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It was the second time that the dark and carefully guarded recesses of the human soul had been opened to him, but Zeal's at least were a man's, and he had listened to him with a certain passive acceptance cut with lightning-like visions of his own ruined future. He had never been invited into a woman's crypts before, and he hardly knew whether he were gratified or repelled.
And the question would always remain if the highest honor would not have commanded confession. He made a deliberate effort to put himself in Zeal's place, and after several failures accomplished the feat.
He walked over to the table and mixed two tumblers of whiskey-and-soda, wondering why he had not thought of it before. They drank without haste, and then Gwynne took the chair opposite Zeal's. "Tell me all about it," he said. "Brathland and I had not been friends for some years. He was a bounder, and an ass in the bargain.
I never worked so hard over one of Jack's elections not only to overcome Zeal's misogyny, which he calls scruples, but I had to fight Strathland every inch of the way. When I think of Jack's desperation if he were pitchforked up into the Peers you do not know him as I do." "Well, he is safe for a time, I fancy. There has been consumption in the family before, and always the slowest sort "
He was about to fling himself against the door when he heard a quick step in the corridor, and before he could retreat Lord Strathland was beside him. There was no defect in the old gentleman's eyesight nor in his perceptions. Zeal's abrupt arrival without servant or luggage, and his more than usual rudeness, had charged him with vague suspicions as well as annoyance.
Are we gone completely smash?" Gwynne was rapidly assuring himself that he was now prepared for the worst, that nothing should knock the props from under him again, that it was the sight of Zeal's face that had upset him; he was not one to collapse before the stiff blows of life. "It is likely. Anyhow, if he lives long enough he'll make a mess of what is left."
He raised his head slowly, and once more Gwynne, as he met those terrible haunted eyes, felt as Adam may have felt when he was being bundled towards the exit of Eden. He braced himself unconsciously, and after Zeal's next words did not relax his body, although his lips turned white and stiff.
Gwynne wondered if he should ever shake off the pall-like memories of the past week: the testimony before the coroner, in which every word had to be weighed as carefully as if life instead of the honor of the worthless dead were at stake, the reporters from the less dignified of the British newspapers, and the American correspondents, two of whom dodged the vigilance of the servants, entered the Abbey by a window, and took snap shots of the lower rooms and of the coffins in the death-chamber; the painful scenes with the women of the family, who had descended in a body; the wearisome interview with the family solicitor, in the course of which he had learned that he was heir to little more than the entailed properties; which must be let in order to insure an income for his three unmarried aunts, Zeal's five girls, and himself; the hideous reiteration of "your lordship" by the obsequious servants, that reproduced in his mind the slow deep notes of the passing bell, tolled in the village for his grandfather and cousin.
In regard to zeal's residing with a man in his understanding, they assigned this reason; because conjugial love defends itself by the understanding, as good does by truth; so the wife defends those things which are common with the man, by her husband; and that on this account zeal is implanted in the men, and by them, and for their sake, in the women.
Zeal's daughters, who bored him inexpressibly, were parcelled out among relatives, and he led a roving life in search of beneficent air for his weary lungs.
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