The Armistice was not more than three weeks old when Tod walked into Mr. Burgetrode’s private room in the Hotel Europa. Mr. Julian Burgetrode had been the Controller of Something during the latter part of the war, and his department inhabited the whole of the hotel. A certain notorious daily paper had said ferocious things about Mr. Burgetrode, referring to him as the “Autocrat with the Red Tie,” yet nothing had happened. Many people had discovered that it was impossible to hurt Mr. Burgetrode; he walked over them with a grim and humorous smile, and his reply was his silence.
“Hallo, Tod! I didn’t know you were on leave.”
He got up briskly out of his leather chair, his blue eyes a-shine, that strong, long-fingered hand of his out to be grasped. Julian Burgetrode’s eyes became quite different when he looked at Tod, for Tod had given him the great thing that he had lacked.
“I’m just off the train, sir.”
Mr. Burgetrode’s eyes absorbed Tod in a keen stare. This was not the normal Tod, but a strong man inwardly excited, burning from some blow or shock of shame, a man whose mouth had been shut tight over words that could only be uttered once or twice in a lifetime.
“Sit down.”
Mr. Burgetrode turned to his private secretary, but that discreet man, a student of the Burgetrode climatology, an observer of cyclonic pressures and weather-cocks, was slipping out of the room.
“I see no one for half an hour, Mr. Jukes.”
“Quite so, sir.”
Tod had not sat down, nor had Mr. Burgetrode. They stood facing each other.
“Special leave, Tod?”
“Special leave.”
“What’s happened?”
Tod pulled a letter out of his pocket-book.
“Read that.”
Mr. Burgetrode sat down in his chair, but Tod walked up and down, looking at the books, the maps and diagrams on the walls, restless, excited, one great emotion locked up within him. Mr. Burgetrode seemed to take a very long time reading that letter, and Tod kept giving him quick and impatient glances.
But he had read it at last, and laid it down on his desk.
“Well?”
His blue eyes betrayed nothing.
“Why didn’t she tell me before?” said Tod, with sudden passion. “Good God, why didn’t she tell me before!”
Mr. Burgetrode’s eyes gave a faint gleam. There was a very human cry in Tod’s voice, an emotion that was deeper than a disillusioned man’s anger and humiliation.
“Well, she has told you,” said Mr. Burgetrode quite gently.
Tod faced about.
“Yes, but this has been going on for months. She says so, she admits it. If only she had been honest with me—months ago.”
“What does it matter, man, if you are free now?”
“It may have made all the difference in the world to me,” said Tod. “I wanted to be free then, but I couldn’t behave like a cad.”
And then Mr. Burgetrode understood. His face seemed to grow a little older, a little thinner, the face of a man who found it difficult to adjust his patience to youth’s sudden passionate surprises.
“So that is what has happened,” he said quietly; “sit down and tell me.”
But Tod remained standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the fire. The war had broadened his sympathies and quickened his understanding. Years ago he would not have thought it possible for this fierce old man to be hurt, but now he knew that it was otherwise. And Tod was touched.
“I have never told anyone else.”
“Is that so?”
“I wanted to come straight to you. It’s not because I feel that I owe you debts that I can never repay—it’s because——”
He hesitated, and gave Mr. Burgetrode a queer, shy, human look, a look that made something cry out in the older man’s heart.
“Because of what, Tod?”
“Because you matter. Because you have been the only friend in England that mattered. You have been such a big man to me. It’s like coming to a father.”
Mr. Burgetrode seemed to sink more deeply into his chair.
“Is that how you feel, Tod?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it. Who is she?”
Tod pulled out a pipe, filled it with quick and jerky movements of the fingers, and looked again at the fire.
“She is French.”
“A Parisienne?”
“Oh, no; I met her in a village—last spring. She teaches in the village school. Her people are peasants, well-to-do peasants, gentlefolk in all that counts.”
“How old?”
“Claire—Claire must be twenty-four. The most exquisitely wise thing in petticoats I ever met, and clean as a bit of white light.”
“So she teaches in the school, Tod.”
“Yes, she loves children,” said Tod; “she’s so much of a child herself. And she can run a house, and cook, and mend things, and she has read books that I never heard of. I don’t suppose she had had any new clothes since 1914, and it suited her. She was a bit of France, a France that our people don’t understand.”
Tod was looking at the fire, and Mr. Burgetrode was looking at Tod.
“And so it just happened?”
“Yes, it just happened.”
“And you went away and never told her?”
“I never told her, but I think she knew.”
Then Tod sat down by the fire with his back half turned to Mr. Burgetrode. He was talking out of the deeps of his heart, and the old man knew it.
“I couldn’t tell her, and yet it was hard, most damnably hard. But then I had never had what other men have had, some woman to think of, and perhaps—children. You don’t know how I wanted it at times. I only had the men, the battalion. I suppose this was bound to happen to me, sooner or later. It’s rather hard that it may have happened too late.”
“You haven’t written?”
“Never. It wouldn’t have been fair. Don’t you know how there are some people you can’t trifle with; it would be like cheating a child.”
“I know,” said Mr. Burgetrode; “it would be like me cheating you.”
He got up and came and stood by Tod.
“So you will go back to this village?”
“I must, even if it’s to find that she’s no longer free.”
“And supposing she is free?”
“I shall ask her to marry me. I want her. You don’t know how I want her.”
Mr. Burgetrode smiled at the fire.
“Tod,” he said; “I’m going to be honest with you. When you first told me this I was angry. I was ready to say all sorts of clever and cynical things, but somehow you always kill the cynic in me. Now that first marriage of yours——”
“I know; it was just sex.”
“And now——?”
“I suppose it is sex; but it is something so different. She’s so natural, so simple, and yet so clever. There is nothing smart about her in the modern sense. She’s as natural as the peasant life they live out there; she’d be natural anywhere, just like a flower or an unspoilt child. You might call me the biggest fool on earth, but I know that I am not a fool. To me it’s obvious; instinct—I suppose.”
“You are not a fool, Tod. The worst woman to manage is the greedy woman, the superficially smart woman. The picture of your little schoolmistress touches me. But supposing she refused to leave France?”
Tod glanced up sharply.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Besides, it’s all a dream as yet. I’m not going near her till I’m free.”
“That may mean months.”
“I don’t care. I’m not going there with any excuses. She has eyes that make any sort of excuse look mean.”
“I’m with you utterly. But to return to that question. Supposing she refused to leave France? She’s a Frenchwoman.”
“I don’t think she would refuse,” said Tod; “if she cared for me enough to marry me.”
“Would you turn Frenchman if she did refuse?”
Tod had to face that question, the question that mattered to Mr. Burgetrode.
“I would,” he admitted, “but I don’t think the need would arise. A man has to work where his farm lies, and my farm lies over here. Claire would see that at once, she always looks straight at the heart of things. But I’m dreaming again.”
He relit his pipe and stood up.
“I have had more than that half-hour, sir; I’m wasting your time.”
“This is my time, Tod. The things that concern you will always concern me.”
He made a movement towards his desk chair, but a sudden little lift of Tod’s head, a look of the eyes, half shy, half proud, but wholly affectionate, held him where he was.
“Do you think I don’t appreciate all this? I’m not just a wild boy who has got lost in his great romance.”
“I like the way you have come to me, Tod.”
“Of course I came to you. You have been my one friend at home through all the war. Those letters of yours used to help me, give me a sort of trumpet call when I was down. You are always telling me to be big. I have tried to be big, and you have been big to me to-day.”
Mr. Burgetrode gave a queer and quiet laugh.
“Have I? Perhaps because you have taught me to swallow my own medicine.”
“I want to come back and work for you,” said Tod; “I have been thinking of that—for years. And if Claire came into my life, she would not spoil your work and mine. She’s big in her simple, wise way. I think you would get rather fond of Claire. She’s like my mother—behind her man all the time, not meddling or fussing, but helping with all her heart. There we are, dreams again!”
“I accept the dream,” said Mr. Burgetrode, with strange softness, “and I thank you for letting me share it.”
He turned sharply and went to his desk. His emotion translated itself into action, and found self-expression there. He began to write a letter. Tod remained by the fire.
Mr. Burgetrode finished his letter.
“Tod.”
Tod turned to him.
“This other affair had better be settled at once. Now—about the man?”
“Goldstein? Oh, he has plenty of money. He’s the sort of beast who would have made a million during the war. I wish I could be sure that he could never treat her like a cad. She—was—my wife, after all.”
“Tod,” said the big man, “don’t try and make yourself responsible for anybody else’s bed. You cannot insure happiness for others. Now, I have written this letter.”
“Yes.”
“It is to my own firm of solicitors. I have told them that this divorce must be pushed through at the earliest possible moment. You had better go to them, because what I have asked them to do will be done. There should be no difficulty. She has gone off with the man and there will be no defence.”
He handed Tod the letter.
“Now, one thing more—money.”
“I don’t want any money,” said Tod; “I have saved a little, and there will be my gratuity. Besides——”
“You couldn’t take it? That’s true; not now, and for such a purpose.”
And then he smiled at Tod.
“Has Claire a dot?”
“I haven’t asked her. And we are still dreaming.”
“Perhaps not. I shall give Claire her dot. Now, what about to-morrow, Tod? Where are you staying?”
“Nowhere—yet.”
“Go to the Melton. It is close to my club; and take my card. And to-morrow—what about a long tramp in the country? I want to talk, and I want you to talk.”
“What about?” asked Tod, with a smile.
“Well, if you can forget Claire for a moment, about what the war has taught you.”
“You will have to include yourself in that, sir,” said Tod.