Part 20

Jani once more lifted her face. In the livid dawn it looked grey with fear. Then she was gone from him with a scarcely perceptible rustle, a whisper of soft garments, like some stealthy-winged thing of the night. Harry English sank back into his squatting attitude; to wait again. Never had fate so completely veiled her countenance from him.

Years he had endured. He had clung tenaciously to life, had borne, at the moment of hope renewed, the cruellest and most insulting buffet that could strike a man, and still had fought, still had held to a determined purpose. Had it all been to this hour only?--false servant, failing friend, lost wife! No, not lost. So long as the faintest breath flickered between those silent smiling lips.

* * * * *

Harry English turned to God, with a great cry of his soul. It was no cry of supplication, but a call upon the Infinity. Because of Power, because of Justice, because of Goodness, she must not die.

*CHAPTER IV*

M. Châtelard sat down by the bed and laid his finger on the slender wrist. A hardening pulse. Fever. He had anticipated fever, he almost welcomed it as the natural course.

Would she live? These nervous creatures are as tough as cats. But, poor soul, were it not perhaps best for her were she to pass? What a situation! Great gods, what a situation! There was not one of these searchers after psychological enigmas, not one of these implacable exponents of the weaknesses of the human heart, not a Maupassant, not a Mirbeau, not a d'Annunzio who could have devised the story of this impasse. To die would be too absolutely commonplace a solution. If he, Châtelard, could help it, she should not die, were it only for the proper working-out of the problem.

Propping his chin on his hand and his elbow on the bed, the savant leaned forward, gazing at his patient, till his keen eyes, piercing the gloom, were able to trace the lines of the unconscious face.

"It is not that she is so beautiful--there are many in this country who possess the same incredible purity of outline, the same delicate wealth of feminine charm--but _c'est une ensorceleuse_! Did I not say it to the young man? One of those women who create passions that become historic. One of those whose fate is to make havoc as they go. The three men here--they are mad of her, each in his different way. The poor Gerardine, he could have cried like a child, as we turned him from the room ... and the sly, quiet, relentless Bethune, that man of granite ... the lover, he's devoured; the very stone wastes in the furnace. How thin he has grown since that Indian night! And the third--the most surprising of all--the real husband! Oh, the strange story! the husband--the _first_ husband _par dessus le marché_, as though matters were not sufficiently entangled already! Ah, ça! mais d'où sort-il, celui-là? C'est qu'il faisait pitié--c'est encore lui le plus atteint des trois! One could feel the frenzied soul under that air of calm command." ...

Then enthusiastically following the trail of his own Gallic deductions, M. Châtelard began to reconstruct, _con amore_, the threads of the drama.

"Un beau gaillard, malgré sa pâleur de revenant.... Avec lui, sans doute, elle a appris ce que c'est que l'amour. Ils se sont aimés jeunes et beaux.... Ils se valaient bien l'un l'autre, certes! Idylle parfaite, heures parfumées! Then comes the cyclone. He is swept from her by relentless duty. He dies, a hero in war as he was a hero in love. She is alone, desolate. She mourns. At the psychological moment, enters upon the scene the handsome, rich, powerful Sir Gerardine. He offers her ease, position, comfort, a home, his protection. She turns to him as a child to a father. She places her hand in his. And thereafter follows the inevitable. The years have gone by; she becomes more and more a woman; the demands of her nature expand; and the old husband who is--and I don't blame him--not content to be father.... _Sapristi_, how he bores her, the old husband! Then arrives the man, the young man, the man of her own age. (He has loved her already as his friend's wife, in the secret of his own soul, all in honour and loyalty.) He seeks her now, knowing that his hour has come." ...

"L'oublierai-je, jamais telle qu'elle était ce soir-là, au moment de la première tentation? Ruisselante du feu vert de ses émeraudes; superbe dans sa beauté, sa chasteté insolente; mais couvant déjà sous la neige de sa blanche beauté, le feu destructeur de la passion renaissante. Elle a lutté. Oh, oui, celle-là a lutté! Son âme et son corps se sont entredéchirés.... Mais, poursuivie jusque dans cette solitude même par l'implacable qui l'a traquée comme le tigre sa proie, la fin est inévitable!"

"Et au moment suprême où, femme au zénith des a gloire, elle cède à la seconde passion--voilà l'objet de la première qui rèsuscite, et vient la rèclamer! Ah, dieux, quel cri! Les oreilles m'en tintent encore. Jamais je ne l'oublierai, ce cri d'un coeur qui s'effondre...."

"And the resuscitated man? The devil! where does he come from? Springing up in the old house in the middle of the night. Another tragedy there! He misdoubts, as yet, nothing. Strong in his right, in the memory of their love, he comes to claim her of the old husband--Of the third, of the lover, he has no suspicion. My God, with what eyes of trouble and wonder did he not look at me when I bade him leave her! Unhappy fellow, why 'tis his very existence that's killing her! How long will it be before he finds out the truth, finds out that, at the very moment of regaining his treasure, he has been robbed, robbed by him who was his friend? And the friend, then, that man of granite, how will he bear himself? Will even his relentless determination stand before that terrible double knowledge of his own unconscious treachery to his comrade and of the mortal danger to his beloved? A stronger man, even than he, might well go mad! ... As for the pitiable second husband, the old man, who counts for so little in the midst of these three young lives, and is yet so stricken in all he holds most dear--his dignity, his honour, his pathetic senile confidence and affection--what of him? Oh, antique, silent house, what palpitating drama do you not hold, this desolate dawn! Those three men, each with his passion and his claim--his just claim--and the woman there, lying so still! ..."

So M. Châtelard mused, with ever and anon a keen eye to the patient, a stealthy touch on the pulse.

A pale shaft of light pierced in between the curtains, and, like a slowly shifting finger, moved straightly till it pointed to the bed. M. Châtelard started, rubbed his eyes, adjusted his spectacles, and stared again. The heavy, half-loosened tress that lay across the sheet shone silver in the light--the tress that had been so richly golden, crown of that haughty head, only the evening before.

"I have heard of such a thing," said the doctor to himself, "but it is the first time that I have seen it with my own eyes." He bent over the pillow and curiously lifted the strand of hair. There was no illusion about it. Rosamond's glorious hair was white.

*CHAPTER V*

"I think you had better get your uncle a little whisky, or something," said Lady Aspasia to Baby, as, upon their ejection into the passage, she guided the poor gentleman's vague footsteps towards her own room. "Come in here, Arty; there's a good fire."

Sir Arthur turned his eyes upon her with a vacant look, catching at surprise.

"Yes, my room. But, Lord, I don't think any of us need mind the _convenances_ to-night!"

She gave a dry laugh. At least, whatever rules were transgressed now--they only regarded him and her: the thought came with sudden and exceeding pleasantness upon her; and that heart of hers, atrophied by long disuse, was stirred. She looked at the helpless, dazed creature, sinking into her armchair, with a softness that, even in his most gallant youth, his image had not evoked. "Good fellow" as she was, Lady Aspasia was yet a woman in the hidden fibre.

Young Aspasia, shuffling about in her slippers, yet still fleet of foot, broke in upon their silence with the decanter. Shivering, partly with fatigue, partly with the chill of the dawn, she stood, vaguely watching the elder lady administer a stiff bumper to Sir Arthur.

Complete as was the turmoil in her own mind, deep as was her distress and anxiety anent Rosamond, Baby's sense of humour was irresistibly acute: the vision of Lady Aspasia, incompletely attired under her motor coat, her loose coiled hair (divested of the dignity of her "transformation") presenting a strangely flat appearance, bending with such solicitude over so reduced a Runkle, brought a hysterical giggle in her throat.

"Pray," said Lady Aspasia, wheeling round upon her, "don't begin to cry here, my dear! One is as much as I can manage."

"I'm not crying," retorted young Aspasia, as indignantly as her chattering teeth would allow. "I'm laughing."

"Then that's worse," responded the other, succinctly. "Take some whisky, too. Go to bed."

Sir Arthur, gulping down the potent mixture provided for him, extended a forbidding left hand:

"One moment," he ordered; then choked and coughed. But the stimulant was working its effect, his backbone was notably stiffer. The native dignity, not to say pomposity, was returning to his support. He regarded his niece with eyes, severe, if somewhat watery. "How long, Aspasia, have you known this--this--disgraceful state of affairs?"

He rolled his suffused gaze from the girl to his distinguished relative, seeking a kindred indignation.

"You mean, how long I have known that Aunt Rosamond wasn't married at all? Oh, Lord, what am I saying?--that she's got two husbands--gracious, I can't help being muddled. Who could? Anyhow, that she's not married to you? I----"

"The premises are by no means established," interrupted Sir Arthur, with not unsuccessful reaching after his old manner. "But how long, I ask, have you known of the presence in this house--or in this neighbourhood--of the person, impostor or no, who dares to present himself as Harry English?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," said Baby, hugging herself in her dressing-gown, the warmth of the fire, the heat of her reawakening antagonism, getting the better of her chill tremors; "as a matter of fact, you have known him a good deal longer and more intimately than I have."

"Lord, child, how you bandy words!" said Lady Aspasia, disapprovingly; "let her go to bed, Arty. Surely, you'll have plenty of time by-and-by for all this."

But the Lieutenant-Governor waived the interruption aside with impatience. Miss Cuningham did not await further questioning. It would be scarce human to feel no complacency in the power to impart weighty information. And Baby was among the most human of her race.

"You went and fished him out yourself," she cried. "Your own particular, private secretary."

And still Sir Arthur was all at sea.

"Private secretary," he repeated blankly, hastily running over in his mind all the members of his staff within recent years. Nonsense! Preposterous! There was not one who bore the faintest resemblance to this black-avised, domineering intruder.

Lady Aspasia whistled under her breath to mark her displeasure at the inopportune discussion, and mixed herself a companion bumper to Sir Arthur's.

"The native spring, not quite so native as we all fancied, Runkle. Muhammed Saif-u-din. My goodness," cried the girl, clasping her hands, and struck with a new aspect of the situation, "no wonder I thought him queer! ... No wonder, Runkle, he looked at you as if he could murder you! Lord, it's just too romantic! To think of his being with you all these days and weeks, and of his being here, alone with us--waiting, waiting all the time."

"Muhammed..." ejaculated Sir Arthur, and sat in his chair as if turned to stone.

Then suddenly:

"Muhammed!" he cried again, in a high shrill voice, and bounded to his feet. "The damned black scoundrel," foamed the Lieutenant-Governor, "the wretched nigger. The miserable beggar, whom I took from the gutter and admitted into my household, and treated as a gentleman--a gentleman, begad! By the Lord, he shall smart for this! It's a hideous conspiracy! No, no, Lady Aspasia, you don't know the race as I do. It's trickery, it's a piece of monstrous Indian jugglery. I tell you, it's a conspiracy between them all."

"Of course," cut in sarcastic Baby, trembliog again, this time with anger, "it's all a conspiracy, merely to annoy the Runkle. Captain English has simply plotted not to have been killed, and poor Aunt Rosamond lies at death's door out of sheer aggravation--that's part of the conspiracy also."

"And pray," said Sir Arthur, unheeding anything but the opposition of her tone, and turning furiously again upon the girl, "will you have the kindness to answer me at last? You, you, my niece, how long have you been in the business? A nice set of vipers I've been nourishing! Oh, my God!"

He put his hand to his forehead and reeled; then stretched out his arm, gropingly. Promptly, Lady Aspasia popped the glass she had destined for herself into the vague fingers; and, as if mechanically, it was instantly conveyed to his lips.

"I've been in the business no longer than you, yourself, Runkle."

Young Aspasia, between anger, scorn, and her sense of humour, was now perilously near the hysterics dreaded by her namesake.

"Now look here," said the latter, catching the small figure by the elbow and turning it towards the door, "you get out of this in double-quick time; I'll manage your uncle."

"Master Muhammed will find he has made a little mistake--a little mistake," said the great man, spurred once more to his normal vigour of intellect.

He was standing, legs wide apart, on the hearthrug, and glared at his niece as she wheeled round on the threshold for her usual Parthian shot.

"It's rather a pity that he does not happen to be Muhammed any more; isn't it, Runkle?" she cried spitefully; "that he never was Muhammed, but always Harry English, Harry English, Harry English, who never was dead at all!"

She closed the door with a slam upon a picture of her uncle's suddenly stricken face, of Lady Aspasia's swift advance towards him with outstretched hands.

"She'll manage him!" said Baby to herself, with a sobbing giggle, as she ran down the dark passage.

*CHAPTER VI*

The Old Ancient House lay in silence--a sinister silence, Bethune thought--after the rumours and alarms of the night. The dawn was breaking yellow over a grey, still world. What did it herald? he wondered, as he looked out of his dormer window under the roof.

One thing it was bringing, he told his sullen heart--the new day of the new life of Raymond Bethune. Raymond Bethune, the disgraced, who had failed his comrade.

When that wild cry had rung out into the night, "Harry, Harry, Harry!" it had sounded, in his ears, like the death-cry of his honour; a parting from all that he had held dear; a parting from his highest and closest, than which no parting between soul and body could be more bitter.

He had sat on his bed, and listened--listened, expecting he knew not what. What, indeed, had he now to expect? He had heard the running of feet, the opening and shutting of doors, all the busy noises of a house alarmed. Was she dead? Dead of her joy, in that supreme moment of reunion? Would there not be a heaven, even in his anguish, for him who could thus take her dying kiss!

By-and-by he had roused himself; and, after a look of horror upon that bed of dreams, mechanically dressed for his departure. To go away--that was all that was left to him--the last decency. He put a grim control upon his nerves as he wielded the razor and the brushes that Harry English's fingers had so recently touched.

Harry English ... out of the grave!

Bethune could not yet face the marvel of the situation. He had yet no power over his dazed brain to bring it to realise that for so long he had been living near his old comrade in the flesh, and had not known--he who had not passed a day, since their parting, without living with him in the spirit! Still less could he speculate upon the reasons of English's incognito, upon his singular scheme, his recklessness of his own reputation; nor by what miracle he had been saved from death; nor by what freakish cruelty of fate he had been buried from their ken till the irreparable had been worked on other lives.

No; Bethune had no single thought to spare from the overwhelming fact of what he had himself done.

How silent was this house, now, in the dawn! And how much worse was silence than the most ominous sounds. Was it not his own silence that had betrayed both himself and his friend?

He packed deliberately, feeling the while a fleeting childish warmth of comfort in the thought that Harry wore his old shooting-jacket--that Harry had still something of his about him. He folded the discarded babu garments with almost tender touch. Then he paused and hesitated.

There were the papers--the damnable, foolish papers that had started all the mischief; and these he must sort. Some must be destroyed; some, not his to deal with, must be laid by before he could leave the place.

He stole to the door, carrying his portmanteau. There was no fear of his meeting any of those whom he dreaded; for, in the rambling old house, his floor had a little breakneck stairs to itself which landed him in a passage outside the hall.

There was a stir of life and a leap of firelight behind the half-open door of the kitchen; but, in a panic, he passed quickly out of reach of the voices lest he should hear. Was she dying ... or dead? Or, since joy does not kill, was she happy in a sublime egotism of two? He had no courage for the tidings--whatever they might be.

The little room where he had worked with such fervour was filled with a grey glimmer that filtered in through the mist-hung orchard trees. The fire had been set but not yet lit. He put a match to it; he would have much to burn. Then he sat down by the table and drew forth his manuscripts. The last line he had written--that line set only yesterday from a full heart--met his eye:

English was then in the perfection of his young manhood--a splendid specimen of an Englishman, athletic, handsome, intellectual, a born leader of men, and withal, the truest comrade ever a man had.

Out of the half-finished page, the past rose at Raymond Bethune and smote him in the face. So had he written, so had he thought of Harry English yesterday, when he believed him dead.

A man of more sanguine temperament, of more imaginative mind, might well have comforted himself with explanatory reflections, with reasons so plausible for his own behaviour, that he must end by believing in them himself, regarding his own act in a gradually changing light, till it assumed a venial, not to say meritorious, aspect. But Raymond Bethune, with his narrow conception of life, with his few, deep-cut affections, had this in him--virtue or deficiency--that he could not lie. And now he knew the naked truth. He knew that, when his only friend had come from out the dead and laid claim upon him, in the overwhelming surprise of the moment he had betrayed friendship--that some unknown base self had sprung into life. He had not been glad--he had not been glad ... and Harry had seen it. Harry had read into his heart--and there had read, not gladness but dismay.

The sweat started again upon Bethune's forehead as he re-lived that moment and again saw his failing soul mirrored in the wide pupils of English's eyes.

* * * * *

Outside, upon the grey-brown twisted boughs of the apple-tree nearest the window, a robin began to sing. The insidious sweetness of the little voice pierced the lonely man to the marrow, with an intolerable pang of self-pity. He looked out on the bleak winter scene of the garden, where the mist hung in shreds across the sodden grass, over the bare boughs. It was an old, old orchard and the trees were leprous with grey lichen. It seemed as though they could not bear flower or fruit again. Vaguely, for his brain was not apt to image, he thought: "In some such desolation lies the future for me." And if the robin sang--oh, if the robin sang--its message never could be for him!

His eye wandered back into the room. Here had he worked so many days, in austere, high ardour of loyalty. Aye, and yonder, in the armchair, had she sat; and he had judged her from this same altitude of mind. Now he knew himself better, saw the earthy soul of him as it really was. All his anger, all his scorn, all his antagonism, from the very first instant when her pale luminous beauty had dawned upon him, had been but fine-sounding words in his own mind to hide the thing, the fact--his passion for Harry English's wife!

He took some of the manuscript into his hands, rough sheets as well as neatly typed copy; and, standing before the now leaping fire, began slowly to tear it, page by page, and fling it into the blaze. He smiled as he watched the red twists fly up the chimney. There was subtle irony in the situation. Major Bethune calling upon his friend's widow to wake from her sleep of oblivion, forcing her back to the sorrow she would fain forget, sparing her no pang, watching her as the warder watches the convict to see that not a jot of her task escape her; seeing, as he watched, the old love reclaim her with strong hands, so that, wooed once more and once more won, she was ready, as surely no woman was before, to greet the dead returned! ... "Harry, Harry, Harry!" He would never get that cry out of his head.

He let himself fall into the chair upon the hearth, his hands resting listlessly from their task. How was he to endure life, how carry out the most trivial business with this sick distaste of all things upon him?

* * * * *

Aspasia opened the door and looked in. She gave a cry of pleasure as she saw him.

"How cosy!" she said, and came over to the fire.

Then she stood, gazing down at him, with a small smile trembling on her lips. She had evidently been crying, and the curves of these same lips looked softer and more childish than ever. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes darkly shadowed.

Bethune sat motionless. After a pause she spoke, still staring reflectively at the flames.

"I wondered where you had been all this dreadful night. You know what has happened? Of course you know."

"I know."

Nothing in his voice or manner struck her--she was so full of the tremendous occasion.

"Ah!" she cried, suddenly flashing upon him, "I think I'm sorry you already know. I should have liked to have been the first to tell you. For you--for you, at least, it's all glorious. Oh, how glad you must be! What it must mean to you!"

He sat like stone: she was worse than the robin. He had thought he had suffered to the fullest capacity; but the girl, with her clear voice and her honest eyes, was tearing his heart to pieces. Then she became conscious that in his silence, though she had known him ever as a silent man, there was something almost sinister.

"What is it?" she asked him. "Oh, I suppose you knew all along? No--you didn't, you couldn't!"

He shook his head.

"Ah!" Her bright face clouded. "It is because of her, of poor Aunt Rosamond--of him, rather? You think he has come back to her too late, only to lose her?"

He resumed the tearing up of his manuscript with fingers clenched upon the page.

"What are you doing?" she cried, quickly diverted. "Oh, Major Bethune, why? Don't tear up all that beautiful life--all you've been working at so long. Oh, what a pity--what a pity!"