CHAPTER V"I think you had better get your uncle a little whisky, or something," said Lady Aspasia to Baby, as, upon their ejection into the passage, she guided the poor gentleman's vague footsteps towards her own room. "Come in here, Arty; there's a good fire."Sir Arthur turned his eyes upon her with a vacant look, catching at surprise."Yes, my room. But, Lord, I don't think any of us need mind theconvenancesto-night!"She gave a dry laugh. At least, whatever rules were transgressed now—they only regarded him and her: the thought came with sudden and exceeding pleasantness upon her; and that heart of hers, atrophied by long disuse, was stirred. She looked at the helpless, dazed creature, sinking into her armchair, with a softness that, even in his most gallant youth, his image had not evoked. "Good fellow" as she was, Lady Aspasia was yet a woman in the hidden fibre.Young Aspasia, shuffling about in her slippers, yet still fleet of foot, broke in upon their silence with the decanter. Shivering, partly with fatigue, partly with the chill of the dawn, she stood, vaguely watching the elder lady administer a stiff bumper to Sir Arthur.Complete as was the turmoil in her own mind, deep as was her distress and anxiety anent Rosamond, Baby's sense of humour was irresistibly acute: the vision of Lady Aspasia, incompletely attired under her motor coat, her loose coiled hair (divested of the dignity of her "transformation") presenting a strangely flat appearance, bending with such solicitude over so reduced a Runkle, brought a hysterical giggle in her throat."Pray," said Lady Aspasia, wheeling round upon her, "don't begin to cry here, my dear! One is as much as I can manage.""I'm not crying," retorted young Aspasia, as indignantly as her chattering teeth would allow. "I'm laughing.""Then that's worse," responded the other, succinctly. "Take some whisky, too. Go to bed."Sir Arthur, gulping down the potent mixture provided for him, extended a forbidding left hand:"One moment," he ordered; then choked and coughed. But the stimulant was working its effect, his backbone was notably stiffer. The native dignity, not to say pomposity, was returning to his support. He regarded his niece with eyes, severe, if somewhat watery. "How long, Aspasia, have you known this—this—disgraceful state of affairs?"He rolled his suffused gaze from the girl to his distinguished relative, seeking a kindred indignation."You mean, how long I have known that Aunt Rosamond wasn't married at all? Oh, Lord, what am I saying?—that she's got two husbands—gracious, I can't help being muddled. Who could? Anyhow, that she's not married to you? I——""The premises are by no means established," interrupted Sir Arthur, with not unsuccessful reaching after his old manner. "But how long, I ask, have you known of the presence in this house—or in this neighbourhood—of the person, impostor or no, who dares to present himself as Harry English?""Well, as a matter of fact," said Baby, hugging herself in her dressing-gown, the warmth of the fire, the heat of her reawakening antagonism, getting the better of her chill tremors; "as a matter of fact, you have known him a good deal longer and more intimately than I have.""Lord, child, how you bandy words!" said Lady Aspasia, disapprovingly; "let her go to bed, Arty. Surely, you'll have plenty of time by-and-by for all this."But the Lieutenant-Governor waived the interruption aside with impatience. Miss Cuningham did not await further questioning. It would be scarce human to feel no complacency in the power to impart weighty information. And Baby was among the most human of her race."You went and fished him out yourself," she cried. "Your own particular, private secretary."And still Sir Arthur was all at sea."Private secretary," he repeated blankly, hastily running over in his mind all the members of his staff within recent years. Nonsense! Preposterous! There was not one who bore the faintest resemblance to this black-avised, domineering intruder.Lady Aspasia whistled under her breath to mark her displeasure at the inopportune discussion, and mixed herself a companion bumper to Sir Arthur's."The native spring, not quite so native as we all fancied, Runkle. Muhammed Saif-u-din. My goodness," cried the girl, clasping her hands, and struck with a new aspect of the situation, "no wonder I thought him queer! ... No wonder, Runkle, he looked at you as if he could murder you! Lord, it's just too romantic! To think of his being with you all these days and weeks, and of his being here, alone with us—waiting, waiting all the time.""Muhammed..." ejaculated Sir Arthur, and sat in his chair as if turned to stone.Then suddenly:"Muhammed!" he cried again, in a high shrill voice, and bounded to his feet. "The damned black scoundrel," foamed the Lieutenant-Governor, "the wretched nigger. The miserable beggar, whom I took from the gutter and admitted into my household, and treated as a gentleman—a gentleman, begad! By the Lord, he shall smart for this! It's a hideous conspiracy! No, no, Lady Aspasia, you don't know the race as I do. It's trickery, it's a piece of monstrous Indian jugglery. I tell you, it's a conspiracy between them all.""Of course," cut in sarcastic Baby, trembliog again, this time with anger, "it's all a conspiracy, merely to annoy the Runkle. Captain English has simply plotted not to have been killed, and poor Aunt Rosamond lies at death's door out of sheer aggravation—that's part of the conspiracy also.""And pray," said Sir Arthur, unheeding anything but the opposition of her tone, and turning furiously again upon the girl, "will you have the kindness to answer me at last? You, you, my niece, how long have you been in the business? A nice set of vipers I've been nourishing! Oh, my God!"He put his hand to his forehead and reeled; then stretched out his arm, gropingly. Promptly, Lady Aspasia popped the glass she had destined for herself into the vague fingers; and, as if mechanically, it was instantly conveyed to his lips."I've been in the business no longer than you, yourself, Runkle."Young Aspasia, between anger, scorn, and her sense of humour, was now perilously near the hysterics dreaded by her namesake."Now look here," said the latter, catching the small figure by the elbow and turning it towards the door, "you get out of this in double-quick time; I'll manage your uncle.""Master Muhammed will find he has made a little mistake—a little mistake," said the great man, spurred once more to his normal vigour of intellect.He was standing, legs wide apart, on the hearthrug, and glared at his niece as she wheeled round on the threshold for her usual Parthian shot."It's rather a pity that he does not happen to be Muhammed any more; isn't it, Runkle?" she cried spitefully; "that he never was Muhammed, but always Harry English, Harry English, Harry English, who never was dead at all!"She closed the door with a slam upon a picture of her uncle's suddenly stricken face, of Lady Aspasia's swift advance towards him with outstretched hands."She'll manage him!" said Baby to herself, with a sobbing giggle, as she ran down the dark passage.CHAPTER VIThe Old Ancient House lay in silence—a sinister silence, Bethune thought—after the rumours and alarms of the night. The dawn was breaking yellow over a grey, still world. What did it herald? he wondered, as he looked out of his dormer window under the roof.One thing it was bringing, he told his sullen heart—the new day of the new life of Raymond Bethune. Raymond Bethune, the disgraced, who had failed his comrade.When that wild cry had rung out into the night, "Harry, Harry, Harry!" it had sounded, in his ears, like the death-cry of his honour; a parting from all that he had held dear; a parting from his highest and closest, than which no parting between soul and body could be more bitter.He had sat on his bed, and listened—listened, expecting he knew not what. What, indeed, had he now to expect? He had heard the running of feet, the opening and shutting of doors, all the busy noises of a house alarmed. Was she dead? Dead of her joy, in that supreme moment of reunion? Would there not be a heaven, even in his anguish, for him who could thus take her dying kiss!By-and-by he had roused himself; and, after a look of horror upon that bed of dreams, mechanically dressed for his departure. To go away—that was all that was left to him—the last decency. He put a grim control upon his nerves as he wielded the razor and the brushes that Harry English's fingers had so recently touched.Harry English ... out of the grave!Bethune could not yet face the marvel of the situation. He had yet no power over his dazed brain to bring it to realise that for so long he had been living near his old comrade in the flesh, and had not known—he who had not passed a day, since their parting, without living with him in the spirit! Still less could he speculate upon the reasons of English's incognito, upon his singular scheme, his recklessness of his own reputation; nor by what miracle he had been saved from death; nor by what freakish cruelty of fate he had been buried from their ken till the irreparable had been worked on other lives.No; Bethune had no single thought to spare from the overwhelming fact of what he had himself done.How silent was this house, now, in the dawn! And how much worse was silence than the most ominous sounds. Was it not his own silence that had betrayed both himself and his friend?He packed deliberately, feeling the while a fleeting childish warmth of comfort in the thought that Harry wore his old shooting-jacket—that Harry had still something of his about him. He folded the discarded babu garments with almost tender touch. Then he paused and hesitated.There were the papers—the damnable, foolish papers that had started all the mischief; and these he must sort. Some must be destroyed; some, not his to deal with, must be laid by before he could leave the place.He stole to the door, carrying his portmanteau. There was no fear of his meeting any of those whom he dreaded; for, in the rambling old house, his floor had a little breakneck stairs to itself which landed him in a passage outside the hall.There was a stir of life and a leap of firelight behind the half-open door of the kitchen; but, in a panic, he passed quickly out of reach of the voices lest he should hear. Was she dying ... or dead? Or, since joy does not kill, was she happy in a sublime egotism of two? He had no courage for the tidings—whatever they might be.The little room where he had worked with such fervour was filled with a grey glimmer that filtered in through the mist-hung orchard trees. The fire had been set but not yet lit. He put a match to it; he would have much to burn. Then he sat down by the table and drew forth his manuscripts. The last line he had written—that line set only yesterday from a full heart—met his eye:English was then in the perfection of his young manhood—a splendid specimen of an Englishman, athletic, handsome, intellectual, a born leader of men, and withal, the truest comrade ever a man had.Out of the half-finished page, the past rose at Raymond Bethune and smote him in the face. So had he written, so had he thought of Harry English yesterday, when he believed him dead.A man of more sanguine temperament, of more imaginative mind, might well have comforted himself with explanatory reflections, with reasons so plausible for his own behaviour, that he must end by believing in them himself, regarding his own act in a gradually changing light, till it assumed a venial, not to say meritorious, aspect. But Raymond Bethune, with his narrow conception of life, with his few, deep-cut affections, had this in him—virtue or deficiency—that he could not lie. And now he knew the naked truth. He knew that, when his only friend had come from out the dead and laid claim upon him, in the overwhelming surprise of the moment he had betrayed friendship—that some unknown base self had sprung into life. He had not been glad—he had not been glad ... and Harry had seen it. Harry had read into his heart—and there had read, not gladness but dismay.The sweat started again upon Bethune's forehead as he re-lived that moment and again saw his failing soul mirrored in the wide pupils of English's eyes.* * * * *Outside, upon the grey-brown twisted boughs of the apple-tree nearest the window, a robin began to sing. The insidious sweetness of the little voice pierced the lonely man to the marrow, with an intolerable pang of self-pity. He looked out on the bleak winter scene of the garden, where the mist hung in shreds across the sodden grass, over the bare boughs. It was an old, old orchard and the trees were leprous with grey lichen. It seemed as though they could not bear flower or fruit again. Vaguely, for his brain was not apt to image, he thought: "In some such desolation lies the future for me." And if the robin sang—oh, if the robin sang—its message never could be for him!His eye wandered back into the room. Here had he worked so many days, in austere, high ardour of loyalty. Aye, and yonder, in the armchair, had she sat; and he had judged her from this same altitude of mind. Now he knew himself better, saw the earthy soul of him as it really was. All his anger, all his scorn, all his antagonism, from the very first instant when her pale luminous beauty had dawned upon him, had been but fine-sounding words in his own mind to hide the thing, the fact—his passion for Harry English's wife!He took some of the manuscript into his hands, rough sheets as well as neatly typed copy; and, standing before the now leaping fire, began slowly to tear it, page by page, and fling it into the blaze. He smiled as he watched the red twists fly up the chimney. There was subtle irony in the situation. Major Bethune calling upon his friend's widow to wake from her sleep of oblivion, forcing her back to the sorrow she would fain forget, sparing her no pang, watching her as the warder watches the convict to see that not a jot of her task escape her; seeing, as he watched, the old love reclaim her with strong hands, so that, wooed once more and once more won, she was ready, as surely no woman was before, to greet the dead returned! ... "Harry, Harry, Harry!" He would never get that cry out of his head.He let himself fall into the chair upon the hearth, his hands resting listlessly from their task. How was he to endure life, how carry out the most trivial business with this sick distaste of all things upon him?* * * * *Aspasia opened the door and looked in. She gave a cry of pleasure as she saw him."How cosy!" she said, and came over to the fire.Then she stood, gazing down at him, with a small smile trembling on her lips. She had evidently been crying, and the curves of these same lips looked softer and more childish than ever. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes darkly shadowed.Bethune sat motionless. After a pause she spoke, still staring reflectively at the flames."I wondered where you had been all this dreadful night. You know what has happened? Of course you know.""I know."Nothing in his voice or manner struck her—she was so full of the tremendous occasion."Ah!" she cried, suddenly flashing upon him, "I think I'm sorry you already know. I should have liked to have been the first to tell you. For you—for you, at least, it's all glorious. Oh, how glad you must be! What it must mean to you!"He sat like stone: she was worse than the robin. He had thought he had suffered to the fullest capacity; but the girl, with her clear voice and her honest eyes, was tearing his heart to pieces. Then she became conscious that in his silence, though she had known him ever as a silent man, there was something almost sinister."What is it?" she asked him. "Oh, I suppose you knew all along? No—you didn't, you couldn't!"He shook his head."Ah!" Her bright face clouded. "It is because of her, of poor Aunt Rosamond—of him, rather? You think he has come back to her too late, only to lose her?"He resumed the tearing up of his manuscript with fingers clenched upon the page."What are you doing?" she cried, quickly diverted. "Oh, Major Bethune, why? Don't tear up all that beautiful life—all you've been working at so long. Oh, what a pity—what a pity!"He crumpled a mass of paper violently together and flung it into the flames, thrusting it down among the embers with his hand. He felt the startled amazement growing upon her, and forced his pale lips to speak."He would hate it."Saying this, he tried to smile. Aspasia contemplated him for a while, her eyes wondering. Then she stretched out her hand and touched his timidly."Don't be unhappy—let me tell you; I think I understand. Oh! I'm sure I understand, for we have been friends a little, too, have we not? You think it's worse for him to come back. You think he had better be dead, if she is to die. But she won't." Aspasia nodded confidently. "I tell you she won't die. I've just seen Dr. Châtelard; he's quite satisfied. I have seen him—Captain English—too. I said to him: 'She won't die.' And he said to me: 'I know it.' He is there outside her room—so strong and patient. Now," said the girl, and was not, in her innocent wish to comfort, aware how tenderly she spoke, "now you will let yourself be glad for yourself, since you've got him back, will you not?"Bethune suddenly turned and caught the gentle hand that touched him in both his. He broke into sobs—a man's difficult, ugly, tearing sobs, that surprise no one more than him whom they overtake. For an instant Aspasia was terrified. But for that desperate clutch she would have fled. The next moment, however, all the woman in her awoke."Oh, don't cry!" she said, as if she were speaking to a child, and laid her free hand upon his close-cropped hair.And then—neither of them knew how it happened—her arm was round his shoulder, and his head was lying upon her tender breast. The dry agony that shook him passed; and tears that fell like balm rolled down his cheeks.Baby, carried quite out of herself in this astounding whirl of events, began to weep, too, quite softly, to herself. And, as he lifted his face to hers and drew her down to him, their lips met upon the bitter of their tears, and yet in sweetness undreamed of. At the touch of that child-mouth and at her voiceless surrender, Bethune knelt before her in his heart and consecrated himself to her for ever. Closed henceforth for him the magic casement on "perilous seas" of passion, "on faëry lands forlorn." Gone those visions, exquisite and deadly! A faithful loving hand, a child's hand, had been held out to him in his moment of utmost misery; it had lifted him from the deeps; it he would clasp and go to meet life's duty, content—aye, humbly grateful—that his winter should have harboured a robin after all; ready to open his heart to its song of spring.* * * * *Afterwards, he knew, he would blame himself for that moment of weakness which had won him, unworthy, so true and unsuspecting a heart. But the deed was irrevocable, and he would not have been human not to rejoice.* * * * *The secret of the sorrow that had given to Aspasia the man she loved, she would never know. And even her frank lips could never seek the story. As sacred as the memory of their first kiss, she would hide in her heart the memory of those strange and terrible sobs.Wiser than Psyche she would light no lamp, but keep this first mystery of love in unprofaned shadow.CHAPTER VIIBethune and Aspasia quickly parted.Love had come as a messenger of comfort; but to linger under its wings in anything that approached to joy, in that stricken house would have seemed desecration. Bethune, moreover, was glad to be alone. His own trouble was too strong upon him. He felt as if he must have the cold clean air upon his face, gather the winter solitude about the nameless confusion of his thoughts. He wanted to meet himself face to face and have it out with Raymond Bethune; Raymond Bethune, who had gained an unlooked-for love, but had lost—everything else. He went forth into the orchard—seeking himself in those barren spaces, that, but a while ago, had seemed to hold the image of his future.But he was no longer the shamed, hopeless man of that hour of dawn, with his eye fixed on some near death, as the savage instinct of some sick wild creature is fixed upon the hole that shall hide the last struggle. Henceforth he would be no longer alone; and if the thought of the gentle comradeship brought solace, it brought also its own serious responsibility, almost its terror—the weight of another life, the loss of his soul's freedom....Presently, as he tramped up and down the drenched grass, a chill and numbing touch seemed to be laid upon him and to invade him with the blankness of the universal winter sleep. The recurrent waves of a lover's exaltation that had seized him at each reminiscence of the young bosom beneath his cheek, of the tear-wet face pressed so close to his, died down within him; and died, too, those spasms of horror over that moment when, by a single evil thought, he had betrayed the true facts of a lifetime.His mind seemed to become nearly as dull as the sky above him—iron grey, flecked with meaningless wrack; his heart to grow cold, like the inert sod beneath his feet. And he let himself go to the respite of this mood. The robin was silent. He was glad of that. There was no sound but the drip of the boughs as he passed. Disjointed visions, foolish tags of memory, flashed through his brain—the echo of Baby's thrumming, the picture of the Eastern palace room, with its English illusions, as he stood waiting; Lady Gerardine, in the rosy radiance of the Indian evening, fitting her slender hand into the imprint of the queens' death-touches on the stone; her smile upon him over the languid Niphotis roses in the narrow varnished cabin, the open port-holes and the green sea-foam springing up across them in the lamplight, the mingled smell of the brine and the flowers; Aspasia dancing on the frozen grass, brown and red like a robin; Muhammed standing before him in his soldier-pride, the ironic smile on his face—son of the East, with the winter-lichened boughs of the English orchard above him!At the end of his beat Raymond wheeled round and looked down the moss-grown avenue where that day the red-turbaned Eastern had met his gaze; and now, with the fantastic effect of a dream, he beheld the selfsame square-shouldered figure swing into sight between the grey boles with their ghostly look of age. Advancing with quick strides, it was bearing straight upon him.Bethune stood as if held by a resistless force. He knew life would have no more crucial moment for him; yet his heart beat not a stroke the faster. He turned his face towards the inevitable. After all, a man can but endure. The illusion of Muhammed had quickly passed, as the steady step drew closer, into that reality that was stranger than any fantasm.Harry English, with head bare to the tart airs, with strong line of clean-shaven chin catching the bleak light, and deep eyes lit with a very human lire—the old comrade in the flesh! He halted within a pace, and the two looked at each other for a second's silence. Then, while Bethune's countenance remained set in that iron dulness, the other's face was suddenly stirred."What the devil is the meaning of this?" cried Harry English, in a loud voice of anger. "I see your portmanteau packed. Do you think for a second that you can leave me now?"The deepest reproach, the utmost note of sorrow or scorn, could not have touched Bethune so keenly as this familiar explosion. A thousand memories awoke and screamed. How often had not his captain rated him with just such a rough tongue and just such a kindly gleam of the eye! All the ice of his cold humour of reaction was shivered into bits under the rush of upheaving blood."Harry!" he stammered. "Harry ... I ... my God!" ...He saw, as before, in that hideous moment in the little bedroom, but now blessedly, a reflection of his own thought on the face opposite to him.Harry English put out his hand and clapped him on the shoulder."My God!" said Bethune again. He turned his head sharply away and his jaw worked. The cry broke from him. "I ought to have died for you! Would to Heaven I had died for you at Inziri! ..."The grasp of his shoulder was tightened. English shook his comrade almost fiercely."Old man, you were never one of the talkers. Hold your tongue now."Bethune drew a deep breath. The intolerable weight rolled from his heart. English's hand dropped. It was over and done with; the two friends had met again, soul to soul.In silence they turned and walked towards the house, side by side, steps together, as so often—God, so often!—in the good old days of hardship."Let us go in," said English, at the door. "They tell me that there can be no change, up there, and she's in good hands, thank Heaven, but I cannot find a moment's peace out of the house. Come, we'll have a cup of tea together."The sun had risen just clear of the moor line into a space of clarity, and shone, a white dazzling disc, sending faint spears into their eyes. It shone, too, pale yet brisk, through the open window of the little dining-room, where, as yet, the board was but half spread, where an ill-kindled fire had flickered into death. (What self-respecting servant could do her work as usual when the family is in affliction?)"Just see to the fire, Ray," said English, and went out of the room.Bethune, with the bachelor's expediency, had recourse to a candle culled from a sconce, and produced a cheerful, if somewhat acrid flame, to greet his friend when he returned, black kettle in one hand, brown teapot in the other. Soon the hot fragrance circled into the room."If we'd had a brew of this up at Inziri, those last days, it would have made a difference, eh?" said the master of the house.They drew their chairs to the hearth and sat, each with his cup in his hand, even as in times bygone, with their tin mugs before the camp fire at dawn. In spite of the sense of that hushed room above and the suspense of its brooding over them, Bethune had not felt so warm in his heart these many years."Man!" he exclaimed suddenly, reverting unconsciously to the Scotch idiom of his youth, "why in the name of Heaven did you do it?"Harry English, staring at the red coals, answered nothing for a while. Not that he had failed to understand the train of thought that ended in the vague-seeming, yet comprehensive question—but that the answer was difficult if not painful."You see," he said slowly, at last, without shifting his abstracted gaze, "there was so much to find out and so much to consider....""To find out?""I had to be sure."Bethune laid his cup on the hob and leaned over towards his friend, his fingers lightly touching the arm of the other's chair. After a while: "I think I understand," he said, knitting his rugged brows.English gave him a fleeting smile of peculiar sadness."When one has been dead eight years, it is wiser, before coming to life again, to make sure that one's resurrection will be a benefit."Bethune fell back into his place, with a grey shade about the lips. English dropped his eyes and there came silence between them. After a pause, he began to mend the fire from the scuttle; and, placing the lumps of coals one by one, he spoke again:"It was all a story of waiting, you see, from beginning to end.""Rajab—Rajab is gone, by the way, poor old chap. He swore he'd seen you fall, more dead than the prophet himself," said Bethune, with the harsh laugh that covers strong emotion. "And from the fort, through the glass, we watched those devils chucking the bodies into the torrent—dead and wounded, too. We thought the great river was your grave with many another's! Never a bone could we find of all the good chaps."Harry English straightened himself and laughed, too, not very mirthfully. Then he pulled open the loose collar of his shirt and laid bare a jagged scar that ran from the column of the throat across the collar bone."I'm confoundedly hard to kill, you know. Just missed the jugular. I must have been spouting blood like a fountain. And then I got a blow on the head from a hilt that knocked me into nothingness. Rajab was about right—I was as dead as the prophet for the time being. If I had not had nine lives——"Again the silence. Then Bethune inquired, casually, fumbling in his pocket for a pipe:"And how is it you weren't chucked overboard with the rest?""Old Yufzul had a fancy for keeping me alive. Ah, if he could have caught the chap that cut me down, he would not have left much skin on him. He'd given stringent orders to spare mine. The old beggar took a notion that I was a sort of mascot, or something, that I carried luck—that it was the influence of my precious person kept things going so triumphantly at the fort.... You may remember he was always sending envoys to me with flattering offers? By the Lord, Ray, I believe it was half to get me that he stuck to the business so long. So much for my carrying luck!"The speaker smiled, with a bitter twist of the lip, and poked the fire unnecessarily."Remember," he added, "that business about the flag on the roof, when the bullets were going so lively? It seems our friend was watching and was much struck to see that I was not.""I remember," answered Bethune's deep bass.Did he not remember? Had he been of the nationality of M. Châtelard, with what a hand-clasp, with what a flow of rhetoric would he not now emphasise his vivid recollection of that hour!English, lying back in his armchair, with his head resting on the top, closed his eyes wearily. His face looked very pallid and sharp-featured thus upturned and relaxed from its usual stern control; and Bethune shot many an anxious look at it as he sat silent, the pipe he forgot to draw hanging loosely between his teeth.Presently the other resumed, in low, reminiscent tones:"I became the Khan's fetish. So long as he had me he was sure of his luck. He thought himself safe. In the end, I think, he thought he could not die.""Well?" said Bethune, as the pause grew over long."Well, that's all. I was a fetish, very well looked after. Too well. God!" said the man, sitting up, a sudden passion on eye and lip, "I was kept prisoner, if you like. For five years, Raymond Bethune, I was chained to that old Khan's carcase, night and day.""For five years," echoed Bethune, stupidly; "and what were you doing?"English did not answer till the silence seemed to have obliterated the question. Then he said slowly:"I was waiting.""Then?""Then the old devil died—and I escaped. Oh, you don't want me to spin you that yarn now! You can imagine it for yourself, if you ever imagine anything, you old dunderhead. There was blood spilt, if you care to know. I had waited a long time, you see.""But," objected the Major of Guides, after some minutes devoted to calculation, "that was three years ago.""Aye," laughed English, good-naturedly contemptuous, "but a man doesn't walk off the Karakoram on to the English lines in a day, especially if he's an Afghan captive. I had to take a little round through Turkestan, and back through Baluchistan—on foot, Raymond, every yard of the way—as a dervish.""Good Lord!" said Bethune."I flatter myself I know more of the Karakorams and the Turkoman frontier than any white man yet. And I can speak the lingo of every tribe that calls Ali chief. Aye, and I know their tricks and customs, their very habit of thought. There was not a camp or hut where they did not take me for one of themselves. It was just a year after Yufzul's death that I landed at Kurrachee.""Oh, Harry," cried his friend, impulsively, "why did you not come to me?""Have I not told you already?" answered English, after one of his deep pauses. "I had things to find out first. Where is your canniness? If live men have to go slow, what about dead men? ... No—no." The bitter smile came back to his lips. "I lay low, and lived in the bazaar, as good a servant of the prophet as ever salaamed to the East; and then"—his voice changed—"oh, then—I got all the news I wanted!"Bethune dared not raise his eyes."More than I wanted," added Harry English, with his bleak laugh. "You don't need to be told why I remained a Pathan, do you?"When Bethune once more found courage to speak to his friend, it was because the stillness, pregnant with so much meaning, seemed intolerable."Well?" he queried hoarsely."Well, then," said Harry English, "I waited—again." ...And his comrade felt more than this he was never to know of the hardest moment of all the man's hard life."I dare say," resumed English, his old air of serenity coming back to him, "you wonder why I did not extend that botched business as far as the jugular this time, and have done with it. But, you see, there was just a chance, I told myself; and so," he repeated, falling back into his significant formula, "I waited. I got work with an old babu; and by-and-by my opportunity came, and I took it.""Good Lord!" exclaimed Bethune, shifting restlessly in his chair. "It was the maddest business!""Perhaps," said English, a shade of pain sweeping across his face. "But I had to know. Any other course was too dangerous. Oh, I am not speaking of myself—think how dangerous!""But, man—man," cried the other, "it need not have taken you all that time! When you'd seen with your own eyes, when you had found that the old fellow was killing her, when you were here in this house, and had seen her in her sorrow—then——"English flung one lightning glance upon the speaker."And even then," he said slowly, "I had still to know—more."A moment Bethune stared at him open-mouthed; then his own unclear conscience pointed the otherwise inconceivable idea to his slow-working wits. He felt the dark blood mount to his forehead."Now I've told you all," said Harry English, and got up from his chair."Thank you," said Bethune.* * * * *Aspasia's bright presence was suddenly with them. English wheeled round; but her smiling face was reassurance sufficient."I've come as I promised," she said, "to give you the last report. Dr. Châtelard says all is going as he wishes. He will be down immediately for some breakfast, and then he will tell you himself. Isn't he a darling little man?" she went on. "I am sorry I said he had a pink head! What should we do now without it? By the way, some one must send a wire to Melbury Towers for his luggage.""Let me go," said Bethune, starting forward."Let him go," echoed Baby, saucily, turning to Captain English.With such new happiness before her, the natural buoyancy of her nature was triumphant over all present doubt and anxiety. Bethune put out his hand, and she slipped her own confidingly into it."Harry," said he, and the girl wondered and was highly flattered at the sudden emotion that shook his voice, "you see how things stand between us?"Again English flashed that glance of vivid scrutiny. This time his friend met it steadily, though again with a heightening colour. Then, after a perceptible pause:"I am glad," said Captain English, simply.And Bethune dropped the girl's hand to meet the strong clasp held out to him.He knew that from henceforth all misunderstanding was swept away from between them. If he had felt before for his friend that love closer than a brother's, it was cemented now by the strongest bond that can exist between generous natures—that of forgiver and forgiven. He was forgiven with the only real forgiveness—that which understands."Have they not brought breakfast?" cried Baby, the housekeeper, very bustling all at once, to cover her pretty confusion. She sprang to the bell, then checked herself, with finger on lip, and tripped from the room, pointing her feet and laughing over her shoulder, as if to her happy years even that sad precaution of quietness must have its mirthful side.Both men looked after her indulgently. Then Bethune's face clouded."She is but a child, after all," he said doubtfully."Nay," said Harry, "it seems to me she has a woman's heart.""She is as true as steel," asserted her lover.When the girl returned, English went restlessly forth. He would wait for M. Châtelard, he said, in the hall. The newly betrothed were alone; and, for a second or two, eyed each other shyly. Then Bethune's face softened in the old, good way; and yet with something, too, that had never been there before, something which made Aspasia drop her lids."Well, Robin?" said he, and beckoned. She came to him sidling.It would always be thus between them. He would beckon and she would come. Had the impossible happened, had that mistress of his hidden ideal condescended to him, he would have gone far to crave the least favour, and always with a trembling soul. But the life that touches the transcendent joy, the rare ecstasy is fated to know but little happiness. Providence, perhaps, was not dealing unkindly with this man."Why do you call me Robin?" she asked.He was not of those who explain. With a kiss on her hand he told her simply that she was like a robin."Then I hope you'll remember, sir," she said, briskly disengaging herself, "that the robin is a bird that makes music in season and out of season."
CHAPTER V
"I think you had better get your uncle a little whisky, or something," said Lady Aspasia to Baby, as, upon their ejection into the passage, she guided the poor gentleman's vague footsteps towards her own room. "Come in here, Arty; there's a good fire."
Sir Arthur turned his eyes upon her with a vacant look, catching at surprise.
"Yes, my room. But, Lord, I don't think any of us need mind theconvenancesto-night!"
She gave a dry laugh. At least, whatever rules were transgressed now—they only regarded him and her: the thought came with sudden and exceeding pleasantness upon her; and that heart of hers, atrophied by long disuse, was stirred. She looked at the helpless, dazed creature, sinking into her armchair, with a softness that, even in his most gallant youth, his image had not evoked. "Good fellow" as she was, Lady Aspasia was yet a woman in the hidden fibre.
Young Aspasia, shuffling about in her slippers, yet still fleet of foot, broke in upon their silence with the decanter. Shivering, partly with fatigue, partly with the chill of the dawn, she stood, vaguely watching the elder lady administer a stiff bumper to Sir Arthur.
Complete as was the turmoil in her own mind, deep as was her distress and anxiety anent Rosamond, Baby's sense of humour was irresistibly acute: the vision of Lady Aspasia, incompletely attired under her motor coat, her loose coiled hair (divested of the dignity of her "transformation") presenting a strangely flat appearance, bending with such solicitude over so reduced a Runkle, brought a hysterical giggle in her throat.
"Pray," said Lady Aspasia, wheeling round upon her, "don't begin to cry here, my dear! One is as much as I can manage."
"I'm not crying," retorted young Aspasia, as indignantly as her chattering teeth would allow. "I'm laughing."
"Then that's worse," responded the other, succinctly. "Take some whisky, too. Go to bed."
Sir Arthur, gulping down the potent mixture provided for him, extended a forbidding left hand:
"One moment," he ordered; then choked and coughed. But the stimulant was working its effect, his backbone was notably stiffer. The native dignity, not to say pomposity, was returning to his support. He regarded his niece with eyes, severe, if somewhat watery. "How long, Aspasia, have you known this—this—disgraceful state of affairs?"
He rolled his suffused gaze from the girl to his distinguished relative, seeking a kindred indignation.
"You mean, how long I have known that Aunt Rosamond wasn't married at all? Oh, Lord, what am I saying?—that she's got two husbands—gracious, I can't help being muddled. Who could? Anyhow, that she's not married to you? I——"
"The premises are by no means established," interrupted Sir Arthur, with not unsuccessful reaching after his old manner. "But how long, I ask, have you known of the presence in this house—or in this neighbourhood—of the person, impostor or no, who dares to present himself as Harry English?"
"Well, as a matter of fact," said Baby, hugging herself in her dressing-gown, the warmth of the fire, the heat of her reawakening antagonism, getting the better of her chill tremors; "as a matter of fact, you have known him a good deal longer and more intimately than I have."
"Lord, child, how you bandy words!" said Lady Aspasia, disapprovingly; "let her go to bed, Arty. Surely, you'll have plenty of time by-and-by for all this."
But the Lieutenant-Governor waived the interruption aside with impatience. Miss Cuningham did not await further questioning. It would be scarce human to feel no complacency in the power to impart weighty information. And Baby was among the most human of her race.
"You went and fished him out yourself," she cried. "Your own particular, private secretary."
And still Sir Arthur was all at sea.
"Private secretary," he repeated blankly, hastily running over in his mind all the members of his staff within recent years. Nonsense! Preposterous! There was not one who bore the faintest resemblance to this black-avised, domineering intruder.
Lady Aspasia whistled under her breath to mark her displeasure at the inopportune discussion, and mixed herself a companion bumper to Sir Arthur's.
"The native spring, not quite so native as we all fancied, Runkle. Muhammed Saif-u-din. My goodness," cried the girl, clasping her hands, and struck with a new aspect of the situation, "no wonder I thought him queer! ... No wonder, Runkle, he looked at you as if he could murder you! Lord, it's just too romantic! To think of his being with you all these days and weeks, and of his being here, alone with us—waiting, waiting all the time."
"Muhammed..." ejaculated Sir Arthur, and sat in his chair as if turned to stone.
Then suddenly:
"Muhammed!" he cried again, in a high shrill voice, and bounded to his feet. "The damned black scoundrel," foamed the Lieutenant-Governor, "the wretched nigger. The miserable beggar, whom I took from the gutter and admitted into my household, and treated as a gentleman—a gentleman, begad! By the Lord, he shall smart for this! It's a hideous conspiracy! No, no, Lady Aspasia, you don't know the race as I do. It's trickery, it's a piece of monstrous Indian jugglery. I tell you, it's a conspiracy between them all."
"Of course," cut in sarcastic Baby, trembliog again, this time with anger, "it's all a conspiracy, merely to annoy the Runkle. Captain English has simply plotted not to have been killed, and poor Aunt Rosamond lies at death's door out of sheer aggravation—that's part of the conspiracy also."
"And pray," said Sir Arthur, unheeding anything but the opposition of her tone, and turning furiously again upon the girl, "will you have the kindness to answer me at last? You, you, my niece, how long have you been in the business? A nice set of vipers I've been nourishing! Oh, my God!"
He put his hand to his forehead and reeled; then stretched out his arm, gropingly. Promptly, Lady Aspasia popped the glass she had destined for herself into the vague fingers; and, as if mechanically, it was instantly conveyed to his lips.
"I've been in the business no longer than you, yourself, Runkle."
Young Aspasia, between anger, scorn, and her sense of humour, was now perilously near the hysterics dreaded by her namesake.
"Now look here," said the latter, catching the small figure by the elbow and turning it towards the door, "you get out of this in double-quick time; I'll manage your uncle."
"Master Muhammed will find he has made a little mistake—a little mistake," said the great man, spurred once more to his normal vigour of intellect.
He was standing, legs wide apart, on the hearthrug, and glared at his niece as she wheeled round on the threshold for her usual Parthian shot.
"It's rather a pity that he does not happen to be Muhammed any more; isn't it, Runkle?" she cried spitefully; "that he never was Muhammed, but always Harry English, Harry English, Harry English, who never was dead at all!"
She closed the door with a slam upon a picture of her uncle's suddenly stricken face, of Lady Aspasia's swift advance towards him with outstretched hands.
"She'll manage him!" said Baby to herself, with a sobbing giggle, as she ran down the dark passage.
CHAPTER VI
The Old Ancient House lay in silence—a sinister silence, Bethune thought—after the rumours and alarms of the night. The dawn was breaking yellow over a grey, still world. What did it herald? he wondered, as he looked out of his dormer window under the roof.
One thing it was bringing, he told his sullen heart—the new day of the new life of Raymond Bethune. Raymond Bethune, the disgraced, who had failed his comrade.
When that wild cry had rung out into the night, "Harry, Harry, Harry!" it had sounded, in his ears, like the death-cry of his honour; a parting from all that he had held dear; a parting from his highest and closest, than which no parting between soul and body could be more bitter.
He had sat on his bed, and listened—listened, expecting he knew not what. What, indeed, had he now to expect? He had heard the running of feet, the opening and shutting of doors, all the busy noises of a house alarmed. Was she dead? Dead of her joy, in that supreme moment of reunion? Would there not be a heaven, even in his anguish, for him who could thus take her dying kiss!
By-and-by he had roused himself; and, after a look of horror upon that bed of dreams, mechanically dressed for his departure. To go away—that was all that was left to him—the last decency. He put a grim control upon his nerves as he wielded the razor and the brushes that Harry English's fingers had so recently touched.
Harry English ... out of the grave!
Bethune could not yet face the marvel of the situation. He had yet no power over his dazed brain to bring it to realise that for so long he had been living near his old comrade in the flesh, and had not known—he who had not passed a day, since their parting, without living with him in the spirit! Still less could he speculate upon the reasons of English's incognito, upon his singular scheme, his recklessness of his own reputation; nor by what miracle he had been saved from death; nor by what freakish cruelty of fate he had been buried from their ken till the irreparable had been worked on other lives.
No; Bethune had no single thought to spare from the overwhelming fact of what he had himself done.
How silent was this house, now, in the dawn! And how much worse was silence than the most ominous sounds. Was it not his own silence that had betrayed both himself and his friend?
He packed deliberately, feeling the while a fleeting childish warmth of comfort in the thought that Harry wore his old shooting-jacket—that Harry had still something of his about him. He folded the discarded babu garments with almost tender touch. Then he paused and hesitated.
There were the papers—the damnable, foolish papers that had started all the mischief; and these he must sort. Some must be destroyed; some, not his to deal with, must be laid by before he could leave the place.
He stole to the door, carrying his portmanteau. There was no fear of his meeting any of those whom he dreaded; for, in the rambling old house, his floor had a little breakneck stairs to itself which landed him in a passage outside the hall.
There was a stir of life and a leap of firelight behind the half-open door of the kitchen; but, in a panic, he passed quickly out of reach of the voices lest he should hear. Was she dying ... or dead? Or, since joy does not kill, was she happy in a sublime egotism of two? He had no courage for the tidings—whatever they might be.
The little room where he had worked with such fervour was filled with a grey glimmer that filtered in through the mist-hung orchard trees. The fire had been set but not yet lit. He put a match to it; he would have much to burn. Then he sat down by the table and drew forth his manuscripts. The last line he had written—that line set only yesterday from a full heart—met his eye:
English was then in the perfection of his young manhood—a splendid specimen of an Englishman, athletic, handsome, intellectual, a born leader of men, and withal, the truest comrade ever a man had.
English was then in the perfection of his young manhood—a splendid specimen of an Englishman, athletic, handsome, intellectual, a born leader of men, and withal, the truest comrade ever a man had.
Out of the half-finished page, the past rose at Raymond Bethune and smote him in the face. So had he written, so had he thought of Harry English yesterday, when he believed him dead.
A man of more sanguine temperament, of more imaginative mind, might well have comforted himself with explanatory reflections, with reasons so plausible for his own behaviour, that he must end by believing in them himself, regarding his own act in a gradually changing light, till it assumed a venial, not to say meritorious, aspect. But Raymond Bethune, with his narrow conception of life, with his few, deep-cut affections, had this in him—virtue or deficiency—that he could not lie. And now he knew the naked truth. He knew that, when his only friend had come from out the dead and laid claim upon him, in the overwhelming surprise of the moment he had betrayed friendship—that some unknown base self had sprung into life. He had not been glad—he had not been glad ... and Harry had seen it. Harry had read into his heart—and there had read, not gladness but dismay.
The sweat started again upon Bethune's forehead as he re-lived that moment and again saw his failing soul mirrored in the wide pupils of English's eyes.
* * * * *
Outside, upon the grey-brown twisted boughs of the apple-tree nearest the window, a robin began to sing. The insidious sweetness of the little voice pierced the lonely man to the marrow, with an intolerable pang of self-pity. He looked out on the bleak winter scene of the garden, where the mist hung in shreds across the sodden grass, over the bare boughs. It was an old, old orchard and the trees were leprous with grey lichen. It seemed as though they could not bear flower or fruit again. Vaguely, for his brain was not apt to image, he thought: "In some such desolation lies the future for me." And if the robin sang—oh, if the robin sang—its message never could be for him!
His eye wandered back into the room. Here had he worked so many days, in austere, high ardour of loyalty. Aye, and yonder, in the armchair, had she sat; and he had judged her from this same altitude of mind. Now he knew himself better, saw the earthy soul of him as it really was. All his anger, all his scorn, all his antagonism, from the very first instant when her pale luminous beauty had dawned upon him, had been but fine-sounding words in his own mind to hide the thing, the fact—his passion for Harry English's wife!
He took some of the manuscript into his hands, rough sheets as well as neatly typed copy; and, standing before the now leaping fire, began slowly to tear it, page by page, and fling it into the blaze. He smiled as he watched the red twists fly up the chimney. There was subtle irony in the situation. Major Bethune calling upon his friend's widow to wake from her sleep of oblivion, forcing her back to the sorrow she would fain forget, sparing her no pang, watching her as the warder watches the convict to see that not a jot of her task escape her; seeing, as he watched, the old love reclaim her with strong hands, so that, wooed once more and once more won, she was ready, as surely no woman was before, to greet the dead returned! ... "Harry, Harry, Harry!" He would never get that cry out of his head.
He let himself fall into the chair upon the hearth, his hands resting listlessly from their task. How was he to endure life, how carry out the most trivial business with this sick distaste of all things upon him?
* * * * *
Aspasia opened the door and looked in. She gave a cry of pleasure as she saw him.
"How cosy!" she said, and came over to the fire.
Then she stood, gazing down at him, with a small smile trembling on her lips. She had evidently been crying, and the curves of these same lips looked softer and more childish than ever. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes darkly shadowed.
Bethune sat motionless. After a pause she spoke, still staring reflectively at the flames.
"I wondered where you had been all this dreadful night. You know what has happened? Of course you know."
"I know."
Nothing in his voice or manner struck her—she was so full of the tremendous occasion.
"Ah!" she cried, suddenly flashing upon him, "I think I'm sorry you already know. I should have liked to have been the first to tell you. For you—for you, at least, it's all glorious. Oh, how glad you must be! What it must mean to you!"
He sat like stone: she was worse than the robin. He had thought he had suffered to the fullest capacity; but the girl, with her clear voice and her honest eyes, was tearing his heart to pieces. Then she became conscious that in his silence, though she had known him ever as a silent man, there was something almost sinister.
"What is it?" she asked him. "Oh, I suppose you knew all along? No—you didn't, you couldn't!"
He shook his head.
"Ah!" Her bright face clouded. "It is because of her, of poor Aunt Rosamond—of him, rather? You think he has come back to her too late, only to lose her?"
He resumed the tearing up of his manuscript with fingers clenched upon the page.
"What are you doing?" she cried, quickly diverted. "Oh, Major Bethune, why? Don't tear up all that beautiful life—all you've been working at so long. Oh, what a pity—what a pity!"
He crumpled a mass of paper violently together and flung it into the flames, thrusting it down among the embers with his hand. He felt the startled amazement growing upon her, and forced his pale lips to speak.
"He would hate it."
Saying this, he tried to smile. Aspasia contemplated him for a while, her eyes wondering. Then she stretched out her hand and touched his timidly.
"Don't be unhappy—let me tell you; I think I understand. Oh! I'm sure I understand, for we have been friends a little, too, have we not? You think it's worse for him to come back. You think he had better be dead, if she is to die. But she won't." Aspasia nodded confidently. "I tell you she won't die. I've just seen Dr. Châtelard; he's quite satisfied. I have seen him—Captain English—too. I said to him: 'She won't die.' And he said to me: 'I know it.' He is there outside her room—so strong and patient. Now," said the girl, and was not, in her innocent wish to comfort, aware how tenderly she spoke, "now you will let yourself be glad for yourself, since you've got him back, will you not?"
Bethune suddenly turned and caught the gentle hand that touched him in both his. He broke into sobs—a man's difficult, ugly, tearing sobs, that surprise no one more than him whom they overtake. For an instant Aspasia was terrified. But for that desperate clutch she would have fled. The next moment, however, all the woman in her awoke.
"Oh, don't cry!" she said, as if she were speaking to a child, and laid her free hand upon his close-cropped hair.
And then—neither of them knew how it happened—her arm was round his shoulder, and his head was lying upon her tender breast. The dry agony that shook him passed; and tears that fell like balm rolled down his cheeks.
Baby, carried quite out of herself in this astounding whirl of events, began to weep, too, quite softly, to herself. And, as he lifted his face to hers and drew her down to him, their lips met upon the bitter of their tears, and yet in sweetness undreamed of. At the touch of that child-mouth and at her voiceless surrender, Bethune knelt before her in his heart and consecrated himself to her for ever. Closed henceforth for him the magic casement on "perilous seas" of passion, "on faëry lands forlorn." Gone those visions, exquisite and deadly! A faithful loving hand, a child's hand, had been held out to him in his moment of utmost misery; it had lifted him from the deeps; it he would clasp and go to meet life's duty, content—aye, humbly grateful—that his winter should have harboured a robin after all; ready to open his heart to its song of spring.
* * * * *
Afterwards, he knew, he would blame himself for that moment of weakness which had won him, unworthy, so true and unsuspecting a heart. But the deed was irrevocable, and he would not have been human not to rejoice.
* * * * *
The secret of the sorrow that had given to Aspasia the man she loved, she would never know. And even her frank lips could never seek the story. As sacred as the memory of their first kiss, she would hide in her heart the memory of those strange and terrible sobs.
Wiser than Psyche she would light no lamp, but keep this first mystery of love in unprofaned shadow.
CHAPTER VII
Bethune and Aspasia quickly parted.
Love had come as a messenger of comfort; but to linger under its wings in anything that approached to joy, in that stricken house would have seemed desecration. Bethune, moreover, was glad to be alone. His own trouble was too strong upon him. He felt as if he must have the cold clean air upon his face, gather the winter solitude about the nameless confusion of his thoughts. He wanted to meet himself face to face and have it out with Raymond Bethune; Raymond Bethune, who had gained an unlooked-for love, but had lost—everything else. He went forth into the orchard—seeking himself in those barren spaces, that, but a while ago, had seemed to hold the image of his future.
But he was no longer the shamed, hopeless man of that hour of dawn, with his eye fixed on some near death, as the savage instinct of some sick wild creature is fixed upon the hole that shall hide the last struggle. Henceforth he would be no longer alone; and if the thought of the gentle comradeship brought solace, it brought also its own serious responsibility, almost its terror—the weight of another life, the loss of his soul's freedom....
Presently, as he tramped up and down the drenched grass, a chill and numbing touch seemed to be laid upon him and to invade him with the blankness of the universal winter sleep. The recurrent waves of a lover's exaltation that had seized him at each reminiscence of the young bosom beneath his cheek, of the tear-wet face pressed so close to his, died down within him; and died, too, those spasms of horror over that moment when, by a single evil thought, he had betrayed the true facts of a lifetime.
His mind seemed to become nearly as dull as the sky above him—iron grey, flecked with meaningless wrack; his heart to grow cold, like the inert sod beneath his feet. And he let himself go to the respite of this mood. The robin was silent. He was glad of that. There was no sound but the drip of the boughs as he passed. Disjointed visions, foolish tags of memory, flashed through his brain—the echo of Baby's thrumming, the picture of the Eastern palace room, with its English illusions, as he stood waiting; Lady Gerardine, in the rosy radiance of the Indian evening, fitting her slender hand into the imprint of the queens' death-touches on the stone; her smile upon him over the languid Niphotis roses in the narrow varnished cabin, the open port-holes and the green sea-foam springing up across them in the lamplight, the mingled smell of the brine and the flowers; Aspasia dancing on the frozen grass, brown and red like a robin; Muhammed standing before him in his soldier-pride, the ironic smile on his face—son of the East, with the winter-lichened boughs of the English orchard above him!
At the end of his beat Raymond wheeled round and looked down the moss-grown avenue where that day the red-turbaned Eastern had met his gaze; and now, with the fantastic effect of a dream, he beheld the selfsame square-shouldered figure swing into sight between the grey boles with their ghostly look of age. Advancing with quick strides, it was bearing straight upon him.
Bethune stood as if held by a resistless force. He knew life would have no more crucial moment for him; yet his heart beat not a stroke the faster. He turned his face towards the inevitable. After all, a man can but endure. The illusion of Muhammed had quickly passed, as the steady step drew closer, into that reality that was stranger than any fantasm.
Harry English, with head bare to the tart airs, with strong line of clean-shaven chin catching the bleak light, and deep eyes lit with a very human lire—the old comrade in the flesh! He halted within a pace, and the two looked at each other for a second's silence. Then, while Bethune's countenance remained set in that iron dulness, the other's face was suddenly stirred.
"What the devil is the meaning of this?" cried Harry English, in a loud voice of anger. "I see your portmanteau packed. Do you think for a second that you can leave me now?"
The deepest reproach, the utmost note of sorrow or scorn, could not have touched Bethune so keenly as this familiar explosion. A thousand memories awoke and screamed. How often had not his captain rated him with just such a rough tongue and just such a kindly gleam of the eye! All the ice of his cold humour of reaction was shivered into bits under the rush of upheaving blood.
"Harry!" he stammered. "Harry ... I ... my God!" ...
He saw, as before, in that hideous moment in the little bedroom, but now blessedly, a reflection of his own thought on the face opposite to him.
Harry English put out his hand and clapped him on the shoulder.
"My God!" said Bethune again. He turned his head sharply away and his jaw worked. The cry broke from him. "I ought to have died for you! Would to Heaven I had died for you at Inziri! ..."
The grasp of his shoulder was tightened. English shook his comrade almost fiercely.
"Old man, you were never one of the talkers. Hold your tongue now."
Bethune drew a deep breath. The intolerable weight rolled from his heart. English's hand dropped. It was over and done with; the two friends had met again, soul to soul.
In silence they turned and walked towards the house, side by side, steps together, as so often—God, so often!—in the good old days of hardship.
"Let us go in," said English, at the door. "They tell me that there can be no change, up there, and she's in good hands, thank Heaven, but I cannot find a moment's peace out of the house. Come, we'll have a cup of tea together."
The sun had risen just clear of the moor line into a space of clarity, and shone, a white dazzling disc, sending faint spears into their eyes. It shone, too, pale yet brisk, through the open window of the little dining-room, where, as yet, the board was but half spread, where an ill-kindled fire had flickered into death. (What self-respecting servant could do her work as usual when the family is in affliction?)
"Just see to the fire, Ray," said English, and went out of the room.
Bethune, with the bachelor's expediency, had recourse to a candle culled from a sconce, and produced a cheerful, if somewhat acrid flame, to greet his friend when he returned, black kettle in one hand, brown teapot in the other. Soon the hot fragrance circled into the room.
"If we'd had a brew of this up at Inziri, those last days, it would have made a difference, eh?" said the master of the house.
They drew their chairs to the hearth and sat, each with his cup in his hand, even as in times bygone, with their tin mugs before the camp fire at dawn. In spite of the sense of that hushed room above and the suspense of its brooding over them, Bethune had not felt so warm in his heart these many years.
"Man!" he exclaimed suddenly, reverting unconsciously to the Scotch idiom of his youth, "why in the name of Heaven did you do it?"
Harry English, staring at the red coals, answered nothing for a while. Not that he had failed to understand the train of thought that ended in the vague-seeming, yet comprehensive question—but that the answer was difficult if not painful.
"You see," he said slowly, at last, without shifting his abstracted gaze, "there was so much to find out and so much to consider...."
"To find out?"
"I had to be sure."
Bethune laid his cup on the hob and leaned over towards his friend, his fingers lightly touching the arm of the other's chair. After a while: "I think I understand," he said, knitting his rugged brows.
English gave him a fleeting smile of peculiar sadness.
"When one has been dead eight years, it is wiser, before coming to life again, to make sure that one's resurrection will be a benefit."
Bethune fell back into his place, with a grey shade about the lips. English dropped his eyes and there came silence between them. After a pause, he began to mend the fire from the scuttle; and, placing the lumps of coals one by one, he spoke again:
"It was all a story of waiting, you see, from beginning to end."
"Rajab—Rajab is gone, by the way, poor old chap. He swore he'd seen you fall, more dead than the prophet himself," said Bethune, with the harsh laugh that covers strong emotion. "And from the fort, through the glass, we watched those devils chucking the bodies into the torrent—dead and wounded, too. We thought the great river was your grave with many another's! Never a bone could we find of all the good chaps."
Harry English straightened himself and laughed, too, not very mirthfully. Then he pulled open the loose collar of his shirt and laid bare a jagged scar that ran from the column of the throat across the collar bone.
"I'm confoundedly hard to kill, you know. Just missed the jugular. I must have been spouting blood like a fountain. And then I got a blow on the head from a hilt that knocked me into nothingness. Rajab was about right—I was as dead as the prophet for the time being. If I had not had nine lives——"
Again the silence. Then Bethune inquired, casually, fumbling in his pocket for a pipe:
"And how is it you weren't chucked overboard with the rest?"
"Old Yufzul had a fancy for keeping me alive. Ah, if he could have caught the chap that cut me down, he would not have left much skin on him. He'd given stringent orders to spare mine. The old beggar took a notion that I was a sort of mascot, or something, that I carried luck—that it was the influence of my precious person kept things going so triumphantly at the fort.... You may remember he was always sending envoys to me with flattering offers? By the Lord, Ray, I believe it was half to get me that he stuck to the business so long. So much for my carrying luck!"
The speaker smiled, with a bitter twist of the lip, and poked the fire unnecessarily.
"Remember," he added, "that business about the flag on the roof, when the bullets were going so lively? It seems our friend was watching and was much struck to see that I was not."
"I remember," answered Bethune's deep bass.
Did he not remember? Had he been of the nationality of M. Châtelard, with what a hand-clasp, with what a flow of rhetoric would he not now emphasise his vivid recollection of that hour!
English, lying back in his armchair, with his head resting on the top, closed his eyes wearily. His face looked very pallid and sharp-featured thus upturned and relaxed from its usual stern control; and Bethune shot many an anxious look at it as he sat silent, the pipe he forgot to draw hanging loosely between his teeth.
Presently the other resumed, in low, reminiscent tones:
"I became the Khan's fetish. So long as he had me he was sure of his luck. He thought himself safe. In the end, I think, he thought he could not die."
"Well?" said Bethune, as the pause grew over long.
"Well, that's all. I was a fetish, very well looked after. Too well. God!" said the man, sitting up, a sudden passion on eye and lip, "I was kept prisoner, if you like. For five years, Raymond Bethune, I was chained to that old Khan's carcase, night and day."
"For five years," echoed Bethune, stupidly; "and what were you doing?"
English did not answer till the silence seemed to have obliterated the question. Then he said slowly:
"I was waiting."
"Then?"
"Then the old devil died—and I escaped. Oh, you don't want me to spin you that yarn now! You can imagine it for yourself, if you ever imagine anything, you old dunderhead. There was blood spilt, if you care to know. I had waited a long time, you see."
"But," objected the Major of Guides, after some minutes devoted to calculation, "that was three years ago."
"Aye," laughed English, good-naturedly contemptuous, "but a man doesn't walk off the Karakoram on to the English lines in a day, especially if he's an Afghan captive. I had to take a little round through Turkestan, and back through Baluchistan—on foot, Raymond, every yard of the way—as a dervish."
"Good Lord!" said Bethune.
"I flatter myself I know more of the Karakorams and the Turkoman frontier than any white man yet. And I can speak the lingo of every tribe that calls Ali chief. Aye, and I know their tricks and customs, their very habit of thought. There was not a camp or hut where they did not take me for one of themselves. It was just a year after Yufzul's death that I landed at Kurrachee."
"Oh, Harry," cried his friend, impulsively, "why did you not come to me?"
"Have I not told you already?" answered English, after one of his deep pauses. "I had things to find out first. Where is your canniness? If live men have to go slow, what about dead men? ... No—no." The bitter smile came back to his lips. "I lay low, and lived in the bazaar, as good a servant of the prophet as ever salaamed to the East; and then"—his voice changed—"oh, then—I got all the news I wanted!"
Bethune dared not raise his eyes.
"More than I wanted," added Harry English, with his bleak laugh. "You don't need to be told why I remained a Pathan, do you?"
When Bethune once more found courage to speak to his friend, it was because the stillness, pregnant with so much meaning, seemed intolerable.
"Well?" he queried hoarsely.
"Well, then," said Harry English, "I waited—again." ...
And his comrade felt more than this he was never to know of the hardest moment of all the man's hard life.
"I dare say," resumed English, his old air of serenity coming back to him, "you wonder why I did not extend that botched business as far as the jugular this time, and have done with it. But, you see, there was just a chance, I told myself; and so," he repeated, falling back into his significant formula, "I waited. I got work with an old babu; and by-and-by my opportunity came, and I took it."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Bethune, shifting restlessly in his chair. "It was the maddest business!"
"Perhaps," said English, a shade of pain sweeping across his face. "But I had to know. Any other course was too dangerous. Oh, I am not speaking of myself—think how dangerous!"
"But, man—man," cried the other, "it need not have taken you all that time! When you'd seen with your own eyes, when you had found that the old fellow was killing her, when you were here in this house, and had seen her in her sorrow—then——"
English flung one lightning glance upon the speaker.
"And even then," he said slowly, "I had still to know—more."
A moment Bethune stared at him open-mouthed; then his own unclear conscience pointed the otherwise inconceivable idea to his slow-working wits. He felt the dark blood mount to his forehead.
"Now I've told you all," said Harry English, and got up from his chair.
"Thank you," said Bethune.
* * * * *
Aspasia's bright presence was suddenly with them. English wheeled round; but her smiling face was reassurance sufficient.
"I've come as I promised," she said, "to give you the last report. Dr. Châtelard says all is going as he wishes. He will be down immediately for some breakfast, and then he will tell you himself. Isn't he a darling little man?" she went on. "I am sorry I said he had a pink head! What should we do now without it? By the way, some one must send a wire to Melbury Towers for his luggage."
"Let me go," said Bethune, starting forward.
"Let him go," echoed Baby, saucily, turning to Captain English.
With such new happiness before her, the natural buoyancy of her nature was triumphant over all present doubt and anxiety. Bethune put out his hand, and she slipped her own confidingly into it.
"Harry," said he, and the girl wondered and was highly flattered at the sudden emotion that shook his voice, "you see how things stand between us?"
Again English flashed that glance of vivid scrutiny. This time his friend met it steadily, though again with a heightening colour. Then, after a perceptible pause:
"I am glad," said Captain English, simply.
And Bethune dropped the girl's hand to meet the strong clasp held out to him.
He knew that from henceforth all misunderstanding was swept away from between them. If he had felt before for his friend that love closer than a brother's, it was cemented now by the strongest bond that can exist between generous natures—that of forgiver and forgiven. He was forgiven with the only real forgiveness—that which understands.
"Have they not brought breakfast?" cried Baby, the housekeeper, very bustling all at once, to cover her pretty confusion. She sprang to the bell, then checked herself, with finger on lip, and tripped from the room, pointing her feet and laughing over her shoulder, as if to her happy years even that sad precaution of quietness must have its mirthful side.
Both men looked after her indulgently. Then Bethune's face clouded.
"She is but a child, after all," he said doubtfully.
"Nay," said Harry, "it seems to me she has a woman's heart."
"She is as true as steel," asserted her lover.
When the girl returned, English went restlessly forth. He would wait for M. Châtelard, he said, in the hall. The newly betrothed were alone; and, for a second or two, eyed each other shyly. Then Bethune's face softened in the old, good way; and yet with something, too, that had never been there before, something which made Aspasia drop her lids.
"Well, Robin?" said he, and beckoned. She came to him sidling.
It would always be thus between them. He would beckon and she would come. Had the impossible happened, had that mistress of his hidden ideal condescended to him, he would have gone far to crave the least favour, and always with a trembling soul. But the life that touches the transcendent joy, the rare ecstasy is fated to know but little happiness. Providence, perhaps, was not dealing unkindly with this man.
"Why do you call me Robin?" she asked.
He was not of those who explain. With a kiss on her hand he told her simply that she was like a robin.
"Then I hope you'll remember, sir," she said, briskly disengaging herself, "that the robin is a bird that makes music in season and out of season."