-work of deceit. Other people did things a hundred times worse every day of their lives. He had often done so himself; but nothing ever came of it. But now, when his whole future might depend upon it, he was face to face with an actual danger. If Colonel Ogilvie quarrelled with him about it that would mean the end of all. Joy would never quarrel with her father; of that he felt as surely as that he loved her. All unknown to himself Athlyne had an instinctive knowledge of character. Any one who had ever seen him exercise the faculty would have been astonished by the rapidity of its working. The instant he had seen Joy he had recognised her qualities. He had understood young Breckenridge at a glance; otherwise he was too shrewd a man to trust him as he had done. It is not often that a man will entrust the first comer in a crowd with a valuable horse. To this man, too, an utter stranger, he had entrusted his secret, the only person who now knew it on the entire American continent. So also with Colonel Ogilvie. He was assured in his inner consciousness that that old gentleman would be hard to convince of the necessity for disguise. There was something about his fine stern-cut features — -so exquisitely modified in his daughter — and in his haughty bearing which was obnoxious to any form of deceit One of these grumbling fits came on him now, and so engrossed him that he quite forgot to sign the letter. It was in the post “box when he recollected the omission. He rejoiced when he did so that he had not written the lie. It was queer how sensitive his conscious was becoming!
One immediate effect of the awakened conscience was that he went about a motor car that very afternoon. He had said to Miss Judy that he was getting one, and his words had to be made good. Moreover he had, in addition to the train of reasons induced by Miss Judy’s mention of Colonel Ogilvie’s getting a car, a sort of intuition that it would be of service to him. Of service to him, meant of course, in his present state of mind with regard to Joy — of service in furthering his love affair. He had wished for a horse and got one, and it had brought him to Joy. Now he wanted a motor... The chain of reasoning seemed so delightfully simple that it would be foolish to dispute it. Sub-conscious intuition supplied all lacunae.
The logic of fact seemed to support that of theory. He looked in at his club to find the name of a motor agency. There in the hall he met an old diplomatic friend, who after greeting him said:
“This is good-bye as well.”
“How so?” he asked.
“I am off for Persia. Ballentyre got a stroke just as he was starting and they sent for me in a hurry and offered me the post. It is too good to refuse, so I am booked for another three years. I was promising myself a long rest, or a spell in a civilised place anyhow. It is too bad, just when I was expecting home my new Delaunay-Belleville car which has been nearly a year in hand.”
“Do you take the car with you?” asked Athlyne feeling a queer kind of beating of his heart.
“No. It would be useless there; at all events until I see what the country and the roads are like. I was just off to the agents to tell them to sell it for me.”
“Strange we should meet. I came here to look up the address of an agent. I want to buy a car.”
“Look here, Athlyne; why not take over this? I shall have to sell it at a sacrifice, and why shouldn’t you have the advantage. I’ll let you have it cheap; I would rather clear it all up before I go.”
“All right, old chap. Ill take it. What’s the figure?”
“I agreed to pay £1,000. You may have it at what you think fair!”
“All right. Can we settle it now?”
“By all means.” Athlyne took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque which he handed to the other.
“I say,” said Chetwynd. “You have made this for the full sum.”
“Quite so! What else could I offer. Why man, do you think I would beat you down because you are in a hurry. If there is any huckstering it is I who should pay. I get my car at once, the very car I wanted. I should have to wait another year.”
Three days after, the car arrived. Athlyne had spent the time in getting lessons at a garage and learning something of the mechanism. He was already a fair mechanic and a fine driver of horses; so that before another week was out he had learned to know his car. He got a good chauffeur so that he would always have help in case of need and before the next letter arrived from Miss Judy he was able to fly about all over the country. The new car was a beauty. It was 100- 110 h. p. and could do sixty miles an hour easily.
The next letter which he received from Miss Hayes was short and devoid, so far as he could discern after much study, of any cryptic meaning whatever. She thus made allusion to the fact that he had not signed his letter “By the way I notice that you forgot to sign your letter. I suppose you were thinking at the time of other things.” The later sentence was underlin
ed. The information in the letter was that Colonel Ogilvie and “his daughter” expected to be in London on the Saturday following her letter and would stay at Brown’s Hotel, Albemarle Street “where I have no doubt they will be happy to see you if you should chance to be in London at the time. I think Lucius intends to write you.”
The latter sentence was literally gall to him. He knew that he must not be in London during their stay there. To be away was the only decent way of avoiding meeting them. He must not meet Colonel Ogilvie until he had made certain of
Joy’s feeling towards him, for he could not make his identity known till he had that certainty. He could then explain his position... The rest of the possibilities remained unspoken; but they were definite in his own mind.
As he had to go away he thought it would be well to study up the various branches of the Ogilvie as well as of the Ogilvie family. He would then make a tour on his own account to the various places where were their ancient seats. As Colonel Ogilvie was interested in the matter some knowledge on his part might lead... somewhere.
CHAPTER 10
A LETTER
Before he set out for London, Colonel Ogilvie wrote a letter to “Mr. Hardy” which he sent to the address given on the card handed to him at New York. He had thought over the matter of writing with the seriousness which he always gave to social matters. Indeed he was careful to be even more punctilious than usual with this young man; firstly because he had got the idea that his overtures had not been cordially received and he wished to be just, secondly because he felt he must not forget the great service rendered to his daughter and himself. In his letter he apprised Mr. Hardy that with his daughter he was coming to London for a week or more, that they would be staying at Brown’s Hotel, Albemarle Street, and that they would be very pleased to see him there if he would honour them with a visit, and that perhaps he would make it convenient to dine with them an evening which he himself might select. He also told him that Mrs. Ogilvie and her sister were to remain some weeks longer in Italy, and that they would join him in the North of England, whence they would go all together to some bracing part of Scotland, to be decided later on when the time came for the aftercure. Of course, as he did not know that Athlyne was already in correspondence with Miss Judy, and was particular to give details of his future movements. Before posting it he showed the letter to Joy so that he might have her opinion as to whether all was correct. Joy was secretly fluttered but she preserved admirably her self-control and came well through the ordeal, leaving no suspicion in the mind of her father as to the real state of things. She was now very deeply in love; the days that had passed had each and all fed the flame of her incipient passion. Time and the brain working together have a period of growth of their own which the physiopsychistsI have called “unconscious cerebration,” a sort of intellectual process whereby crude thoughts are throughout the darkness of suspended effort developed into logical results. Again, one of Nature’s mysterious workings; again one of her analogies to the inner and outer worlds of growth. As the hibernating seed, as the child in the womb, so the thought of man. Growth without ceasing, in light or darkness. Logical development, from the gates of life to the gates of Death.
Joy was so deeply in love that all her thoughts, all her acts, all her hopings and fearings were tinged by it. Dreams need a physical basis somewhere; and whatever is the outward condition of man or woman so will be the mind. Whatever the inward, so will be the outward; each is the true index to the other. Her father, though an acute enough man in other respects, was sublimely unconscious of any change in his little girl; indeed he held her in his mind as but a child to whom the realities of life had not yet presented themselves. And yet even as a father he was feeling the effects of her developed affection. All the sweetness of her childhood had ripened. Somehow her nature had become more buoyant, more elastic. Sweetness and thoughtful understanding of his wishes seemed to breathe from her. Now and again were languorous moments when her whole being seemed to yield itself involuntarily to a wish outside her own. To a woman these are times of danger. For when the will ceases, passivity is no longer negative; it is simply a doubling of the external domination — as though an active spirit had been breathed into inertness. There are many readings to any of the Parables. When certain devils have been cast out and the house has been swept and garnished may it not be that spirits other than devils may find place therein. May it not also be that there is a virtue in even selfishness; if only that its protective presence keeps out devils that would fain enter the house where it abides.
With a spirit of meekness Joy waited the coming of the friend who had been bidden. She had every confidence that he would come. True that he had not written to her; but she had seen his unsigned letter to Judy, and into its barrenness had read meanings of her own. How could he not come to her when she would have so gladly flown to him? Besides there was always with her the memory of that rapturous moment when he had spoken her name: “Joy look at me!” It was not hard to remember that; it was the only time she had heard her name upon his lips. As the weeks had gone by, that little sentence impulsively spoken had arrived at the dignity of a declaration of passion. It had grown in her mind from a request to a command; and she felt the sweetness of being commanded by a man she loved. In that moment she had accepted him as her Master; and that acceptance on a woman’s part remains as a sacred duty of obedience so long as love lasts. This is one of the mysteries of love. Like all other mysteries, easy of acceptance to those who believe; an acceptance which needs no doubting investigation, no proof, no consideration of any kind whatever. She had faith in him, and where Faith reigns Patience ceases to be a virtue.
Her father waited also, though not in the same meekness of spirit. Indeed his feeling was fast becoming an exasperation in which the feeling of gratitude was merging. He felt that he had done all that was right and correct with regard to the young man. He had gone out of his way to be nice to him; but with only the result of insult — that was the way in which he was beginning to construe the silence of Mr. Hardy. Insult to his daughter as well as himself; and that was a thing which could not be brooked from anyone no matter how strong or how numerous were his claims for leniency! Joy saw that there was some cause of displeasure with her father, and with a sinking heart had to attribute it to the real cause. She knew — which her father did not — from his letter to Judy that Mr. Hardy would have to be away from London just at the time of their visit; but she was afraid to speak lest she should precipitate catastrophe. It was not that she had fear in the ordinary sense. Much as she loved her father she would face him if necessary. But she felt that it would be unwise to force the issue prematurely; her father was a man of such strong prejudices — he called them convictions! — that once they were aroused they mastered his judgment What might happen if he should give them scope on this occasion! Her heart sank more deeply still at the very thought.
In her anxiety she took what was probably the wisest course; she kept him perpetually busy, trotting about with her to see the sights of London. This was a pleasure which she had long promised herself with — since the adventure with the run-away horse — the added interest of having present a nice Englishman to point out and explain. This special charm had now to be foregone; and the denial made her secretly sad. However, the best anodyne to pain is pain; her anxiety regarding her father’s case was a counteractant to her own. Father and daughter were so busy, morning noon and night, and the girl appeared to be so tired when the day’s programme as laid down had been exhausted, that occasion was lacking for consideration of a disagreeable subject. Towards the end of the first week, however, Colonel Ogilvie’s patience began to fail. He felt that he must speak of his annoyance to some one, and there was no choice. Joy felt that the moment had come, and she did not flinch. She had a grim foreboding that there would be something said which would give her pain to hear. Her hands were tied. She could not even mention that Mr. Hardy was away; her father would be sure to ask how she knew it. If he did s
o, she would not dare to tell him; for she knew well that if he learned that the man who had not even answered his own letter was in secret correspondence with the ladies of his own family — that is how he would put it — the fact would add fuel to the flame, would change chagrin to fury. And so she steeled herself to the quiet endurance of suffering.
The blow fell at breakfast time when her father had looked through the few letters which lay beside his plate.
“Well, I do think that that young man’s rudeness is unpardonable!”
Joy looked up with a pleasant smile which belied the chilly feeling about her heart. She felt that she must pretend ignorance; her father might, later on, hold a too ready acceptance as suspicious:
“What, Daddy? Who? Whose rudeness?”
“That — that gentleman whom I asked to dine with us. Mr. Hardy.”
“Perhaps he may not have got your letter.”
“How do you mean, daughter? He must have got it; I directed it to the address he gave me himself.”
“But Daddy, he may be away. You remember he told you at dinner that day in the Holland that he had important business. It may have been prolonged you know. He may not even be in London.”
“Then he should see that his letters are duly sent on to him.”
“Certainly he ought. But perhaps Daddy he’s not as careful as we are. He may not be a man of business!” Colonel Ogilvie smiled:
“I’m afraid that is a very bad argument my dear. You have just used the opposite!”
“How so, Daddy?” she asked wrinkling up her brows.
“You said he might be away on business!” He was so pleased with his combating of her argument that her purpose was effected; he abandoned the subject — for a time.
The next morning, however, he renewed it again under similar circumstances:
“I think, my dear, that we had better give up any idea of keeping that young man on the list of our friends. It is quite evident that he does not care to continue our acquaintanceship.” Joy suffered much this time; all the more because there was nothing that she could say which would be wise. She had to content herself with a commonplace acceptance of his views. So she answered with as steady a voice as she could manage: