“Throne Hotel, Harrogate,
“September 8th, 1911.
“DEAR OLD BRUCE,—What wondrous weather we are still having! I have shoved this delightful desk close up to the open window, to see a bit more of what’s going on, and really the life and spirit of this place are most exhilarating. The last char-a-banc has just departed for the day; if I had not better fish to fry I might have made one of its merry load. The Punch and Judy man is mustering his first audience; it would be too much to say that his squeak attracts me, but I do not resent it as I did. And I have just thrown half-a-crown to a harpist in a flat-brimmed bowler, a fiddler of more than faulty intonation, and a lady vocalist in a feather boa who has been singing me songs of Araby in a way that would indeed have charmed me to a tear this time yesterday. But all’s well with Harrogate and me this morning, and really the people in this hotel are as nice a crowd as one could wish to meet in a casual sort of way. You perceive, of course, that I have worked out my new idea to my own satisfaction? Well, I should say I have! I am wrong, however, for it has worked itself out in a fashion that would never have occurred to me in my most deliberately ingenious moments. Fact, my dear fellow, has once more demonstrated its superiority to fiction even of the ultra-Wells or imitation-Anstey type.
“In spite of all the thousands of words I fired at you yesterday, you must bear with another thousand if you want to know the astounding conclusion of the whole matter. But don’t you show this lot to the Vivid. It is for the private eye of the pal whom I value more than any agent.
“I posted both my other letters, as I told you I should, at the Post Office here while the afternoon of yesterday was still young; then I set off for those wretched rocks of which you have heard so much. You will hear no more of them; they have not seen me yet. I had won through the Valley Gardens, and the encampment of curists listening to the band in their tent-chairs, when on the asphalt slope between the Gardens and the Moor I met Miss Vereker face to face. I was naturally pleased, after the way I had just missed her in the morning; my only trouble was that she was so near home, and rather fidgety about her father, though I was able to assure her that he was all right. She said she must get back to give him his tea after his rest; but I told her I thought he had not retired so soon as usual after lunch, as there had been some little excitement in the hotel owing to a very small fire in the vicinity. I was afraid I was going to be pressed for particulars, but Ruth seemed somewhat full of her own affairs, though I could not help thinking that in a way she was glad to see me. I was naturally delighted to have fallen in with her; and yet she seemed surprised when I importuned her to turn back for the least little stroll on the Moor.
“ ‘But don’t you want to think about your story, Phil?’
“ ‘No, thank you! I’ve torn that story up. I want to forget about it. I’m going to do another one instead, if they’ll give me time.’
“ ‘But aren’t you almost too conscientious?’
“ ‘Not a bit. It’s mere policy not to supply an order with stuff that one knows is bad. Besides, it was making an old man of me, that story. You don’t know what it is to tinker and tinker away, and yet to feel at the back of your head that you’re doing no good all the time.’
“Ruth had given in, and we were walking now in the direction of the Moor; but we went so far without further speech, and something in her figure and carriage, her colouring and her hair, had spirited me back so many years that I had lost my own thread before she took it up.
“ ‘I’m glad it was only that,’ she said.
“ ‘What do you mean?’
“ ‘You didn’t seem the least bit glad to see us again. I thought you’d forgotten us at first.’
“ ‘Forgotten you!’ I cried. ‘That only shows what a beast that infernal story was making of me. My wretched work always does drive me to one extreme or the other; if it had been going well you’d have heard about nothing else, and found me the most awful bore.’
“ ‘I don’t think I should. I haven’t had so many opportunities of hearing you talk about your work. It’s about a hundred years since we met.’
“ ‘I shouldn’t have forgotten you if it were a thousand. Besides, I heard all about you from Dick last time he was home from India. Do you remember the first time I came to stay with him in the holidays?’
“ ‘I’ve got the verses you sent me afterwards about everything we’d done.’
“ ‘You haven’t! I remember having an awful row with Dick because I would always go about with you.’
“ ‘Do you remember the day we hid from him in the loft?’
“ ‘Rather! Poor old Dick! I didn’t quite play the game by him. But it all seems like yesterday.’
“And it really did, Bruce, for we had been the most tremendous pals in our early days, and for years afterwards, until her brother went to India; but since then we have hardly ever met until this time. Yet it all came back, here on the Moor; we called up memory against memory, and laugh for laugh, exactly as though it were a game; and all the years since the end of those days seemed to drop out of our lives, or mine at least, and give me back my youth. You may say I flatter and deceive myself; you may say what you like! I never felt a younger man than yesterday afternoon, and I never sat beside a younger woman than Ruth Vereker, with her wonderful colouring and her gold-brown hair, as crisp and bonny as the day she put it up.
“I must tell you that this so-called Moor is a sort of miniature heath, only planted with tiny clumps of trees as well; and we sat under one, on a seat thoughtfully provided by the local corporation, and as carefully covered with the names and initials of local louts. It wasn’t in the least secluded or romantic; a train runs close at hand, cars hoot nearer still, nurses and children with harsh Yorkshire accents lurk behind every bush if they are not actually sitting beside you. We had our seat to ourselves; so far we were fortunate; and a hideous reservoir, with a row of raw villas inverted in its glassy depths, might have been a magic blend of Venice and Vallombrosa as seen between a neighbouring dump of birches and a more distant ridge of pines.
“It was with a kind of thud that we came back to Harrogate and 1911.
“ ‘Why on earth did you get engaged, Ruth?’
“Was it that her colouring gained in brilliance, or merely that the afternoon sun swept the cheek nearer mine?
“ ‘Who told you I was engaged?’ she asked.
“ ‘Your father. Isn’t it true?’
“ ‘Only just.’
“ ‘Only just!’ I echoed. ‘It must be one thing or the other, Ruth?’
“ ‘Then it’s true enough, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I—I couldn’t keep him waiting any longer—and now I’ve done it!’
“She looked adorably unhappy about it all.
“ ‘When did you do it?’ I demanded.
“ ‘Only this morning,’ she sighed.
“ ‘What?’ I cried. ‘Is the fellow here in Harrogate?’
“She shook her head.
“ ‘Then where is he, and who is he, Ruth? Is he an old friend,’ I asked, jealously, ‘who can talk over old days as well as I can? If so, I may remember him,’ I had the wit to say hastily.
“ ‘He is an old friend,’ she answered, ‘but of course not in the sense that you are, Phil. We weren’t children together. He lives abroad, and I sent him his answer this morning.’
“I leapt to my legs.
“ ‘You posted it?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘About twelve o’clock—opposite the hotel?’
“ ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘It’s done!’
“ ‘It isn’t!’ I cried. ‘Your letter never went; it was destroyed, with everything else that was in that pillarbox at that time; didn’t I tell you there had been a fire? That was the one I meant, and—and it isn’t done Ruth—and it never shall be!’
“That, my dear Bruce, is the end of the story I began to tell you yesterday, little dreaming what the end was to be. This much I owe you, and have leave to tell you word for word. The rest is silence, until you come down and see her for yourself. But you will plainly see that I cannot give it to the Vivid after all—unless—but to-morrow is Saturday, and a fine train leaves St. Pancras at 11.30. Come!
“PHIL.”
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