A Prince of Sinners E. Phillips Oppenheim BOOK 3 CHAPTER 9 doc

A Prince of Sinners
E. Phillips Oppenheim

BOOK 3
CHAPTER 9

A QUESTION AND AN ANSWER

Brooks returned to London to find the annual exodus already commenced. Lady
Caroom and Sybil had left for Homburg. Lord Arranmore was yachting in the
Channel. Brooks settled down to work, and found it a little wearisome.
He saw nothing of Mary Scott, whose duties now brought her seldom to the
head office. He began to think that she was avoiding him, and there came upon
him about this time a sense of loneliness to which he was sometimes subject. He
fought it with hard work early and late, till the colour left his cheeks and black
lines bordered his eyes. They pressed him to take a holiday, but he steadily
declined. Mr. Bullsom wrote begging him to spend a week-end at least at Woton
Hall. He refused this and all other invitations.
One day he took up a newspaper which was chiefly concerned with the doings
of fashionable people, and Lady Caroom's name at once caught his eye. He read
that her beautiful daughter Lady Sybil was quite the belle of Homburg, that the
Duke of Atherstone was in constant attendance, that an interesting
announcement might at any moment be made. He threw aside the paper and
looked thoughtfully out into the stuffy little street, where even at night the air
seemed stifling and unwholesome. After all, was he making the best of his life?
He had started a great work. Hundreds and thousands of his fellow creatures
would be the better for it. So far all was well enough. But personally was this
entire self-abnegation necessary? was he fulfilling his duty to himself? was he
not rather sacrificing his future to a prejudice an idea? In any case he knew that
it was too late to retract. He had renounced his proper position in life, it was too
late for him now to claim it. And there had gone with it Sybil. After all, why

should he arrogate to himself judgment? The sins of his father were not his
concern. It was chiefly he who suffered by his present attitude, yet he had
chosen it deliberately. He could not draw back. He had cut himself off from her
world he saw now the folly of his ever for a moment having been drawn into it.
It must be a chapter closed.
The weeks passed on, and his loneliness grew. One day the opening of still
another branch brought him for a moment into contact with Mary Scott. She too
was looking pale, but her manner was bright, even animated. She seemed to feel
none of the dejection which had stolen away from him the whole flavour of life.
Her light easy laugh and cheerful conversation were like a tonic to him. He
remembered those days at Medchester After all, she was the first woman whom
he had ever looked upon as a comrade, whom he had ever taken out of her sex
and considered singly.
She spoke of his ill-looks kindly and with some apprehension.
"I am all right," he assured her, "but a little dull. Take pity on me and come out
to dinner one night this week."
They dined in the annex of a fashionable restaurant practically out of doors a
cool green lawn for a carpet and a fountain playing close at hand. Mary wore a
white dinner-gown, gossamer-like and airy. Her rich brown hair was tastefully
arranged, her voice had never seemed to him so soft and pleasant. All around
was the hum of cheerful conversation. A little world of people seemed to be
there whose philosophy of life after all was surely the only true one, where
hearts were light with the joy of the moment. The dinner was carefully served,
the wine, which in his solitude he had neglected, stole through his veins with a
pleasant warmth. Brooks felt his nerves relax, the light came back to his eyes
and the colour to his cheeks. Their conversation grew brighter almost gay.
They both carefully avoided all mention of their work it was a holiday. The
burden of his too carefully thought out life seemed to pass away. Brooks felt
that his youth was coming to him a little late, but with delicious freshness.
He smoked a cigarette and sipped his coffee, glancing every now and then at his

companion with approving eyes. For Mary, whose dress was so seldom a matter
of moment to her, chanced to look her best that night. The delicate pallor of her
cheeks under the rich tone of her hair seemed quite apart from any suggestion of
ill-health, her eyes were wonderfully full and soft, a quaint pearl ornament hung
by a little gold chain from her slender, graceful neck. A sort of dreamy content
came over Brooks. After all, why should he throw himself in despair against the
gates of that other world, outside which he himself had elected to dwell? It was
only madness for him to think of Sybil. While Lord Arranmore lived he must
remain Kingston Brooks and for Kingston Brooks it seemed that even
friendship with her was forbidden. He could live down those memories. They
were far better crushed. He thought of that moment in Mary's sitting-room, that
one moment of her self-betrayal, and his heart beat with an unaccustomed force.
Why not rob her of the bitterness of that memory? He looked at the white hand
resting for a moment on the table so close to his, and a sudden impulse came
over him to snatch it up, to feel his loneliness fade away for ever before the new
light in her face.
"Let us go and sit on the other side of the lawn," he said, leaning over towards
her. "We can hear the music better."
They found a quiet seat where the music from the main restaurant reached them,
curiously mingled with the jingling of cab bells from Piccadilly. Brooks leaned
over and took her hand. "Mary," he said, "will you marry me?"
She looked at him as though expecting to find in his face some vague sign of
madness, some clue to words which seemed to her wholly incomprehensible.
But he had all the appearance of being in earnest. His eyes were serious, his
fingers had tightened over hers. She drew a little away, and every vestige of
colour had vanished from her cheeks.
"Marry you?" she exclaimed.
He bent over her, and he laughed softly in the darkness. A mad impulse was
upon him to kiss her, but he resisted it.
"Why not? Does it sound so dreadful?"

She drew her fingers away slowly but with determination.
"I had hoped," she said, "that you would have spared me this."
"Spared you!" he repeated. "I do not understand. Spared you!"
She looked at him with flashing eyes.
"Oh, I suppose I ought to thank you," she said, bitterly. "Only I do not. I cannot.
You were kinder when you joined with me and helped me to ignore that hateful
moment. That was much kinder."
"Upon my honour, Mary," Brooks declared, earnestly, "I do not understand you.
I have not the least idea what you mean."
She looked at him incredulously.
"You have asked me to marry you," she said. "Why?"
"Because I care for you."
"Care for me? Does that mean that you love me?"
"Yes."
She noted very well that moment's hesitation.
"That is not true," she declared. "Oh, I know. You ask me out of pity because
you cannot forget. I suppose you think it kindness. I don't! It is hateful!"
A light broke in upon him. He tried once more to take her hand, but she
withheld it.
"I only half understand you, Mary," he said, earnestly, "but I can assure you that
you are mistaken. As to asking you out of pity that is ridiculous. I want you to
be my wife. We care for the same things we can help one another and I seem
to have been very lonely lately."
"And you think," Mary said, with a curious side-glance at him, "that I should
cure your loneliness. Thank you. I am very happy as I am. Please forget
everything you have said, and let us go."
Brooks was a little bewildered and manlike a little more in earnest.
"For some reason or other," he said, "you seem disinclined to take me seriously.
I cannot understand you, Mary. At any rate you must answer me differently. I
want you to be my wife. I am fond of you you know that and I will do my best

to make you happy."
"Thank you," Mary said, hardly. "I am sorry, but I must decline your offer
absolutely. Now, let us go, shall we?"
She would have risen, but he laid his hand firmly upon her shoulder.
"Not till I have some sort of explanation," he said. "Is it that you do not care for
me, Mary?"
She turned round upon him with colour enough in her cheeks and a strange
angry light burning in her eyes.
"You might have spared me that also," she exclaimed. "You are determined to
humiliate me, to make me remember that hateful afternoon in my rooms oh, I
can say it if I like when I kissed you. I knew then that sooner or later you
would make up your mind that it was your duty to ask me to marry you. Only
you might have done it by letter. It would have been kinder. Never mind. You
have purged your conscience, and you have got your answer. Now let us go."
Brooks looked at her for a moment amazed beside himself with wonder and
self-reproach.
"Mary," he said, quietly, "I give you my word that nothing which I have said
this evening has the least connection with that afternoon. I give you my word
that not for a moment have I thought of it in connection with what I have said to
you to-night."
She looked at him steadfastly, and her eyes were full of things which he could
not understand.
"When did you make up your mind to ask me this?"
He pointed to the little table where they had been sitting.
Only a few minutes ago. I confess it was an impulse. I think that I realized as we
sat there how dear you had grown to me, Mary how dull life was without you."
"You say these things to me," she exclaimed, "when all the time you love
another woman."
He started a little. She smiled bitterly as she saw the shadow on his face.
"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said, deliberately, "that you love Sybil Caroom. Is it not true?"
His head drooped a little. He had never asked himself even so much as this. He
was face to face now with all the concentrated emotions which lately had so
much disturbed his life. The problem which he had so sedulously avoided was
forced upon him ruthlessly, with almost barbaric simplicity.
"I do not know," he answered, vaguely. "I have never asked myself. I do not
wish to ask myself. Why do you speak of her? She is not of our world, the world
to which I want to belong. I want to forget her."
"You are a little mad to-night, my friend," Mary said. "To-morrow you will feel
differently. If Sybil Caroom cares for you, what does it matter which world she
belongs to? She is not the sort of girl to be bound by old-fashioned prejudices.
But I do not understand you at all to-night. You are not yourself. I think that you
are a little cruel." "Cruel?" he repeated.
Her face darkened.
"Oh, it is only natural," she said, with a note of suppressed passion in her how
tone. "It is just the accursed egotism of your sex. What right have you to make
us suffer so to ask me to marry you and sit by my side and wonder whether
you care for another woman? Can't you see how humiliating it all is? It is an
insult to ask a woman to marry you to cure your loneliness, to make you a home
to settle your indecision. It is an insult to ask a woman to marry you for any
reason except that you care for her more than any other woman in the world,
and can tell her so trustfully, eagerly. Please to put me in a cab at once, and
never speak of these things again."
She was half-way across the lawn before he could stop her, her head thrown
back, carrying herself proudly and well, moving as it seemed to him with a sort
of effortless dignity wholly in keeping with the vigour of her words. He obeyed
her literally. There was nothing else for him to do. His slight effort to join her in
the cab she firmly repulsed, holding out her hand and speaking a few cheerful
words of thanks for her evening's entertainment. And when the cab rolled away
Brooks felt lonelier than ever.