Rob had a silk hat now, and he thrust it on his head, meaning to run downstairs to tell Simms of his good fortune. He was in the happy frame of mind that makes a man walk round improbabilities, and for the first time since he came to London he felt confident of the future, without becoming despondent immediately afterwards. The future, like the summer, was an allegory for Miss Abinger. For the moment Rob's heart filled with compassion for Simms. The one thing our minds will not do is leave our neighbours alone, and Rob had some time before reached the conclusion that Simms's nature had been twisted by a disappointment in love. There was nothing else that could account for his fits of silence, his indifference to the future. He was known to have given the coat off his back to some miserable creature in the street, and to have been annoyed when he discovered that a friend saw him do it. Though Simms's walls were covered with engravings, Rob remembered all at once that there was not a female figure in one of them.
To sympathise with others in a love affair is delightful to every one who feels that he is all right himself. Rob went down to Simms's rooms with a joyous step and a light heart. The outer door stood ajar, and as he pushed it open he heard a voice that turned his face white. From where he stood paralysed he saw through the dark passage into the sitting-room. Mary Abinger was standing before the fireplace, and as Rob's arm fell from the door, Simms bent forward and kissed her.
Chapter XI.
Rob is Struck Down
Rob turned from Simms's door and went quietly downstairs, looking to the beadle, who gave him a good-evening at the mouth of the inn, like a man going quietly to his work. He could not keep his thoughts. They fell about him in sparks, raised by a wheel whirling so fast that it seemed motionless.
Sleep-walkers seldom come to damage until they awake; and Rob sped on, taking crossings without a halt; deaf to the shouts of cabmen, blind to their gesticulations. When you have done Oxford Circus you can do anything; but he was not even brought to himself there, though it is all savage lands in twenty square yards. For a time he saw nothing but that scene in Simms's chambers, which had been photographed on his brain. The light of his life had suddenly been turned out, leaving him only the last thing he saw to think about.
By and by he was walking more slowly, laughing at himself. Since he met Mary Abinger she had lived so much in his mind that he had not dared to think of losing her. He had only given himself fits of despondency for the pleasure of dispelling them. Now all at once he saw without prejudice the Rob Angus who had made up his mind to carry off this prize, and he cut such a poor figure that he smiled grimly at it. He realised as a humorous conception that this uncouth young man who was himself must have fancied that he was, on the whole, less unworthy of Miss Abinger than were most of the young men she was likely to meet. With the exaggerated humility that comes occasionally to men in his condition, without, however, feeling sufficiently at home to remain long, he felt that there was everything in Simms a girl could find lovable, and nothing in himself. He was so terribly open that any one could understand him, while Simms was such an enigma as a girl would love to read. His own clumsiness contrasted as disastrously with Simms's grace of manner as his blunt talk compared with Simms's wit. Not being able to see himself with the eyes of others, Rob noted only one thing in his favour, his fight forward; which they, knowing, for instance, that he was better to look at than most men, would have considered his chief drawback. Rob in his calmer moments had perhaps as high an opinion of his capacity as the circumstances warranted, but he never knew that a good many ladies felt his presence when he passed them.
Most men are hero and villain several times in a day, but Rob went through the whole gamut of sensations in half an hour, hating himself the one moment for what seemed another's fault the next, fancying now that he was blessing the union of Mary with the man she cared for, and, again, that he had Simms by the throat. He fled from the fleeting form of woman, and ran after it.
Simms had deceived him, had never even mentioned Silchester, had laughed at the awakening that was coming to him. All these months they had been waiting for Mary Abinger together, and Simms had not said that when she came it would be to him. Then Rob saw what a foolish race these thoughts ran in his brain, remembering that he had only seen Simms twice for more than a moment, and that he himself had never talked of Silchester. He scorned his own want of generosity, and recalled his solicitude for Simms's welfare an hour before.
Rob saw his whole future life lying before him. The broken-looking man with the sad face aged before his time, who walked alone up Fleet Street, was Rob Angus, who had come to London to be happy. Simms would ask him sometimes to his house to see her, but it was better that he should not go. She would understand why, if her husband did not. Her husband! Rob could not gulp down the lump in his throat. He rushed on again, with nothing before him but that picture of Simms kissing her.
Simms was not worthy of her. Why had he always seemed an unhappy, disappointed man if the one thing in the world worth striving for was his? Rob stopped abruptly in the street with the sudden thought, Was it possible that she did not care for Simms? Could that scene have had any other meaning? He had once heard Simms himself say that you never knew what a woman meant by anything until she told you, and probably not even then. But he saw again the love in her eyes as she looked up into Simms's face. All through his life he would carry that look with him.
They took no distinct shape, but wild ways of ending his misery coursed through his brain, and he looked on calmly at his own funeral. A terrible stolidity seized him, and he conceived himself a monster from whom the capacity to sympathise had gone. Children saw his face and fled from him.
He had left England far behind, and dwelt now among wild tribes who had not before looked upon a white face. Their sick came to him for miracles, and he either cured them or told them to begone. He was not sure whether he was a fiend or a missionary.
Then something remarkable happened, which showed that Rob had not mistaken his profession. He saw himself in the editorial chair that he had so often coveted, and Mary Abinger, too, was in the room. Always previously when she had come between him and the paper he had been forced to lay down his pen, but now he wrote on and on, and she seemed to help him. He was describing the scene that he had witnessed in Simms's chambers, describing it so vividly that he heard the great public discussing his article as if it were an Academy picture. His passion had subsided, and the best words formed slowly in his brain. He was hesitating about the most fitting title, when some one struck against him, and as he drew his arm over his eyes he knew with horror that he had been turning Mary Abinger into copy.
For the last time that night Rob dreamt again, and now it was such a fine picture he drew that he looked upon it with sad complacency. Many years had passed. He was now rich and famous. He passed through the wynds of Thrums, and the Auld Lichts turned out to gaze at him. He saw himself signing cheques for all kinds of charitable objects, and appearing in the subscription lists, with a grand disregard for glory that is not common to philanthropists, as X. Y. Z. or 'A Wellwisher.' His walls were lined with books written by himself, and Mary Abinger (who had not changed in the least with the years) read them proudly, knowing that they were all written for her. (Simms somehow had not fulfilled his promise.) The papers were full of his speech in the House of Commons the night before, and he had declined a seat in the Cabinet from conscientious motives. His imagination might soon have landed him master in the Mansion House, had it not deserted him when he had most need of it. He fell from his balloon like a stone. Before him he saw the blank years that had to be traversed without any Mary Abinger, and despair filled his soul. All the horrible meaning of the scene he had fled from came to him like a rush of blood to the head, and he stood with it, glaring at it, in the middle of a roaring street. Three hansoms shaved him by an