One fine morning in June theMahanaddysteamed with stately deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but there is also pathos—perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle—in the arrival of the homeward-board ship.
Who can tell? There may have been others as anxious to look on the green slopes of Mount Edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who stood ever smoking—smoking—always at the forward starboard corner of the hurricane deck. His story had not leaked out, because only two men on board knew it—men with no conversational leaks whatever. He had made no other friends. But many watched him half interestedly, and perhaps a few divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed quiet of his manner.
“That man—Jem Agar—is dangerous,” the Doctor had said to the Captain more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously mistaken in such matters.
“Um!” replied the Captain of theMahanaddy. “There is an uncanny calm.”
They were talking about him now as the Captain—his own pilot for Plymouth and the Channel—walked slowly backwards and forwards on the bridge. It seemed quite natural for the Doctor to be sitting on the rail by the engine-room telegraph. The passengers and the men were quite accustomed to it. This friendship was a matter of history to the homeless world of men and women who travelled east and west through the Suez Canal.
“He has asked me,” the Doctor was saying, “to go ashore with him at Plymouth; I don't know why. I imagine he is a little bit afraid of wringing Seymour Michael's neck.”
“Just as likely as not,” observed the Captain. “It would be a good thing done, but don't let Agar do it.”
“May I leave the ship at Plymouth?” asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it was offered.
“I don't see why you should not,” was the reply. “Everybody goes ashore there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your services.”
“I should rather like to do it. We come from the same part of the country, and Agar seems anxious to have me. He is not a chap to say much, but I imagine there will be some sort of adenouement.”
The Captain was looking through a pair of glasses ahead, towards the anchorage.
“All right,” he said. “Go.”
And he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which made theMahanaddyone of the safest boats afloat.
Presently Mark Ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. As he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and touched Jem Agar on the arm.
“It's all right,” he said. “I'll go with you.”
Agar nodded. He was gazing at the green English hills and far faint valley of the Tamar with a curious gleam of excitement in his eyes.
Half an hour later they landed.
“You stick by me,” said Jem Agar, when they discerned the small wiry form of Seymour Michael awaiting them on the quay. “I want you to hear everything.”
This man was, as Ruthine had said, dangerous. He was too calm. There was something grand and terrifying in that white heat which burned in his eyes and drove the blood from his lips.
Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile, waving his hand in greeting to Jem and to Ruthine, whom he knew.
Jem shook hands with him.
“I'm all right, thanks,” he said curtly, in answer to Seymour Michael's inquiry.
“Good business—good business,” exclaimed the General, who seemed somewhat unnecessarily excited.
“Old Mark Ruthine too!” he went on. “You look as fit as ever. Still turning your thousands out of the British public—eh!”
“Yes,” said Ruthine, “thank you.”
“Just run ashore for half an hour, I suppose?” continued Seymour Michael, looking hurriedly out towards theMahanaddy.
“No,” replied Ruthine, “I leave the ship here.”
The small man glanced from the face of one to the other with something sly and uneasy in his eyes.
Jem Agar had altered since he saw him last in the little tent far up on the slopes of the Pamir. He was older and graver. There was also a wisdom in his eyes—that steadfast wise look that comes to eyes which have looked too often on death. Mark Ruthine he knew, and him he distrusted, with that quiet keenness of observation which was his.
“Now,” he said eagerly to Jem, “what I thought we might do was to have a little breakfast and catch the eleven o'clock train up to town. If Ruthine will join us, I for one shall be very pleased. He won't mind our talking shop.”
Mark Ruthine was attending to the luggage, which was being piled upon a cab.
“Have you not had breakfast?” asked Agar.
“Well, I have had a little, but I don't mind a second edition. That waiter chap at the hotel got me out of bed much too soon. However, it is worth getting up the night before to see you back, old chap.”
“Is there not an earlier train than the eleven o'clock?” asked Agar, looking at his watch. There was a singular constraint in his manner which Seymour Michael could not understand.
“Yes, there is one at nine forty-five.”
“Then let us go by that. We can get something at the station, if we want it.”
“Make it a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the explorer, and I am your man,” said Michael heartily.
“Make it anything you like,” answered Agar, in a gentler voice. He was beginning to come under the influence of Seymour Michael's sweet voice, and of that fascination which nearly all educated Jews unconsciously exercise.
He turned and beckoned to Mark Ruthine, who presently joined them, after paying the boatmen.
“The nine forty-five is the train,” he said to him. “We may as well walk up. The streets of Plymouth are not pleasant to drive through.”
So the cab was sent on with the luggage, and the three men turned to the slope that leads up to the Hoe.
There was some sort of constraint over them, and they reached the summit of the ascent without having exchanged a word.
When they stood on the Hoe, where the old Eddystone lighthouse is now erected, Seymour Michael turned and looked out over the bay where the ships lay at anchor.
“The good oldMahanaddy,” he said, “the finest ship I have ever sailed in.”
Neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one on each side of him.
Then at last Jem Agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding since theMahanaddycame out of the Canal.
“I want to know,” he said, “exactly how things stand with my people at home.”
He continued to look out over the bay towards theMahanaddy, but Mark Ruthine was looking at Seymour Michael.
“Yes,” replied the General, “I wanted to talk to you about that. That was really my reason for proposing that we should wait till the second train.”
“There cannot be much to say,” said Jem Agar rather coldly.
“Well, I wanted to tell you all about it.”
“About what?”
There was what the Captain had called an uncanny calm in the voice. General Michael did not answer, and Jem turned slowly towards him.
“I presume,” he said, “that I am right in taking it for granted that you have carried out your share of the contract?”
“My dear fellow, it has been perfectly wonderful. The secret has been kept perfectly.”
“By all concerned?”
“Eh!—yes.”
Michael was glancing furtively at Mark Ruthine, as the fox glances back over his shoulder, not at the huntsman, but at the hounds.
“Did you tell them personally, or did you write?” pursued Jem Agar relentlessly.
“My dear fellow,” replied Michael, pulling out his watch, “it is a long story, and we must get to the train.”
“No,” replied Agar, in the calm voice which raised a sort of “fearful joy” in Ruthine's soul, “we need not be getting to the train yet, and there is no reason for it to be a long story.”
Seymour Michael gave an uneasy little laugh, which met with no response whatever. The two taller men exchanged a glance over his head. Up to that moment Jem Agar had hoped for the best. He had a greater faith in human nature than Mark Ruthine had managed to retain.
“Have you or have you not told those people whom you swore to me that you would tell, out there, that night?” asked Jem.
“I told your brother,” answered the General with dogged indifference.
“Only?”
There was an ugly gleam in the blue eyes.
“I didn't tell him not to tell the others.”
“But you suggested it to him,” put in Mark Ruthine, with the knowledge of mankind that was his.
“What has it got to do with you, at any rate?” snapped Seymour Michael.
“Nothing,” replied Ruthine, looking across at Agar.
“You did not tell Dora Glynde?”
General Michael shrugged his shoulders.
“Why?” asked Jem hoarsely. It was singular, that sudden hoarseness, and the Doctor, whose business such things were, made a note of it.
“I didn't dare to do it. Why, man, it was too dangerous to tell a single soul. If it had leaked out you would have been murdered up there as sure as hell. There would have been plenty of men ready to do it for half-a-crown.”
“That wasmybusiness,” answered Jem coolly. “You promised, youswore, that you would tell Dora Glynde, my step-mother, and my brother Arthur. And you didn't do it. Why?”
“I have given you my reasons—it was too dangerous. Besides, what does it matter? It is all over now.”
“No,” said Jem, “not yet.”
The clock struck nine at that moment; and from the harbour came the sound of the ship's bells, high and clear, sounding the hour. The Hoe was quite deserted; these three men were alone. A silence followed the ringing of the bells, like the silence that precedes a verdict.
Then Jem Agar spoke.
“I asked Mark Buthine,” he said, “to come ashore with me, because I had reason to suspect your good faith. I can't see now why you should have done this, but I suppose that people who are born liars, as Ruthine says you are, prefer lying to telling the truth. You are coming down now with Ruthine and myself to Stagholme. I shall tell the whole story as it happened, and then you will have to explain matters to the two ladies as best you can.”
A sudden unreasoning terror took possession of Seymour Michael. He knew that one of the ladies was Anna Agar, the woman who hated him almost as much as he deserved. He was afraid of her; for it is one consolation to the wronged to know that the wronger goes all through his life with a dull, unquenchable fear upon his heart. But this was not sufficient, this could not account for the mighty terror which clutched his soul at that moment, and he knew it. He felt that this was something beyond that—something which could not be reasoned away. It was a physical terror, one of those emotions which seem to attack the body independently of the soul, a terror striking the Man before it reaches the Mind. His limbs trembled; it was only by an effort that he kept his teeth clenched to prevent them from chattering.
“And,” said Jem Agar, “if I find that any harm has been done—if any one has suffered for this, I will give you the soundest thrashing you have ever had in your life.”
Both his hearers knew now who Dora Glynde was, what she was to him. He neither added to their knowledge nor sought to mislead. He was not, as we have said,de ceux qui s'expliquent.
“Come,” he added, and turning he led the way across the Hoe.
Seymour Michael followed quietly. He was cowed by the inward fear which would not be allayed, and the judicial calmness of these two men paralysed him. Once, in the train, he began explaining matters over again.
“We will hear all that at Stagholme,” said Jem sternly, and Mark Ruthine merely looked at him over the top of a newspaper which he was not reading.
To thine own self be true; And it must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Human nature is, after all, a hopeless failure. Not even the very best instinct is safe. It will probably be turned sooner or later to evil account.
The best instinct in Anna Agar was her maternal love, and upon this strong rock she finally wrecked her barque. She was one of those women who hold that, so long as the object is unselfish, the means used to obtain it cannot well be evil. She did not say this in so many words, because she was quite without principle, good or bad, and she invariably acted on impulse.
Her impulse at this time was to turn as much of heaven and earth as came under her influence to compel Dora to marry Arthur. That Arthur should be unhappy, and should be allowed to continue in that common condition, was a thought that she could not tolerate or allow. Something must be done, and it was characteristic of the woman that that something should present itself to her in the form of the handy and useful lie. In a strait we all naturally turn to that accomplishment in which we consider ourselves most proficient. The blusterer blusters; the profane man swears; the tearful woman weeps—and weeping, by the way, is no mean accomplishment if it be used at the right moment. Mrs. Agar naturally meditated on that form of diplomacy which is sometimes called lying. The truth would not serve her purpose (not that she had given it a fair trial), and therefore she would forsake the straight path for that other one which hath many turnings.
Dora absolutely refused to come to Stagholme while Arthur was there—a delicacy of feeling, which, by the way, was quite incomprehensible to Mrs. Agar. It was necessary for Arthur's happiness that he should see Dora again and try the effect of another necktie and further eloquence. Therefore, Dora must be made by subterfuge to see Arthur.
“Dear Dora,” she wrote, “it will be a great grief to me if this unfortunate attachment of my poor boy's is allowed to interfere with the affection which has existed between us since your infancy. Come, dear, and see me to-morrow afternoon. I shall be quite alone, and the subject which, of course, occupies the first place in my thoughts will, if you wish it, be tabooed.
“Your affectionate old Friend,
“It will be quite easy,” reflected this diplomatic lady as she folded the letter—almost illegible on account of its impetuosity—“for Arthur to come back from East Burgen earlier than I expected him.”
The rest she left to chance, which was very kind but not quite necessary, for chance had already taken possession of the rest, and was even at that moment making her arrangements.
Dora read the letter in the garden beneath the laburnum-tree, where she spent a large part of her life. Before reaching the end of the epistle she had determined to go. She was a young person of spirit as well as of discrimination, and in obedience to the urging of the former was quite ready to show Mrs. Agar, and Arthur too, if need be, that she was not afraid of them.
She was distinctly conscious of the increasing power of her own strength of purpose as she made this resolution, and as she walked across the park the next afternoon her feeling was one very near akin to elation. It is only the strong who mistrust their own power. Dora Glynde had always looked upon herself as a somewhat weak and easily led person; she was beginning to feel her own strength now and to rejoice in it. From the first she half-suspected a trap of some sort. Such a subterfuge was eminently characteristic of Mrs. Agar, and that lady's manner of welcoming her only increased the suspicion.
The mistress of Stagholme was positively crackling with an excitement which even her best friend could not have called suppressed. There was no suppression whatever about it.
“So good of you,” she panted, “to come, Dora dear!”
And she searched madly for her pocket handkerchief.
“Not at all,” replied Dora, very calmly.
“And now, dear,” went on the lady of the house, “are we going to talk about it?”
The question was somewhat futile, for it was easy to see that she was not in a condition to talk of anything else.
“I think not,” replied Dora. She had a way of using the word “think” when she was positive. “The question was raised the last time I saw you, and I do not think that any good resulted from it.”
Mrs. Agar's face dropped. In some ways she was a child still, and a childish woman of fifty is as aggravating a creature as walks upon this earth. Dora remembered every word of the interview referred to, while Mrs. Agar had almost forgotten it. It is to the common-minded that common proverbs and sayings of the people apply. Hard words had not the power of breaking anything in Mrs. Agar's being.
“Of course,” she said, “Idon't wish to talk about it, if you don't. It is most painful to me.”
She had dragged forward a second chair, only separated from that occupied by Dora by the tea-table.
“Arthur,” she said, with a lamentable assumption of cheerfulness, “has driven over to East Burgen to get some things I wanted. He will not be back for ever so long.”
She reflected that he was overdue at that moment, and that the butler had orders to send him to the library as soon as he returned.
“I was sorry to hear,” said Dora, quite naturally, “that he had not passed his examination.”
Mrs. Agar glanced at her cunningly; she was always looking for second meanings in the most innocent remarks, hardly guilty of an original meaning.
At this moment the door leading through a smaller library into the dining-room opened and Arthur came quietly in. He changed colour and hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he remembered that before all things a gentleman must be a gentleman. He came forward and held out his hand.
“How do you do?” he said, and for a moment he was quite dignified. “I am glad to see you here with mother. I did not know that I was going to interrupt atéte-à-téte, tea. No tea, thanks, mother; no.”
“Have you brought the things I wanted? You are earlier than I expected,” blurted out the lady of the house unskillfully.
“Yes, I have brought them.”
“I must go and see if they are right,” said Mrs. Agar, rising, and before he could stop her she passed out of the door by which he had entered.
For a moment there was an awkward silence, then Dora spoke—after the door had been reluctantly closed from without.
“I suppose,” she said, “that this was done on purpose?”
“Not by me, Dora.”
She merely bowed her head.
“Do you believe me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
She continued to sip her tea, and he actually handed her a plate of biscuits.
“Is it still No?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes.”
Perhaps her fresh youthful beauty moved him, perhaps it was merely opposition that raised his love suddenly to the dignity of a passion that made him for once forget himself, his clothes, his personal appearance, and the gentlemanly modulation of his voice.
For a moment he was almost a man. He almost touched the height of a man's ascendency over woman.
“You may say No now,” he cried, “but I shall have you yet. Some day you will say Yes.”
It was then for the first time that Dora realised that this man did actually love her according to his lights. But never for an instant did she admit in her own mind the possibility of succumbing to Arthur's will. It is not by words that men command women. They must first command their respect, and that is never gained by words.
Dora was conscious of a feeling of sudden, unspeakable pain. Arthur had only succeeded in convincing her that she could have submitted to a man's will, wholly and without reserve; but not to the will of Arthur Agar. He had only showed her that such a submission would in itself have been a greater happiness than she had ever tasted. But she knew at once that only one man ever had, ever could have had, the power of exacting such submission; and he commanded it, not by word of mouth (for he never seemed to ask it), but by something strong and just and good within himself, before which her whole being bowed down.
We never know how we appear in the eyes of our neighbours, friends or lovers. Arthur was at that moment in Dora's eyes a mere sham, aping something he could never attain.
He had seized her two hands in his nervous and delicate fingers, from which she easily withdrew them. The action was natural enough, strong enough. But he completely spoiled the effect by the words he spoke in his thin tenor voice.
“No, Arthur,” she said. “No, Arthur; since you mention the future, I may as well tell younowthat my answer will never be anything but No. At one time I thought that it might be different. I told my mother that possibly, after a great many years, I might think otherwise; but I retract that. I shall never think otherwise. And if you imagine that you can force me to do so, please lay aside that hope at once.”
“Then there is some one else!” cried Arthur, with an apparent irrelevance. “I know there is some one else.”
Dora seemed to be reflecting. She looked over his head, out of the window, where the fleecy summer clouds floated idly over the sky.
She turned and looked deliberately at the door by which Mrs. Agar had disappeared. It was standing ajar. Then again she reflected, weighing something in her mind.
“Yes,” she replied half-dreamily at length. “I think you have a right to know—there is some one else.”
“Was,” corrected Arthur, with the womanly intuition which was given to him with other womanly traits.
“Was and is,” replied Dora quietly. “His being dead makes no difference so far as you are concerned.”
“Then itwasJem! I was sure it was Jem,” said a third voice.
In the excitement of the moment Mrs. Agar forgot that when ladies and gentlemen stoop to eavesdropping they generally retire discreetly and return after a few moments, humming a tune, hymns preferred.
“I knew that you were there,” said Dora, with a calmness which was not pleasant to the ear. “I saw your black dress through the crack of the door. You did not stand quite still, which was a pity, because the sunlight was on the floor behind you. I was not surprised; it was worthy of you.”
“I take God to witness,” cried Mrs. Agar, “that I only heard the last words as I came back into the room.”
“Don't,” said Dora, “that is blasphemy.”
“Arthur,” cried Mrs. Agar, “will you hear your mother called names?”
“We will not wrangle,” said Dora, rising with something very like a smile on her face. “Yes, if you want to know, itwasJem. I have only his memory, but still I can be faithful to that. I don't care if all the world knows; that is why I toldyoubehind the door. I am not ashamed of it. I always did care for Jem.”
There was a little pause, for mother and son had nothing to answer. Dora turned to take her gloves, which she had laid on a side table, and as she did so the other door opened, the principal door leading to the hall. Moreover, it was opened without the menial pause, and they all turned in surprise, knowing that there were only servants in the house.
In the doorway stood Jem, brown-faced, lean, and anxious-looking. There was something wolf-like in his face, with the fierce blue eyes shining from beneath dark lashes, the fair moustache pushed forward by set lips.
Behind him the keen face of Seymour Michael peered nervously, restlessly from side to side. He was distinctly suggestive of a rat in a trap. And beyond him, in the gloom of the old arras-hung hall, a third man, seemingly standing guard over Seymour Michael, for he was not looking into the room but watching every movement made by the General—tall man, dark, upright, with a silent, clean-shaven face, a total stranger to them all. But his manner was not that of a stranger, he seemed to have something to do there.
Jem came straight into the room, and there seemed to be no one in it for him but Dora. She went to meet him with outstretched hand, and her eyes were answering the questions that she read in his.
He took her hand and he said no word, but suddenly all the misery of the last year slipped back, as it were, into a dream. She could not define her thoughts then, and they left no memory to recall afterwards. She seemed to forget that this man had been dead and was living, she only knew that her hand was within his. Jem looked round to the others present, his attitude a judgment in itself, his face, in its fierce repose, a verdict.
Mark Ruthine had gently pushed Seymour Michael into the room and was closing the door behind them. Mrs. Agar did not see the General, who was half-concealed by his junior officer. She could not take her eyes from Jem's face.
“This is fortunate,” he said; and the sound of his voice was music in Dora's ears. “This is fortunate, every one seems to be here.”
He paused for a moment, as if at a loss, and drew his brown hand down over his moustache. Perhaps he felt remotely that his position was strong and almost dramatic; but that, being a simple, honest Englishman, he was unable to turn it to account.
He turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood behind, uncomfortably conscious of Mark Ruthine at his heels. It was not in Jem to make an effective scene. Englishmen are so. We do not make our lives superficially picturesque by apostrophising the shade of a dead mother. Jem gave way to the natural instinct of a soldier by nature and training. A clear statement of the facts, and a short, sharp judgment.
“This man,” he said, laying his hand on the General's shoulder, and bringing him forward, “has been brought here by us to explain something.”
White-lipped, breathless, in a ghastly silence Anna Agar and Seymour Michael stared at each other over the dainty tea-table, across a gulf of misused years, through the tangle of two unfaithful lives.
Then Jem Agar began his story, addressing himself to Dora, then, and until the end.
“I was not with Stevenor,” he said, “when his force was surprised and annihilated. I had been sent on through an enemy's country into a position which no man had the right to ask another to hold with the force allowed me. This man sent me. All his life has he been seeking glory at the risk of other men's lives. After the disaster he came to me and relieved my little force; but he proposed to me a scheme of exploration, which I have carried through. But even now I shall not get the credit;hewill have that. It was a low, scurrilous thing to do; for he was my commanding officer, and I could not say No.”
“I gave you the option,” blurted out Michael sullenly.
Jem took no notice of the interruption, which only had the effect of making Mark Ruthine move up a few paces nearer.
“He made a great point of secrecy,” continued Agar, “which at the time I thought to be for my safety. But now I see otherwise; Ruthine has pointed it out to me. If I had never come back he would have said nothing, and would thus have escaped the odium of having sent a man to certain death. I only made one condition—namely, that three persons should be informed at once of my survival, after the disaster to Stevenor's force. Those three persons were my brother Arthur, my step-mother, and Miss Glynde.”
He paused for a moment, and Dora's clear, low voice took up the narrative.
“I met General Michael,” she said, “in London, some months ago. I met him more than once. He knew quite well who I was, and he never told me.”
Thus was the first link of the chain riveted. Seymour Michael winced. He never raised his eyes.
Mark Ruthine moved forward again. He did so with a singular rapidity, for he had seen murder flash from beneath Jem Agar's eyebrows. He was standing between them, his left hand gripping Jem's right arm with an undeniable strength. Dora, looking at them, suddenly felt the tears well to her eyes. There was something that melted her heart strangely in the sight of those two men—friends—standing side by side; and at that moment her affection went out towards Mark Ruthine, the friend of Jem, who understood Jem, who knew Jem and loved him, perhaps, a thousandth part as well as she did; an affection which was never withdrawn all through their lives.
It was Ruthine's voice that broke the silence, giving Jem time to master himself.
“It is to his credit,” he said, also addressing Dora, “that for very shame he did not dare to tell you that he had sent Agar on a mission which was as unnecessary as it was dangerous. When he sent him he must have known that it was almost a sentence of death.”
Then Jem spoke again.
“As soon as I got back to civilisation,” he said, “I wrote to him as arranged, and I enclosed letters to—the three persons who were admitted into the secret. Those letters have, of course, never reached their destination. General Michael will be required to explain that also.”
At this moment Arthur Agar gave a strange little cackling laugh, which drew the general attention towards him. He was looking at his half-brother, with a glitter in his usually soft and peaceful eyes.
“There are a good many things which he will have to explain.”
“Yes,” answered Jem. “That is why we have brought him here.”
It fell to Arthur Agar's lot to forge the second link.
“When,” he asked Jem, “did he know that you had got back to safety and civilisation?”
“Two months ago, by telegram.”
The half-brothers turned with one accord towards Seymour Michael, who stood trying to conceal the quiver of his lips.
“He promised,” said Arthur Agar, “to tell me at once when he received news of your safety.”
It was singular that Seymour Michael should give way at that moment to a little shrinking movement of fear—back and away, not from Jem, who towered huge and powerful above him, but from the frail and delicate younger brother. Mark Ruthine, who was standing behind, saw the movement and wondered at it. For it would appear that, of all his judges, Seymour Michael feared the weakest most.
And so the second link was welded on to the first, while only Anna Agar knew the motive that had prompted Michael to suppress the news. She divined that it was spite towards herself, and for once in her life, with that intuition which only comes at supreme moments, she had the wisdom to bide her time.
Then at last Seymour Michael spoke. He did not raise his eyes, but his words were evidently addressed to Arthur.
“I acted,” he said, “as I thought best. Secrecy was necessary for Agar's safety. I knew that if I told you too much you would tell your mother, and—I know your mother better than either you or Jem Agar know her. She is not fit to be trusted with the most trifling secret.”
“Well, you see, you were quite wrong,” burst out Mrs. Agar, with a derisive laugh. “For I knew it all along. Arthur told me at the first.”
Her voice came as a shock to them all. It was harsh and common, the voice of the street-wrangler.
“Then,” cried Seymour Michael, as sharp as fate, “why did you not tell Miss Glynde?”
He raised his arm, pointing one lean dark finger into her face.
“I knew,” he hissed, “that the boy would tell you. I counted on it. Why did you not tell Miss Glynde? Come! Tell us why.”
Mark Ruthine's face was a study. It was the face of a very keen sportsman at the corner of a “drive.” In every word he saw twice as much as simple Jem Agar ever suspected.
“Well,” answered Mrs. Agar, wavering, “because I thought it better not.”
“No,” Dora said, “you kept it from me because you wanted me to marry Arthur. And you thought that I should do so because he was master of Stagholme. You wanted to trick me into marrying Arthur before”—she hesitated—“before—”
“Before I came back,” added Jem imperturbably. “That was it, that was it!” cried Seymour Michael, grasping at the straw which might serve to turn the current aside from himself.
But the attempt failed. No one took any notice of it. Jem was looking at Dora, and she was looking anywhere except at him.
It was Jem who spoke, with the decisiveness of the president of a court-martial.
“That will come afterwards,” he said. “And now, perhaps,” he went on, turning towards Seymour, “you will kindly explain why you broke your word to me. Explain it to these l—— [sic.] to Miss Glynde.”
Seymour Michael shrugged his shoulders.
“Why, what is the good of making all this fuss about it now?” he explained. “It has all come right. I acted as I thought best. That is all the explanation I have to offer.”
“Can you not do better than that?” inquired Jem, with a dangerous suavity. “You had better try.”
Dora was looking at Jem now, appealingly. She knew that tone of voice, and feared it. She alone suspected the anger that was hidden behind so calm an exterior.
Seymour Michael preserved a dogged silence, glancing from side to side beneath his lowered lashes. He had not forgotten Jem's threat, but he felt the safeguard of a lady's presence.
“I can offer an explanation,” put in Mark Ruthine. “This man is mentally incapable of telling the truth and of doing the straight thing. There are some people who are born liars. This man is one. It is not quite fair to judge him as one would judge others. I have known him for years, have watched him, have studied him.”
All eyes turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood half-cringing, trembling with fear and hatred towards his relentless judges.
“Years ago,” pursued Ruthine, “at the outset of life, he committed a wanton crime. He did a wrong to a poor innocent woman, whose only fault was to love him beyond his deserts. He was engaged to be married to her, and meeting a richer woman he had not the courage to ask to be released from his engagement. It happened that by a mistake he was gazetted 'dead' at the time of the Mutiny. He never contradicted the mistake—that was how he got out of his engagement. He played the same trick with Jem Agar's name. I recognised it.”
Then the last link of the chain was forged.
“So did I,” said Anna Agar. “I was the woman.”
Before the words were well out of her mouth Mark Ruthine's voice was raised in an alarmed shout.
“Look out!” he cried. “Hold that man; he is mad!”
No one had been noticing Arthur Agar—no one except Seymour Michael, who had never taken his eyes from his face during Ruthine's narration.
With a groan, unlike a human sound at all, Arthur Agar had rushed forward when his mother spoke, and for a few seconds there was a wild confusion in the room, while Seymour Michael, white with dread, fled before his doom. In and out among the people and the furniture, shouting for help, he leapt and struggled. Then there came a crash. Seymour Michael had broken through the window, smashing the glass, with his arms doubled over his face.
A second later Arthur wrenched open the sash and gave chase across the lawn. In the confusion some moments elapsed before the two heavier men followed him over the smooth turf, and the ladies from the window saw Arthur Agar kneeling over Seymour Michael on the stone terrace at the end of the lawn. They heard with cruel distinctness the sharp crackling crash of the Jew's head upon the stone flags, as Arthur shook him as a terrier shakes a rat.
Instinctively they followed, and as they came up to the group where Ruthine was kneeling over Seymour Michael, while Jem dragged Arthur away, they heard the Doctor say—
“Agar, get the ladies away. This man is dead. Look sharp, man! They mustn't see this.”
And Jem barred their way with one hand, while he held his half-brother with the other.