* * * * *All at once Aspasia found herself awake—a blast of cold air had rushed into the drowsy secret atmosphere. The door had been flung open and one had entered—a man who came with quick clean tread, whose face was pale, as if indeed risen from the dead, but whose eyes shone with a wonderful light of life.The woman in the bed reared herself up with outflung arms, and, as he who entered went straight to her, she cast herself upon his breast with a great cry."Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry!"Such a cry had the walls of the manor-house surely never held before. It might have been the voice of all the anguish and all the ecstasies it had known these centuries. It rang round the old walls; every echo took it up and answered it, as if they had been waiting for it.BOOK IIICHAPTER IBethune had soon packed his simple baggage; then he went straight to bed, setting his will upon sleep, against thought.But what mind perturbed can command repose? Every ugly demon of disquiet that his situation could breed took form and sat beside him on the narrow bed. Three there were of a special torment. One with the eyes of hatred that Lady Gerardine had fixed upon him that evening. A twin demon that for ever repeated in his ear: "You should have died, that he might live." And a third, whose face was veiled, whose immutable hand pointed towards the empty sandy desert of the future.When at last, far on in the watches of the night, sleep did fall upon him, it was in trouble and confusion of mind—a dream-struggle with fate, more painful even than the reality.He was back in the midst of the siege—one of the starving, thirst-plagued, harassed garrison. They were hard pressed, piling sandbags on a newly defiladed rampart, but his men were a leaden weight upon him. He could not stir them to activity; when he tried to shout orders or expostulation, he could bring forth nothing but a whisper. Always the barricades melted away beneath his touch, his very rifle twisted like wax when he handled it, and then there sprang into the breach Muhammed Saif-u-din, one of an endless chain of leaping swordsmen: and Muhammed stood with folded arms smiling at him ironically.Once again the siege. They were going to bury Vane. A file of little Goorkhas were picking the grave, and he was working at it too with the shot whistling overhead. Never was grave so hard to dig. They toiled, it seemed to him, for years, and still the stones rolled back into the hole and all was to begin again. Then suddenly it was ready: they were lowering the stiff figure, rolled in a cerement of tent canvas, into the shallow ditch. And a flap of the cloth fell back from over the face of the dead. It was not the face of Vane, but the face of Harry English. Then, with the awful knowledge of the dreamer, Bethune knew that Harry was not dead. But when he tried to call out to the others to stop, again he had no voice. He saw a little brown Goorkha twist the cloth over the livid countenance. They began shovelling the stony earth upon his friend; and while he felt in his own lungs the suffocation of him that is buried alive, a voice said in his ear: "What is it to you? You, who should have died that he might live!"The suffocation continued so intense as to drown in physical torture even the workings of the over-active brain. Then, out of the blank, dream-consciousness struggled back to him. And again it was the siege. He was on his hard and narrow couch; it was the middle of the night, there was a great anxious rumour about him; sentries were calling; the enemy were upon them. In spite of anguished struggle, Bethune remained bound, hand and foot, while never had his spirit been more vividly awake. He could hear the running footsteps of the men in the passages, the thud, thud of the soft-shod Easterns. He could hear some one break into his room, hear himself called: "Raymond, Raymond!" And with the curious double personality of the sleeper, he told himself that it was years since any one had called him by that name—long and forlorn years of solitary life."Raymond!" called the voice, and the red light as of a torch burned through his closed eyelids. "Wake, Raymond!"He knew who it was. It was Harry; his comrade who wanted him in the danger. What shame to be sleeping at such a moment!Bethune wrenched himself from his pillow and sat upright. The room was full of light to his dazzled eyes; and the voice, the voice of Harry English, was still ringing in his ears.Muhammed Saif-u-din, who had been bending over the bed, one hand on the sleeper's shoulder, withdrew his touch and straightened himself. In his left hand he held a candle. The light flickered upon his dense black beard. But he was turbanless, and the tossed crisp hair was boyishly loose over his brow. His eyes were fixed upon Bethune, and Bethune stared back. Then Muhammed spoke:"Raymond," he said.For a moment that was heavier in the scales of time than most hours of men's lives, the two plunged their gaze into each other."My God," said Bethune, in a whisper then, "you!"A dream! Another dream of torture! Nay, no dream this time; he was awake. The unbelievable had happened. The grave had yawned and given out a living man. Harry English was alive. He had come back from the bourne whence no traveller returns, to claim his own—to claim his wife. As in a sudden vision, more vivid than any of his troubled fancies had been to-night, Bethune saw them in each other's arms, and was himself stabbed through and through by daggers of fire—he, the man whose misery it was to love his friend's wife! ...The dead had heard her call. He could see it all now, with horrible lucidity. All was clear to him. He himself had brought Lady Gerardine, the forgetful, back to the memory of her love. She had called, and Harry had come—from death.And here he stood, Harry English, looking into his friend's eyes, reading his friend's soul. Suddenly Bethune grew cold to the marrow.He would have given everything he had, his life by inches, to be able at that instant to veil those tell-tale eyes of his. But in vain; he could not drop the lids between them. At last, with a short laugh, Harry English turned away and released him, and Bethune covered his face with his hands.Oh life, more cruel than death! These two had been closer than brothers; it was eternity itself that was giving them back to each other. And thus did they meet!"Bethune," said he that had been the Pathan, in brief decided accents which once again whirled Raymond back to the hours when all had hung upon their leader in the crucial emergency, "there is no time for explanation. Every moment just now is precious. I must have this beard off—I want scissors, razors." As he spoke he tore his long coat from his back; he caught up the razors on the dressing-table with impatient hands. "Scissors, man, scissors! And for the Lord's sake, give me some more light!"Bethune sprang out of bed as if he had indeed gone back to that past of which he had been dreaming and his commanding officer had called upon his services.No stranger scene had ever been enacted within the narrow limits of this antique room, nor one more fraught with vital significance: though here, perchance, life had been born, and from here, surely, life had departed.A silence as heavy as the last doom lay between the comrades; and every second as it passed was ticked off, it seemed, by Bethune's heart. Death they had faced together often—it was at the test of life that friendship had faltered.Swiftly the glossy wings of the Pathan's beard fell under the snipping blades. And when he had exhausted what aid he could render, Bethune sat on the edge of the bed and watched the passing of Saif-u-din and the rising of Harry English from the dead.There was one moment of outward triviality which yet, to the looker-on, was charged with a pain almost beyond bearing; it was when English, with the lather white upon his chin and cheek, turned quickly round upon him with hands outstretched for a towel. How often had not he seen his comrade thus, in the old days, when they had lived together, marched together, laughed and fought and suffered together, and he had been so happy!The shaving accomplished, Captain English bent forward to the mirror and occupied himself with minute care in trimming and combing the flaunting, upturned moustache of the Pathan back to the old sober limits. There was not a quiver in the strong busy hands.Vaguely Bethune, in the chaos of his thoughts, wondered how he could ever have believed this man dead. Such as he did not die, so long as they were wanted in life.Then it was Harry English, indeed, that looked round. If Bethune's brain had had room for any doubt, the doubt must have died at that instant. Harry English, pallid, where for years the Eastern beard had grown so close—almost as with the pallor of the cheek upon which the earth has lain—worn, not so much by these same years as by a devouring impatience sternly held: but the old leader nevertheless, with such a light in his dark eyes as had been wont to kindle there when he called his men into the heart of the fight.He spoke suddenly, abruptly; and the other found once more the exorbitant situation heightened rather than lowered by the very triviality of the words that marked it:"I suppose," he said, "that you can lend me a coat. Where is it? In your bag?"He could not wait for his companion to draw his wits together. In a couple of movements the whole contents of the portmanteau were on the floor, and his arm was already in the sleeve of a shooting-jacket.This urgency of haste, under strong control though it was, awoke an answering fever in Bethune's veins. Oh, there was no need of words to make him understand! When he thought of her to whom the husband was hastening, his own heart beat to madness.In two steps Harry was at the door, when Bethune, with an inarticulate sound, flung himself before him, stretching out his arms. So poignantly familiar did the old comrade look in the shabby shooting-jacket that his heart was all dissolved within him for ruth and tenderness.A second English fixed his friend with cold and steel-bright glance, inquiring: then his face relaxed."Not now, Raymond," said he, put him on one side with quick but kindly touch, and was gone.CHAPTER II"The Captain Sahib! the Captain Sahib!" cried Jani in shrill tones; and prostrated herself before the brazier, her face on the floor."Does she think she has called him from the dead?" wondered Baby. Her thoughts danced in a mist; she would have liked to have caught one and clung to it, but they kept whirling beyond all control. She sat as if tied to her chair, staring stupidly at the two who held each other clasped so close—at the black head bent upon the golden head. Then she saw how the grip of Rosamond's hands relaxed; how the whole clinging figure fell inertly, while he—man or ghost—seemed to let it slip from him as though in surprise.He turned his head and looked at Aspasia. There was indeed, something unearthly about his countenance; in the ashen pallor on cheek and chin, in contrast to the bronze of the rest of the face, which seemed still to hold the touch of that Indian sun under which he had died. His eyes burnt with fierce light in their dark hollows. Aspasia felt that she ought to shudder with terror, that the situation, at least, ought to be one of desperate interest, but she was only conscious of a numb curiosity. She sat and stared. Then her gaze wandered from the mysterious presence to the figure lying on the bed. She saw the sharp outline of Rosamond's chin upturned, and thought, without the least emotion, that perhaps her aunt was dead. The very gold of the hair seemed lifeless, turning to ash. That cry still ringing in her ears must have been a death-cry. It had been as the cry of a soul that is passing.She watched the man lay his hand on the still forehead, saw him look sharply about him and inhale the air with deep breath.Suddenly, in two great strides, he was across the room. There was a noise of tearing curtains and jingling glass; and Aspasia found herself inhaling icy breaths of air in gasps. Heavily, with a sob of pain, she woke from her stupor. She seemed to be drawing this delicious coldness into herself as if it were new life. The man passed before her once again. He was holding Jani's tripod high in his hands. A trail of aromatic vapour swept against her face; and, as she involuntarily breathed it, she had a nauseating sense of suffocation, and the vanishing stupor returned upon her momentarily, like the shadow of some huge bird's wings. With an effort she turned her eyes, saw the man hoist the brazier in his hands and hurl it through the open window, saw the charcoal scattered apart like a shower of falling stars, heard a crash without. Then she knew it was no ghost.The singular white and bronze face bent over her."You are better, Miss Cuningham?" said a voice. She knew that voice, too; she smiled lazily."Now I know you," she said. "You are Muhammed."He smiled back at her, a fugitive smile, mixed sweetness and sadness."By-and-by you will know me better—by-and-by," he said. "Now try and wake up, if you can, and help me."He had left her and was again at the bed. Aspasia did as she was bidden. She shook herself from her torpor and stood up, somewhat dizzy, somewhat sick, but yet herself.The man, Muhammed or another, she did not allow herself to think out the matter further, was hanging over Rosamond's inanimate form. Now he laid down the hand he held and bent his dark head to her breast. Baby flung one look of horror at the rigid upturned chin."She's dead!" she screamed.He raised himself abruptly, his countenance grey even under the bronze."She is not dead," he answered her quickly, with a gesture that forbade her words, "but I have been too sudden with her, and Jani has been playing devil's tricks with her drugs. Is there any brandy——?" He wheeled round as he spoke, for the door had opened and old Mary's figure appeared.The Ancient House was now full of rumours. Old Mary's blue eyes were fixed in a stare of uttermost ecstasy. Her trembling hands were lifted as if in invocation; all at once she stretched them out, with an inarticulate cry of exaltation. Then her voice faltered into homely accents:"My lamb!" she stammered."Oh, Mary," said the man, and his tones rang with boyish note. "Mary dear, brandy! Mary, if you love me, quick."He sat down on the side of the bed chafing Rosamond's fingers. Silently Aspasia held up a bottle of essence, taken from the dressing-table. He nodded, and she began to lave her aunt's temples, not daring to let her thoughts or eyes rest on the waxen face, on the ominous air of irrevocable repose about the long relaxed figure. She wished the silent lips did not wear that mysterious smile. Determinedly arresting her mind on those strong words: "She is not dead," she felt that so long as she could hold this confidence it would help to keep the dread angel at bay."I was too sudden with her," said the man again, "but when I heard her call me, I think I went mad—I had waited so long!"Then it seemed to Aspasia that, from the first moment since he had spoken to her in the passage to-night, she had known him."You are Harry English," she said. And saying this, she began to cry. She looked down at the piteous fixed smile. He had waited so long! Was it not now too late?"Oh," she said aloud, sobbing, "is it now not too late?"Then he flung himself on his knees beside the bed, and she drew back, for none should come between them. He gathered the inanimate form into his arms; his lips were close to the deaf ear, and he was speaking into it."Rosamond, my wife, Rosamond, I have come back to you—come back to me. Rosamond, beloved!"The room was suddenly full of people.Was it possible, Aspasia asked herself, that between that cry of Rosamond and this gathering of the inmates of the house so short a time had lapsed. She felt as if she had lived a span of years."My goodness," cried Lady Aspasia. "Who was screaming? Any one hurt? I never heard such a scream in my life!"Then speech and movement alike left the eager lady. Gazing at the bed, she stood open-mouthed with stupefaction—an odious inclination to laugh barely stifled, for decency's sake, in her throat.Sir Arthur also had halted on the threshold. His eyes were fixed, as if he could hardly credit their evidence, upon the figure of the man in the shooting-jacket who knelt at the side of the low bed, almost covering the unconscious body with his embrace. And, indeed, Sir Arthur's eyes at the moment were playing him false."Bethune!" ... he exclaimed. "Major Bethune!"Not a thought, not a glance had he for the death-like stillness of his wife's face against the crisp black head—to him that head appeared sleek, close-cropped, indefinitely brown. He cried out again loudly:"You infernal scoundrel..." and caught the intruder roughly by the shoulder.The kneeling man merely turned his head."What ... what ... the devil!——" The words died on Sir Arthur's lips. His eyes protruded. "Who the devil are you, sir?""Who is it?" came Lady Aspasia's whisper, more penetrating than natural tones."Oh hush, hush," said Baby, rebuking she knew not what spirit of sacrilegious curiosity. "Hush! It is Harry English, uncle!"Slowly the man got up from his knees and looked round; then his eye came back to Sir Arthur."Harry English!" repeated Lady Aspasia's lips, voicelessly.Her mind leaped; an irrepressible lightning satisfaction wrote itself on her harsh, handsome face; then her glance swept over the bed, and the corners of her mouth went down in a grimace. There lay Death—Death already, or very near, or she had never seen it. A double release! This double release was unnecessary—nay, a complication. Fate played such tricks at times! But Sir Arthur had staggered and reeled, and Lady Aspasia, ever practical, had to postpone thought for action. She caught him firmly by the elbow:"Hold up, Arty; be a man."The Lieutenant-Governor's first impulse had naturally been to deny the monstrous thought, to wither Aspasia for her impious suggestion. Then a look at the black and white portrait over the dressing-table, fitfully but vividly illumined by the flames of the draught-blown candles—a look from that strong presentment to the pallid-faced, black-haired man by the bed, brought an overwhelming conviction. He faltered under it. For a while he could collect no words, no thought; but presently, as the tide of blood began slowly to recede, eddying, from his brain, broken phrases escaped him, almost in a whisper:"Your—your conduct is infamous, sir," he babbled, "ungentlemanly—ungentlemanly in the extreme!" ...Harry English, with one hand on Rosamond's quiet breast as if mutely claiming his own, spoke then, his eyes on the creature who had robbed him."Your place, sir, is no longer here," he said. His voice was very low, but it contained an authority which Sir Arthur instinctively felt with a fresh spasm of indignation and self-pity, trembling upon tears. "Your place is no longer here," repeated English. "Leave the room."The Lieutenant-Governor fairly suffocated:"How long has she known it?" cried he, panting, as he pointed to the bed. "No wonder I thought her mad. You have killed her!" he exclaimed acridly, upon another revulsion of thought."Had you not better have a doctor?" came Lady Aspasia's dispassionate accents. "If it's not too late," she added cynically.Baby called out as if she had been struck, and burst into fresh tears.The inert figure on the bed was all the girl had of home, all she had of certain love. This marble woman, no longer kin to her, had lavished on her more than a mother's care; from those lips, now so silent, except in the last sad days of trouble, Aspasia had never heard an ungentle word."She must not die," sobbed she."She will not die," said Harry English.He shifted his hand till it rested over Rosamond's heart. Then he looked down at the face, with its faint smile of secret joy, pitifully exposed to all these eyes; and his own countenance took an expression of tenderness so infinite that weeping Baby, catching sight of it, held her breath. He moved and stood with his back to the bed, to shelter in some measure the unconscious woman from the violation of curious looks."I must beg you all to go," he said.Sir Arthur, who had been gradually growing, within and without, to the purple stage of fury, now exploded. Portrait or no portrait, the story was preposterous. This fellow was an impostor!"Turn me out! ... 'Tis you, sir, I'll turn out. I'll have you committed, sir, I'll——""Please," said a voice from the door, "if any one is ill, let it not be forgotten that I am a doctor. I offer my services," said Monsieur Châtelard.CHAPTER IIIMonsieur Châtelard, compact in self-possession, precisely attired, as if he had not been called from slumber at the worst hour of the night by a sense of mortal emergency! And yet a very different Châtelard, either from the eager traveller or the genial raconteur and table companion they had known: this was Châtelard the physician—the world-renowned specialist.There was a weighty professional seriousness about him as he advanced into the room, fixing his spectacles with thumb and forefinger; an air of confident responsibility. He wasted not a second upon curiosity at the singular group by the bed, but sent his keen direct gaze straight to the patient."She's killed herself," was his first thought. "Poison," he murmured aloud, and his gesture was enough to clear the bedside for his own approach."No," said a voice close to him. "Not poison-shock."M. Châtelard looked up quickly, and immediately became aware of a stranger's presence."Monsieur?" he exclaimed. He, too, had instantly concluded that the second man in the room must be Bethune. He was shaken into surprise. "In the name of Heaven, who are you?""I am her husband, whom she thought dead. I took her by surprise; she fainted."M. Châtelard formed his lips for a noiseless whistle. Affairs, at one bound, had complicated themselves with a vengeance. Incredibly interesting! ... But the emergency claimed him. He bent over the bed, and there was silence all through the room.Even Sir Arthur, recalled from his undignified attitude, was stilled; not so much indeed from the sense that a human life was trembling in the balance, but from the demands which the presence of a new witness made upon decorum.The doctor raised himself and held out his hand."A candle," he said briefly.It was given to him, and again the silence reigned.M. Châtelard, with deft and gentle touch, lifted the heavy eyelid, passed the flame before it, and peered for some seconds into the fixed pupil, abnormally dilated. Then he handed back the light. Harry English took it, and held it aloft while the doctor once more consulted pulse and heart.Muttering that he would never travel without his stethescope again, M. Châtelard laid his cropped head on the fair bosom. Again the seconds ticked by with nightmare slowness. The brown hand that held the candle was shaken with slight tremor. At last M. Châtelard straightened himself with the final air of one who pronounces a verdict."This is no mere syncope," he said. "This is brain trouble. Shock, as you said, sir," with a grave inclination of his head towards Captain English.Old Mary, back from her errand, here proffered some brandy in a glass."What is that?" cried the physician, sharply. "Brandy," he said, sniffing. "Heaven preserve us, 'tis well I am here! Above all things she must not be roused. Mon cher Monsieur," he went on, turning again to Harry English, "here all our efforts must be to help nature, not to oppose her. Let all those lights be extinguished," he added authoritatively. "We must have darkness and quiet. How come all these people in the room?" He spoke with the doctor's immediate irritation at surroundings injurious to his patient.There are situations passing the endurance of human nature, especially when it is the human nature of a person of high political importance. Here was M. Châtelard actually addressing yonder infernal interloper as the leading person!"I call you to witness, M. Châtelard," Sir Arthur cried excitedly, "that this is some conspiracy that I by no means acknowledge——"Old Mary interposed, subdued yet urgent."Oh, sir, it is indeed my master!""Hush, Arty, come away now!" whispered Lady Aspasia; and once more clasped his elbow with strong sensible hand. "There will be plenty of time for all this by-and-by.""Unless you want to kill her altogether, Sir Gerardine," said Dr. Châtelard, gravely, "you will make no scenes here."Harry English stood sentinel by his wife's bed, disdaining speech."Unless you want to kill her," had said the doctor. As the words had been spoken Sir Arthur looked quickly at her whom he had called wife. "Better she should die," thought he. The whole measure of his love for the woman in whose beauty he had gloried was in that mean thought. Better she should die, since her existence was no longer an honour but a shame to him, Sir Arthur. He had loved her as part of himself; no longer his, what was she to him? Nothing more than the amputated limb to its owner, a thing to hide out of sight with all speed, a thing to bury away."I beg of you again," resumed Dr. Châtelard, in tones of restrained impatience; "I can have no one remain."A couple of servant girls, who stood huddled whispering in their corner, slid away one after the other.Lady Aspasia, by some moral force and a good deal of muscular pressure, succeeded in dragging the protesting Sir Arthur in their wake. The doctor looked at old Mary—she dropped her curtsey."I might be of use, sir."He considered her a second in silence."You may stay," he said."And I?" said Aspasia, her pallid tear-stained face was thrust pleadingly forward."You will do better to go, my child," said the Frenchman, paternally."Doctor ... she will not die?""Assuredly not this night at least," he replied, evasive yet consoling. From the door she flung back a piteous look at English, and once again his eyes answered her: "She will not die."Harry English took the last unextinguished candle and laid it on the floor. Outside, the yellow grey dawn was breaking."I want hot bottles," ordered Dr. Châtelard of Mary; and when she had left the room, he turned to the strange man who had called himself Lady Gerardine's husband."You, too, sir," he said. "You must leave us."Harry English started. For the first time, that evening, discomposure laid hold of him."I? ... but I cannot go. She will want me.""My dear sir," said the other, his tone softening into compassion (here was one who loved as few love, or he knew not how to read countenances), "this affair is very strange, but I, as doctor, am here to judge of nothing but the good of my patient. She has had a shock, and the shock has been caused by you. I repeat, all I can do here is to aid nature—nature demands repose. She is as one who has had concussion of the brain. That brain must rest. Call her back to thought, you may call her to death.""I would sit in a corner of the room—she would not know.""Ah," said the doctor, "one never can tell. That is a fallacy I have long since seen through. So long as the soul is there, my dear sir, many things take place inside the body that we know naught of."Then Harry English submitted. He went forth with bent head.... He who had waited so long! lint, even as Aspasia had done, he halted to question:"If she comes to consciousness?""She will not come to consciousness, perhaps, for days.""If she wants me——?""My dear sir—immediately, of course.""When she comes to consciousness, will she——""Ah," interrupted the doctor, "who knows? We may have brain trouble—an illness we will surely have."Then Harry English, who had so confidently said she would not die, looked at the other mutely inquiring yet further."Ah, my dear sir," said the Frenchman in his quick apprehension, and shrugged his shoulder. Then he added, compassionately, turning his head towards the bed:"She is young."Harry English closed the door and sat down in the dark passage, cross-legged after the habit that had grown second nature, and there remained. Waiting.Suddenly he rose to his feet again; he had heard the handle of the door click. M. Châtelard stood on the threshold."The Indian woman," he whispered, "she makes a noise. She must go."Jani, crouching in a hidden corner within, had set up a moaning. The sound of her wail caught Harry English's ear: a creeping chill passed over him; that Eastern lament that had nothing human in its note, but was as the despair of the animal that mourns without understanding, how familiar it was to his ear! So did the women there, over seas, wail only over death. He, who had held himself in such strength hitherto, was shaken to his soul. He could not form the words that rose to his lips."You know how to deal with these persons," pursued the Frenchman, absorbed in his thoughts, and in the dusk unable to read the other's countenance, "I beg you to remove her at once. But,chut,chut, attention, please, not to disturb my patient!"English drew his breath sharply. Had he been of those who weep, he might have burst into tears then. It is the instant of relief that catches the strong-fighting soul unawares. He clenched his hands till the nails ran into the palm, and followed the doctor on noiseless feet into the room.One glance at the bed! It was all in shadow; but even in the deliberate dimness there was evidence that a practised hand had already been at work. He could see that his wife had been settled among her pillows with care. The white of a bandage lay across her brow. A screen was set between the bed and the banked-up fire. Old Mary was seated in a high chair, within the glow, composed and watchful, the very picture of what a nurse should be. The light of the shaded candle illumined but one thing—the white hand that hung slightly over the edge of the bed; it scintillated back from the gems of the ring that guarded the narrow wedding circlet. His rings!M. Châtelard pulled him by the sleeve. Harry English turned sharply. He had told Sir Arthur "that his place was not here," and must now realise in his turn that neither was his place here. There was bitterness and anger in his eyes as he bent over the ayah.She looked up at him, terror on her face. He pointed to the passage, and she crawled out, on hands and knees, whimpering to herself like a dog. Without another glance towards Rosamond, Harry retired also, and closed the door behind him. Old Mary followed him with her eyes, and folded her hands; her lips moved as if in prayer.* * * * *In the passage Jani dragged herself towards her old master, and clutching his ankles, laid her head upon his feet."Sahib!" ...Harry looked down at her a moment, without speaking. So intense was the bitterness that welled up within him, even towards this poor wretch, that he was ashamed of it. Thus, when he spoke, it was with an added gentleness."Ah, Jani," he said, "you knew me, here, from the beginning." ...This miserable pawn on the chess-board of life, had she not worked against him, how different all might now have been!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 IVM. 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—butc'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—thefirsthusbandpar 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.
* * * * *
All at once Aspasia found herself awake—a blast of cold air had rushed into the drowsy secret atmosphere. The door had been flung open and one had entered—a man who came with quick clean tread, whose face was pale, as if indeed risen from the dead, but whose eyes shone with a wonderful light of life.
The woman in the bed reared herself up with outflung arms, and, as he who entered went straight to her, she cast herself upon his breast with a great cry.
"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry!"
Such a cry had the walls of the manor-house surely never held before. It might have been the voice of all the anguish and all the ecstasies it had known these centuries. It rang round the old walls; every echo took it up and answered it, as if they had been waiting for it.
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
Bethune had soon packed his simple baggage; then he went straight to bed, setting his will upon sleep, against thought.
But what mind perturbed can command repose? Every ugly demon of disquiet that his situation could breed took form and sat beside him on the narrow bed. Three there were of a special torment. One with the eyes of hatred that Lady Gerardine had fixed upon him that evening. A twin demon that for ever repeated in his ear: "You should have died, that he might live." And a third, whose face was veiled, whose immutable hand pointed towards the empty sandy desert of the future.
When at last, far on in the watches of the night, sleep did fall upon him, it was in trouble and confusion of mind—a dream-struggle with fate, more painful even than the reality.
He was back in the midst of the siege—one of the starving, thirst-plagued, harassed garrison. They were hard pressed, piling sandbags on a newly defiladed rampart, but his men were a leaden weight upon him. He could not stir them to activity; when he tried to shout orders or expostulation, he could bring forth nothing but a whisper. Always the barricades melted away beneath his touch, his very rifle twisted like wax when he handled it, and then there sprang into the breach Muhammed Saif-u-din, one of an endless chain of leaping swordsmen: and Muhammed stood with folded arms smiling at him ironically.
Once again the siege. They were going to bury Vane. A file of little Goorkhas were picking the grave, and he was working at it too with the shot whistling overhead. Never was grave so hard to dig. They toiled, it seemed to him, for years, and still the stones rolled back into the hole and all was to begin again. Then suddenly it was ready: they were lowering the stiff figure, rolled in a cerement of tent canvas, into the shallow ditch. And a flap of the cloth fell back from over the face of the dead. It was not the face of Vane, but the face of Harry English. Then, with the awful knowledge of the dreamer, Bethune knew that Harry was not dead. But when he tried to call out to the others to stop, again he had no voice. He saw a little brown Goorkha twist the cloth over the livid countenance. They began shovelling the stony earth upon his friend; and while he felt in his own lungs the suffocation of him that is buried alive, a voice said in his ear: "What is it to you? You, who should have died that he might live!"
The suffocation continued so intense as to drown in physical torture even the workings of the over-active brain. Then, out of the blank, dream-consciousness struggled back to him. And again it was the siege. He was on his hard and narrow couch; it was the middle of the night, there was a great anxious rumour about him; sentries were calling; the enemy were upon them. In spite of anguished struggle, Bethune remained bound, hand and foot, while never had his spirit been more vividly awake. He could hear the running footsteps of the men in the passages, the thud, thud of the soft-shod Easterns. He could hear some one break into his room, hear himself called: "Raymond, Raymond!" And with the curious double personality of the sleeper, he told himself that it was years since any one had called him by that name—long and forlorn years of solitary life.
"Raymond!" called the voice, and the red light as of a torch burned through his closed eyelids. "Wake, Raymond!"
He knew who it was. It was Harry; his comrade who wanted him in the danger. What shame to be sleeping at such a moment!
Bethune wrenched himself from his pillow and sat upright. The room was full of light to his dazzled eyes; and the voice, the voice of Harry English, was still ringing in his ears.
Muhammed Saif-u-din, who had been bending over the bed, one hand on the sleeper's shoulder, withdrew his touch and straightened himself. In his left hand he held a candle. The light flickered upon his dense black beard. But he was turbanless, and the tossed crisp hair was boyishly loose over his brow. His eyes were fixed upon Bethune, and Bethune stared back. Then Muhammed spoke:
"Raymond," he said.
For a moment that was heavier in the scales of time than most hours of men's lives, the two plunged their gaze into each other.
"My God," said Bethune, in a whisper then, "you!"
A dream! Another dream of torture! Nay, no dream this time; he was awake. The unbelievable had happened. The grave had yawned and given out a living man. Harry English was alive. He had come back from the bourne whence no traveller returns, to claim his own—to claim his wife. As in a sudden vision, more vivid than any of his troubled fancies had been to-night, Bethune saw them in each other's arms, and was himself stabbed through and through by daggers of fire—he, the man whose misery it was to love his friend's wife! ...
The dead had heard her call. He could see it all now, with horrible lucidity. All was clear to him. He himself had brought Lady Gerardine, the forgetful, back to the memory of her love. She had called, and Harry had come—from death.
And here he stood, Harry English, looking into his friend's eyes, reading his friend's soul. Suddenly Bethune grew cold to the marrow.
He would have given everything he had, his life by inches, to be able at that instant to veil those tell-tale eyes of his. But in vain; he could not drop the lids between them. At last, with a short laugh, Harry English turned away and released him, and Bethune covered his face with his hands.
Oh life, more cruel than death! These two had been closer than brothers; it was eternity itself that was giving them back to each other. And thus did they meet!
"Bethune," said he that had been the Pathan, in brief decided accents which once again whirled Raymond back to the hours when all had hung upon their leader in the crucial emergency, "there is no time for explanation. Every moment just now is precious. I must have this beard off—I want scissors, razors." As he spoke he tore his long coat from his back; he caught up the razors on the dressing-table with impatient hands. "Scissors, man, scissors! And for the Lord's sake, give me some more light!"
Bethune sprang out of bed as if he had indeed gone back to that past of which he had been dreaming and his commanding officer had called upon his services.
No stranger scene had ever been enacted within the narrow limits of this antique room, nor one more fraught with vital significance: though here, perchance, life had been born, and from here, surely, life had departed.
A silence as heavy as the last doom lay between the comrades; and every second as it passed was ticked off, it seemed, by Bethune's heart. Death they had faced together often—it was at the test of life that friendship had faltered.
Swiftly the glossy wings of the Pathan's beard fell under the snipping blades. And when he had exhausted what aid he could render, Bethune sat on the edge of the bed and watched the passing of Saif-u-din and the rising of Harry English from the dead.
There was one moment of outward triviality which yet, to the looker-on, was charged with a pain almost beyond bearing; it was when English, with the lather white upon his chin and cheek, turned quickly round upon him with hands outstretched for a towel. How often had not he seen his comrade thus, in the old days, when they had lived together, marched together, laughed and fought and suffered together, and he had been so happy!
The shaving accomplished, Captain English bent forward to the mirror and occupied himself with minute care in trimming and combing the flaunting, upturned moustache of the Pathan back to the old sober limits. There was not a quiver in the strong busy hands.
Vaguely Bethune, in the chaos of his thoughts, wondered how he could ever have believed this man dead. Such as he did not die, so long as they were wanted in life.
Then it was Harry English, indeed, that looked round. If Bethune's brain had had room for any doubt, the doubt must have died at that instant. Harry English, pallid, where for years the Eastern beard had grown so close—almost as with the pallor of the cheek upon which the earth has lain—worn, not so much by these same years as by a devouring impatience sternly held: but the old leader nevertheless, with such a light in his dark eyes as had been wont to kindle there when he called his men into the heart of the fight.
He spoke suddenly, abruptly; and the other found once more the exorbitant situation heightened rather than lowered by the very triviality of the words that marked it:
"I suppose," he said, "that you can lend me a coat. Where is it? In your bag?"
He could not wait for his companion to draw his wits together. In a couple of movements the whole contents of the portmanteau were on the floor, and his arm was already in the sleeve of a shooting-jacket.
This urgency of haste, under strong control though it was, awoke an answering fever in Bethune's veins. Oh, there was no need of words to make him understand! When he thought of her to whom the husband was hastening, his own heart beat to madness.
In two steps Harry was at the door, when Bethune, with an inarticulate sound, flung himself before him, stretching out his arms. So poignantly familiar did the old comrade look in the shabby shooting-jacket that his heart was all dissolved within him for ruth and tenderness.
A second English fixed his friend with cold and steel-bright glance, inquiring: then his face relaxed.
"Not now, Raymond," said he, put him on one side with quick but kindly touch, and was gone.
CHAPTER II
"The Captain Sahib! the Captain Sahib!" cried Jani in shrill tones; and prostrated herself before the brazier, her face on the floor.
"Does she think she has called him from the dead?" wondered Baby. Her thoughts danced in a mist; she would have liked to have caught one and clung to it, but they kept whirling beyond all control. She sat as if tied to her chair, staring stupidly at the two who held each other clasped so close—at the black head bent upon the golden head. Then she saw how the grip of Rosamond's hands relaxed; how the whole clinging figure fell inertly, while he—man or ghost—seemed to let it slip from him as though in surprise.
He turned his head and looked at Aspasia. There was indeed, something unearthly about his countenance; in the ashen pallor on cheek and chin, in contrast to the bronze of the rest of the face, which seemed still to hold the touch of that Indian sun under which he had died. His eyes burnt with fierce light in their dark hollows. Aspasia felt that she ought to shudder with terror, that the situation, at least, ought to be one of desperate interest, but she was only conscious of a numb curiosity. She sat and stared. Then her gaze wandered from the mysterious presence to the figure lying on the bed. She saw the sharp outline of Rosamond's chin upturned, and thought, without the least emotion, that perhaps her aunt was dead. The very gold of the hair seemed lifeless, turning to ash. That cry still ringing in her ears must have been a death-cry. It had been as the cry of a soul that is passing.
She watched the man lay his hand on the still forehead, saw him look sharply about him and inhale the air with deep breath.
Suddenly, in two great strides, he was across the room. There was a noise of tearing curtains and jingling glass; and Aspasia found herself inhaling icy breaths of air in gasps. Heavily, with a sob of pain, she woke from her stupor. She seemed to be drawing this delicious coldness into herself as if it were new life. The man passed before her once again. He was holding Jani's tripod high in his hands. A trail of aromatic vapour swept against her face; and, as she involuntarily breathed it, she had a nauseating sense of suffocation, and the vanishing stupor returned upon her momentarily, like the shadow of some huge bird's wings. With an effort she turned her eyes, saw the man hoist the brazier in his hands and hurl it through the open window, saw the charcoal scattered apart like a shower of falling stars, heard a crash without. Then she knew it was no ghost.
The singular white and bronze face bent over her.
"You are better, Miss Cuningham?" said a voice. She knew that voice, too; she smiled lazily.
"Now I know you," she said. "You are Muhammed."
He smiled back at her, a fugitive smile, mixed sweetness and sadness.
"By-and-by you will know me better—by-and-by," he said. "Now try and wake up, if you can, and help me."
He had left her and was again at the bed. Aspasia did as she was bidden. She shook herself from her torpor and stood up, somewhat dizzy, somewhat sick, but yet herself.
The man, Muhammed or another, she did not allow herself to think out the matter further, was hanging over Rosamond's inanimate form. Now he laid down the hand he held and bent his dark head to her breast. Baby flung one look of horror at the rigid upturned chin.
"She's dead!" she screamed.
He raised himself abruptly, his countenance grey even under the bronze.
"She is not dead," he answered her quickly, with a gesture that forbade her words, "but I have been too sudden with her, and Jani has been playing devil's tricks with her drugs. Is there any brandy——?" He wheeled round as he spoke, for the door had opened and old Mary's figure appeared.
The Ancient House was now full of rumours. Old Mary's blue eyes were fixed in a stare of uttermost ecstasy. Her trembling hands were lifted as if in invocation; all at once she stretched them out, with an inarticulate cry of exaltation. Then her voice faltered into homely accents:
"My lamb!" she stammered.
"Oh, Mary," said the man, and his tones rang with boyish note. "Mary dear, brandy! Mary, if you love me, quick."
He sat down on the side of the bed chafing Rosamond's fingers. Silently Aspasia held up a bottle of essence, taken from the dressing-table. He nodded, and she began to lave her aunt's temples, not daring to let her thoughts or eyes rest on the waxen face, on the ominous air of irrevocable repose about the long relaxed figure. She wished the silent lips did not wear that mysterious smile. Determinedly arresting her mind on those strong words: "She is not dead," she felt that so long as she could hold this confidence it would help to keep the dread angel at bay.
"I was too sudden with her," said the man again, "but when I heard her call me, I think I went mad—I had waited so long!"
Then it seemed to Aspasia that, from the first moment since he had spoken to her in the passage to-night, she had known him.
"You are Harry English," she said. And saying this, she began to cry. She looked down at the piteous fixed smile. He had waited so long! Was it not now too late?
"Oh," she said aloud, sobbing, "is it now not too late?"
Then he flung himself on his knees beside the bed, and she drew back, for none should come between them. He gathered the inanimate form into his arms; his lips were close to the deaf ear, and he was speaking into it.
"Rosamond, my wife, Rosamond, I have come back to you—come back to me. Rosamond, beloved!"
The room was suddenly full of people.
Was it possible, Aspasia asked herself, that between that cry of Rosamond and this gathering of the inmates of the house so short a time had lapsed. She felt as if she had lived a span of years.
"My goodness," cried Lady Aspasia. "Who was screaming? Any one hurt? I never heard such a scream in my life!"
Then speech and movement alike left the eager lady. Gazing at the bed, she stood open-mouthed with stupefaction—an odious inclination to laugh barely stifled, for decency's sake, in her throat.
Sir Arthur also had halted on the threshold. His eyes were fixed, as if he could hardly credit their evidence, upon the figure of the man in the shooting-jacket who knelt at the side of the low bed, almost covering the unconscious body with his embrace. And, indeed, Sir Arthur's eyes at the moment were playing him false.
"Bethune!" ... he exclaimed. "Major Bethune!"
Not a thought, not a glance had he for the death-like stillness of his wife's face against the crisp black head—to him that head appeared sleek, close-cropped, indefinitely brown. He cried out again loudly:
"You infernal scoundrel..." and caught the intruder roughly by the shoulder.
The kneeling man merely turned his head.
"What ... what ... the devil!——" The words died on Sir Arthur's lips. His eyes protruded. "Who the devil are you, sir?"
"Who is it?" came Lady Aspasia's whisper, more penetrating than natural tones.
"Oh hush, hush," said Baby, rebuking she knew not what spirit of sacrilegious curiosity. "Hush! It is Harry English, uncle!"
Slowly the man got up from his knees and looked round; then his eye came back to Sir Arthur.
"Harry English!" repeated Lady Aspasia's lips, voicelessly.
Her mind leaped; an irrepressible lightning satisfaction wrote itself on her harsh, handsome face; then her glance swept over the bed, and the corners of her mouth went down in a grimace. There lay Death—Death already, or very near, or she had never seen it. A double release! This double release was unnecessary—nay, a complication. Fate played such tricks at times! But Sir Arthur had staggered and reeled, and Lady Aspasia, ever practical, had to postpone thought for action. She caught him firmly by the elbow:
"Hold up, Arty; be a man."
The Lieutenant-Governor's first impulse had naturally been to deny the monstrous thought, to wither Aspasia for her impious suggestion. Then a look at the black and white portrait over the dressing-table, fitfully but vividly illumined by the flames of the draught-blown candles—a look from that strong presentment to the pallid-faced, black-haired man by the bed, brought an overwhelming conviction. He faltered under it. For a while he could collect no words, no thought; but presently, as the tide of blood began slowly to recede, eddying, from his brain, broken phrases escaped him, almost in a whisper:
"Your—your conduct is infamous, sir," he babbled, "ungentlemanly—ungentlemanly in the extreme!" ...
Harry English, with one hand on Rosamond's quiet breast as if mutely claiming his own, spoke then, his eyes on the creature who had robbed him.
"Your place, sir, is no longer here," he said. His voice was very low, but it contained an authority which Sir Arthur instinctively felt with a fresh spasm of indignation and self-pity, trembling upon tears. "Your place is no longer here," repeated English. "Leave the room."
The Lieutenant-Governor fairly suffocated:
"How long has she known it?" cried he, panting, as he pointed to the bed. "No wonder I thought her mad. You have killed her!" he exclaimed acridly, upon another revulsion of thought.
"Had you not better have a doctor?" came Lady Aspasia's dispassionate accents. "If it's not too late," she added cynically.
Baby called out as if she had been struck, and burst into fresh tears.
The inert figure on the bed was all the girl had of home, all she had of certain love. This marble woman, no longer kin to her, had lavished on her more than a mother's care; from those lips, now so silent, except in the last sad days of trouble, Aspasia had never heard an ungentle word.
"She must not die," sobbed she.
"She will not die," said Harry English.
He shifted his hand till it rested over Rosamond's heart. Then he looked down at the face, with its faint smile of secret joy, pitifully exposed to all these eyes; and his own countenance took an expression of tenderness so infinite that weeping Baby, catching sight of it, held her breath. He moved and stood with his back to the bed, to shelter in some measure the unconscious woman from the violation of curious looks.
"I must beg you all to go," he said.
Sir Arthur, who had been gradually growing, within and without, to the purple stage of fury, now exploded. Portrait or no portrait, the story was preposterous. This fellow was an impostor!
"Turn me out! ... 'Tis you, sir, I'll turn out. I'll have you committed, sir, I'll——"
"Please," said a voice from the door, "if any one is ill, let it not be forgotten that I am a doctor. I offer my services," said Monsieur Châtelard.
CHAPTER III
Monsieur Châtelard, compact in self-possession, precisely attired, as if he had not been called from slumber at the worst hour of the night by a sense of mortal emergency! And yet a very different Châtelard, either from the eager traveller or the genial raconteur and table companion they had known: this was Châtelard the physician—the world-renowned specialist.
There was a weighty professional seriousness about him as he advanced into the room, fixing his spectacles with thumb and forefinger; an air of confident responsibility. He wasted not a second upon curiosity at the singular group by the bed, but sent his keen direct gaze straight to the patient.
"She's killed herself," was his first thought. "Poison," he murmured aloud, and his gesture was enough to clear the bedside for his own approach.
"No," said a voice close to him. "Not poison-shock."
M. Châtelard looked up quickly, and immediately became aware of a stranger's presence.
"Monsieur?" he exclaimed. He, too, had instantly concluded that the second man in the room must be Bethune. He was shaken into surprise. "In the name of Heaven, who are you?"
"I am her husband, whom she thought dead. I took her by surprise; she fainted."
M. Châtelard formed his lips for a noiseless whistle. Affairs, at one bound, had complicated themselves with a vengeance. Incredibly interesting! ... But the emergency claimed him. He bent over the bed, and there was silence all through the room.
Even Sir Arthur, recalled from his undignified attitude, was stilled; not so much indeed from the sense that a human life was trembling in the balance, but from the demands which the presence of a new witness made upon decorum.
The doctor raised himself and held out his hand.
"A candle," he said briefly.
It was given to him, and again the silence reigned.
M. Châtelard, with deft and gentle touch, lifted the heavy eyelid, passed the flame before it, and peered for some seconds into the fixed pupil, abnormally dilated. Then he handed back the light. Harry English took it, and held it aloft while the doctor once more consulted pulse and heart.
Muttering that he would never travel without his stethescope again, M. Châtelard laid his cropped head on the fair bosom. Again the seconds ticked by with nightmare slowness. The brown hand that held the candle was shaken with slight tremor. At last M. Châtelard straightened himself with the final air of one who pronounces a verdict.
"This is no mere syncope," he said. "This is brain trouble. Shock, as you said, sir," with a grave inclination of his head towards Captain English.
Old Mary, back from her errand, here proffered some brandy in a glass.
"What is that?" cried the physician, sharply. "Brandy," he said, sniffing. "Heaven preserve us, 'tis well I am here! Above all things she must not be roused. Mon cher Monsieur," he went on, turning again to Harry English, "here all our efforts must be to help nature, not to oppose her. Let all those lights be extinguished," he added authoritatively. "We must have darkness and quiet. How come all these people in the room?" He spoke with the doctor's immediate irritation at surroundings injurious to his patient.
There are situations passing the endurance of human nature, especially when it is the human nature of a person of high political importance. Here was M. Châtelard actually addressing yonder infernal interloper as the leading person!
"I call you to witness, M. Châtelard," Sir Arthur cried excitedly, "that this is some conspiracy that I by no means acknowledge——"
Old Mary interposed, subdued yet urgent.
"Oh, sir, it is indeed my master!"
"Hush, Arty, come away now!" whispered Lady Aspasia; and once more clasped his elbow with strong sensible hand. "There will be plenty of time for all this by-and-by."
"Unless you want to kill her altogether, Sir Gerardine," said Dr. Châtelard, gravely, "you will make no scenes here."
Harry English stood sentinel by his wife's bed, disdaining speech.
"Unless you want to kill her," had said the doctor. As the words had been spoken Sir Arthur looked quickly at her whom he had called wife. "Better she should die," thought he. The whole measure of his love for the woman in whose beauty he had gloried was in that mean thought. Better she should die, since her existence was no longer an honour but a shame to him, Sir Arthur. He had loved her as part of himself; no longer his, what was she to him? Nothing more than the amputated limb to its owner, a thing to hide out of sight with all speed, a thing to bury away.
"I beg of you again," resumed Dr. Châtelard, in tones of restrained impatience; "I can have no one remain."
A couple of servant girls, who stood huddled whispering in their corner, slid away one after the other.
Lady Aspasia, by some moral force and a good deal of muscular pressure, succeeded in dragging the protesting Sir Arthur in their wake. The doctor looked at old Mary—she dropped her curtsey.
"I might be of use, sir."
He considered her a second in silence.
"You may stay," he said.
"And I?" said Aspasia, her pallid tear-stained face was thrust pleadingly forward.
"You will do better to go, my child," said the Frenchman, paternally.
"Doctor ... she will not die?"
"Assuredly not this night at least," he replied, evasive yet consoling. From the door she flung back a piteous look at English, and once again his eyes answered her: "She will not die."
Harry English took the last unextinguished candle and laid it on the floor. Outside, the yellow grey dawn was breaking.
"I want hot bottles," ordered Dr. Châtelard of Mary; and when she had left the room, he turned to the strange man who had called himself Lady Gerardine's husband.
"You, too, sir," he said. "You must leave us."
Harry English started. For the first time, that evening, discomposure laid hold of him.
"I? ... but I cannot go. She will want me."
"My dear sir," said the other, his tone softening into compassion (here was one who loved as few love, or he knew not how to read countenances), "this affair is very strange, but I, as doctor, am here to judge of nothing but the good of my patient. She has had a shock, and the shock has been caused by you. I repeat, all I can do here is to aid nature—nature demands repose. She is as one who has had concussion of the brain. That brain must rest. Call her back to thought, you may call her to death."
"I would sit in a corner of the room—she would not know."
"Ah," said the doctor, "one never can tell. That is a fallacy I have long since seen through. So long as the soul is there, my dear sir, many things take place inside the body that we know naught of."
Then Harry English submitted. He went forth with bent head.... He who had waited so long! lint, even as Aspasia had done, he halted to question:
"If she comes to consciousness?"
"She will not come to consciousness, perhaps, for days."
"If she wants me——?"
"My dear sir—immediately, of course."
"When she comes to consciousness, will she——"
"Ah," interrupted the doctor, "who knows? We may have brain trouble—an illness we will surely have."
Then Harry English, who had so confidently said she would not die, looked at the other mutely inquiring yet further.
"Ah, my dear sir," said the Frenchman in his quick apprehension, and shrugged his shoulder. Then he added, compassionately, turning his head towards the bed:
"She is young."
Harry English closed the door and sat down in the dark passage, cross-legged after the habit that had grown second nature, and there remained. Waiting.
Suddenly he rose to his feet again; he had heard the handle of the door click. M. Châtelard stood on the threshold.
"The Indian woman," he whispered, "she makes a noise. She must go."
Jani, crouching in a hidden corner within, had set up a moaning. The sound of her wail caught Harry English's ear: a creeping chill passed over him; that Eastern lament that had nothing human in its note, but was as the despair of the animal that mourns without understanding, how familiar it was to his ear! So did the women there, over seas, wail only over death. He, who had held himself in such strength hitherto, was shaken to his soul. He could not form the words that rose to his lips.
"You know how to deal with these persons," pursued the Frenchman, absorbed in his thoughts, and in the dusk unable to read the other's countenance, "I beg you to remove her at once. But,chut,chut, attention, please, not to disturb my patient!"
English drew his breath sharply. Had he been of those who weep, he might have burst into tears then. It is the instant of relief that catches the strong-fighting soul unawares. He clenched his hands till the nails ran into the palm, and followed the doctor on noiseless feet into the room.
One glance at the bed! It was all in shadow; but even in the deliberate dimness there was evidence that a practised hand had already been at work. He could see that his wife had been settled among her pillows with care. The white of a bandage lay across her brow. A screen was set between the bed and the banked-up fire. Old Mary was seated in a high chair, within the glow, composed and watchful, the very picture of what a nurse should be. The light of the shaded candle illumined but one thing—the white hand that hung slightly over the edge of the bed; it scintillated back from the gems of the ring that guarded the narrow wedding circlet. His rings!
M. Châtelard pulled him by the sleeve. Harry English turned sharply. He had told Sir Arthur "that his place was not here," and must now realise in his turn that neither was his place here. There was bitterness and anger in his eyes as he bent over the ayah.
She looked up at him, terror on her face. He pointed to the passage, and she crawled out, on hands and knees, whimpering to herself like a dog. Without another glance towards Rosamond, Harry retired also, and closed the door behind him. Old Mary followed him with her eyes, and folded her hands; her lips moved as if in prayer.
* * * * *
In the passage Jani dragged herself towards her old master, and clutching his ankles, laid her head upon his feet.
"Sahib!" ...
Harry looked down at her a moment, without speaking. So intense was the bitterness that welled up within him, even towards this poor wretch, that he was ashamed of it. Thus, when he spoke, it was with an added gentleness.
"Ah, Jani," he said, "you knew me, here, from the beginning." ...
This miserable pawn on the chess-board of life, had she not worked against him, how different all might now have been!
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—butc'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—thefirsthusbandpar 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.