CHAPTER VIIIBethune went off in the cart, at the best speed of Aspasia's pony, carrying a second telegram, more weighty than that concerning M. Châtelard's luggage. This was a summons for a London specialist.Although unaware that the Frenchman had himself a world-wide reputation for such cases, English, with his habit of quick judgment, had decided to trust the proffered skill. But, in the course of their conversation, he had tentatively touched upon the advantage of a consultation; and the suggestion was accepted; with so much alacrity, indeed, that a more livid pallor spread over the husband's countenance.M. Châtelard saw the impression he had unwittingly produced. With fat forefinger thrown out in emphasis, he promptly endeavoured to remove it."In cases of obscure diagnosis, two heads are always better than one," said he, kindly. "Yet your great Farrar will, I have no doubt—so much confidence have I in myself, my dear sir—merely confirm my treatment—a treatment, in parenthesis, purely negative. Paradoxical, yet true, sir, the slower our fair patient recovers the better."To himself, as he sat down to his coffee, the genial physician remarked complacently, that it would bedu dernier intérétto seece fameux Farrarat work.M. Châtelard was entirely satisfied with the situation, as far as it concerned himself. He kept Harry English at his elbow, and, while enjoying the excellent fare (les émotions, ça creuse!), discoursed learnedly upon the brain, that terrible and fragile organism which he had made his own especial study. His insatiable curiosity the while was anticipating with gusto the moment when it could gratify itself upon the enigmatic personality of his new-found host.Fate played into his hand. For, ere he could insinuate the first leading question, there entered upon them Sir Arthur. M. Châtelard was forthwith made witness to a scene between the "two husbands" which was to give him, in the most dramatic manner, all the information he desired.There they stood opposite each other—the old and the young. The most complete contrast, perhaps, that it was possible to imagine. Harry English, erect, square-shouldered, extraordinarily quiet, with head held high and pendant arms, in an attitude not unlike that of the soldier in the orderly-room, the oriental composure of his countenance occasionally contradicted by a flash of the eye and a twist of the lip. Sir Arthur, swinging between bluster and authority, both equally futile, painfully conscious of a hopelessly ungraceful position. It is only the young that the stress of passion becomes. When a man is past the prime of life, every emotion that shakes him from the dignified self-control of his years betrays him on to senility."Here, then, do we behold his Excellency as he is," thought the judicial looker-on. "Without toilet, without what milady Aspasia so brutally calls 'grooming'; without the support of a commanding position—here stands the natural man. And he is an old man, impotently angry—a sorry spectacle, while the rival—ah,belle jeunesse!"To the elderly Frenchman Harry English, still in the thirties, was to be reckoned among the youthful. Sir Arthur began the interview by a renewal of his last night's threat of the police. Harry English smiled, and the smile instantly worked havoc upon the Governor's assumption of confident authority. Rage broke forth."Look at him, Châtelard! There's a pretty fellow to call himself an Englishman. Look at the colour of his skin; look at his hair! By God, man," he yelled, "look at his teeth! The trick's been done before, sir. The wily servant, with his thieving knowledge of family secrets, playing the part of his dead master. This is a new Tichborne case, and the babu Muhammed will find what comes of such tricks.""Muhammed!" interrupted M. Châtelard, rising from his seat, "Muhammed! dites-vous? Ma parole!"His fingers flew up to steady his spectacles; his shrewd eyes fixed themselves upon English with a gaze in which admiration contended with amazement."Muhammed! ... Ah, what the devil—a wonderful disguise! Even now I hardly recognise, save, indeed, that he has worn a beard recently, as is revealed by that pallid chin and throat—I protest I do not even recognise Muhammed now in Captain English. No wonder," thought the Frenchman, in a rapid parenthesis, "that we French were as children in India compared to these English. English he remains," he chuckled, playing on the name, "and yet, to suit his purpose, he can assimilate himself to the black devil.""Ha, we've had a Tichborne case!" repeated Sir Arthur.The silent man opposite looked at him, still silent, still smiling; but into his eyes there crept a shade of pity. There was, indeed, something pitiable in this pomposity so fallen, in this tyranny so powerless—in Sir Arthur, brandishing his rag of defiance, standing the while in all the nakedness of his cause."You are witness, Châtelard," he was insisting.M. Châtelard, pinching the wire of his glasses, lifted his gaze to inspect the portrait which hung in the panel over the mantelpiece; then brought it solemnly back to Harry English's countenance. He turned and spoke, not without enjoying the consciousness of the weight of his own adverse verdict.—Expect no bowels of mercy from one whose life-work is the study of other people's brains."Alas! my excellent Sir Gerardine; I fear there above hangs a witness with a testimony more emphatic than ever mine could be."Sir Arthur rolled his bloodshot eye towards the picture—another of those infernal daubs! From the first instant he had set eyes on them, all over the place, he had thought it in bad taste—in confoundedly bad taste. Last night, in the bedroom, the sight of one of them had put him off his balance altogether. But he had been, then, in a nervous state. He knew better now."Pooh!" He tried to laugh, but his mouth twitched down at the corners, with a childish tremble. "If every black-haired man is going to claim to be my wife's first husband——"But everything was against Sir Arthur this morning. Who knows how far he might have gone in convincing the inconvenient English that he could not possibly be himself, if that objectionable person, Bethune—it was most reprehensible of Rosamond to have received the fellow in her husband's absence—had not marched in upon them.The Major of Guides stood a second, with beetling brows, measuring the situation. Then, without a word, he strode across the room and took up his post beside his comrade, so close that their shoulders touched. It was mute testimony, but more convincing than spoken phrase.M. Châtelard experienced one of those spasms of satisfaction which the discovery of some fresh trait characteristic of the race under his microscope never failed to cause him.Those two silent ones, with what force they imposed themselves! "Voilâ bien, l'Angleterre—sa morgue, son arrogance! She steps in—her mere presence is enough. She disdains argument, she stands passive, massive, she smiles—she remains. As for my poor Sir Gerardine, he represents here the enemy. Ah,sapristi, it is not astonishing if it makes him enraged."Sir Arthur, in truth, turned to an apoplectic purple, stammered wildly, shook his balled hand—the telling retort failed him. Upon this, at last, Captain English spoke:"Sir Arthur," said he, "believe me, you will, in due time, be furnished with every proof of my identity that you can desire to see. Meanwhile you will be wise if you accept the evidence of"—he paused, and there was a subtle alteration in the clear steady voice—"the evidence of all that has occurred this night—of my friend here, Major Bethune, and of the old servant of my house."Sir Arthur turned sharply and met the vindictive stare of Bethune's pale eyes."I have recognised my friend, Captain English," said Bethune, with harsh decision.Sir Arthur's glance went quickly from one to the other. It was typical of the man that, for the moment, the secondary irritation of having a pair of twopenny-halfpenny Indian officers brow-beating him—browbeating him, egad! the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province—for the moment, almost outweighed the fact that his own huge personal tragedy was being irremediably established."You are a witness, are you?" he snarled.Bethune nodded."Then," cried Sir Arthur, springing to his feet and thumping the table so that all the china rattled, "you are a witness, sir, to as peculiar a business as I think has ever been heard of in his Majesty's service. Captain English, I think—since it is agreed that this man is Captain English—will find some little difficulty in explaining his proceedings all these years.""You have heard of people being held prisoners," said English, quietly."Yes," screamed Sir Arthur, "but what about this disguise—this Muhammed business?""I don't expect you to understand my reasons," pursued the other, in the same manner; while, beside him, Bethune kept his taciturn watch. "But you have, I recognise, the right to be told of them. I had to find out if my wife was happy.""You had to find out if——" Sir Arthur pouncing upon the new suggestion, to lay bare its folly, was suddenly arrested midway by a glimmer of the other's meaning and its extraordinary bearing upon himself."If you wish, I shall put the matter clearer," said the first husband, incisively. "I had to find out if your wife was happy.""If my wife was happy!"A vision rose before Sir Arthur—his wife, the wife of Sir Arthur Gerardine, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor, her Excellency, Lady Gerardine, queen of her world, flashing in the glory of his diamonds and emeralds, treading palace rooms, herself the centre of a court—his wife petted, adulated, envied, the object of his chivalrous attention, of his lavish indulgence, his constant solicitude—not happy! He broke into boisterous laughter."Not happy! For that was your conclusion, I suppose?"Still laughing, he flung a glance at M. Châtelard—eloquent. "Did you ever hear such an absurdity in your life?" it said, in all languages.M. Châtelard unaccountably dropped his eyes before that triumphant appeal; and a dry cough of unwonted embarrassment escaped him. Sir Arthur's mirth changed from its first genuine note of sarcastic fury to something that rang hollow and forced. Abruptly withdrawing his eyes from the unresponsive Frenchman, he caught sight of his own countenance reflected, in all the cruel morning light, by a mirror that hung between the two windows. He stood staring. For a second he could not recognise himself—an unkempt old man, with yellow trembling cheeks and vacant mouth.In such moments the body works unconsciously. Had Sir Arthur had proper control over himself, the swift look at his rival, the immediate comparison, was the last thing his vanity would have condescended to. But his treacherous eyes had done their work before self-esteem could intervene. And, for once, Sir Arthur Gerardine saw.The braced figure of Henry English, with its noble lines of still young manhood; the romantic head, refined, not aged, by suffering and endurance, the vital flame in the eye. What a contrast! Sir Arthur swayed, fell into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. Acrid tears of self-pity were burning his lids. This is what they have brought me to!Of the other three in the room, there was not one who could find a word. To see the strong suffer may be a painful yet inspiring sight, but there are tragedies of the weak, before the sordid pity of which the mind instinctively recoils."And you thought it honourable and gentlemanly to come into my house and eat my bread and—and spy?" said the Lieutenant-Governor, raising his head at last, turning dull orbs upon his whilom secretary.The blood raced into Harry English's face."Here," thought Châtelard, scarcely breathing in his quiet corner of observation, "here it is the old one scores at last.""I could not choose my methods, Sir Arthur."The ancient Chippendale clock, with a sigh between its ticks, measured half a minute of heavy waiting. Then English spoke again, decisively, vigorously, stepping to the table with the air of one determined to put an end to an unbearable situation."Useless, all this. You shall have full evidence, as I said, in due time. Meanwhile, here is a house of sorrow, and your presence in it adds grievously to its burdens."A gleam lit the watery depths of Sir Arthur's eyes."Here is a house of sorrow." He was suddenly reminded of what, in the absorption of his own misery, he had well-nigh forgotten—that the woman lay in danger of death.Were she to die now—who had committed this inconceivable indiscretion—the situation might yet be saved. If she were to die, the affair could be hushed up. He jumped to his feet."Well, and what do you think of her state, doctor?" cried he.The greedy glance was a revelation. The whole mind of the man was laid bare in its odious pettiness. With a dignified gesture the physician refused answer.But the soul of Harry English leaped forth in wrath, as the blade leaps from the scabbard."Out of my house!" said he, his arm flung wide, pointing to the door. Voice, gesture, look, spoke of a passion so intense that for a second Sir Arthur quailed before it as one may before an unexpected flash of lightning.He retreated hurriedly a few steps, then wheeled round, his natural combativeness reasserting itself."Your story is strange, singularly strange, Captain English," he sneered. "I shall consider it my duty to report it in proper quarters without delay. You will have to produce some better explanations there, sir, I fancy, than those which seem to satisfy a couple of silly women and an ignorant foreigner—I mean," his old habit of courtesy tugging against the impulsiveness of his irritation—"I mean a foreigner ignorant of our customs." (M. Châtelard had an indulgent smile for the correction.) "I shall report you, sir, and your accomplice there."A withering look included the stolid Bethune in this last indictment."Raymond, see that he goes," said English, "that he goes at once—and quietly.""Ah, yes, I beg," interposed the doctor, with gravity. "Quiet is imperative, Sir Gerardine."English walked over to the window and began to drum on the pane. Dr. Châtelard removed his spectacles, and put them into his pocket."One is reminded of the history of the judgment of Solomon," he remarked genially, as he followed Bethune to the door. "Permettez, cher capitaine? I return to your wife."CHAPTER IX"They're going!" said Bethune, triumphantly. "Their fellow has patched up the motor; it will take them as far as the station at least."Harry English, pacing the little study much after the manner of Muhammed the night before, halted abruptly."They ought to have gone an hour ago," he answered. And, when he looked like that, for a certainty Captain English wore no pleasant countenance. "What has he been doing?"The relaxation of the muscles, which was Bethune's usual substitute for a smile, came over his face."First, he's been trying to persuade Aspasia to go away with him. And secondly, he's been reproaching her for her unfilial behaviour in refusing to leave us; and thirdly, he has been bestowing his avuncular curse upon her and repudiating her for ever and ever. All this naturally took some time."A flash of pleasure swept across the other's gloom."So the girl sticks to us. That is right," he said. Then the frown came back. "You've warned them to be quiet, I hope, with their infernal car?""I've told the chauffeur if he makes a sound more than he can help, he'll have me to deal with. I made the fellow swear to wait for them halfway down the avenue. Lady Aspasia's a good sort too, take her all in all—has her head screwed on the right way. She'll keep the old man in order."English took a couple of turns again, and halted, his head bent. There were voices passing in the hall without: Sir Arthur's querulous tones, Lady Aspasia's unmistakable accents, strident even under her breath. Bethune went to the window."There they go," said he, presently. "She's giving him her arm. By George," he went on, "she, for one, won't be anxious to dispute your identity, Harry!"The other had sat down by the fire and was gazing into the flames after his old attitude. Bethune, at the window, remained gazing upon the departure of the undesired guests. In a second or two he broke forth again:"The motor's jibbing! Good Lord, they'll have it into the gate—now into the apple-tree!" He gave a single note of mirth. "Lady Aspasia is holding down Sir Arthur by main force. Of course he wants to teach the chauffeur how to do it. But she knows better. By George," ejaculated Bethune, in a prophetic burst, "she's the very woman for him! Ah, here comes Miss Aspasia, hatless, to offer her opinion. I'd give something to hear her; she does not want them back upon us—I warrant." There was a pause. "They're off! Thank God, they're off!" Still the man lingered by the window.Aspasia was waving her handkerchief ironically after the departing company, as the car proceeded down the avenue, fitfully, at a speed which (as she subsequently remarked) "would have made any self-respecting cart-horse smile."When she turned to re-enter the house, Bethune had the vision of her rosy face, all brightening with smiles. The interchange of mute greetings, the swift impression of her fair light youth as she flashed by, left him lost in a muse.Harry English stirred in his chair and, on the moment, his friend was at his side."They're gone," repeated he, rubbing his hands.The other made no direct reply; but, stooping forward, picked up one of the fragments of paper that had escaped Bethune's hand in the morning's work of destruction.He looked at it for a few seconds, abstractedly, and then laughed."So you were writing a life of me, old man?" said he.Bethune stood, looking as if he had been convicted of the most abject folly. And English lightly flicked the scrap into the blaze:"The life that counts is the life that no other soul can know," said he.But he had no sooner said the words than he corrected himself, and his voice took that altered note which marked any reference to his wife."At least," he said, "no other soul but one."Those friends, who were so much to each other, in speech communicated less than the most ordinary acquaintances. Bethune stood, in his wooden way, looking down at the armchair. Just now he had something to say, and it was difficult to him. At last, pointing to the hearth, as if he still beheld the fruit of his labour of friendship being consumed in it, he spoke, awkwardly:"It did its work, though."English flashed an upward look, half humorous, half searching."What did its work?""The—my—oh, the damned Life!"The other man pondered over the words a little while. Then, with a smile that had something almost tender in it, he looked up at his friend again:"I am afraid you will have to explain a little more, Ray."Bethune shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The colour mounted to his face. He stared down at English, wistfully."It's a bit hard to explain," he said, "yet I'd like you to know—that diary, those letters of yours, I had to have them, extracts of them, for the work, you see.... Well——"Here came a pause of such length that English was fain to repeat:"Well?"Then Bethune blurted it out:"She had never read them——""Ah!""She never wanted to read them. Oh!"—quickly, "it's not that she didn't care.""You need not explain that."English's head was bent. His voice was very quiet, but Bethune's whole being thrilled to the tumult he inarticularly felt in the other's soul. He half put out his hand to touch him, then drew it back."Go on with your story—with your own part of the story," said Harry."She did not want to read them," said Bethune. "I made her."The husband offered no comment; and, drawing a long breath like a child, his friend went on:"And when she read at last—oh! even I could see it—it was as if her heart broke."Still the bent head, the hands clasped over the knees, the silence. Bethune could bear it no longer, and took courage to lay that touch of timid eager sympathy upon English's shoulder."Harry, I'm such a fool, I can't explain things.""Oh, I understand," answered English then, in a deep vibrating voice. He rose suddenly and squared himself, drawing in the air in a long sigh. "Do you think I could misunderstand—her?"Their looks met. There was a wonderful mixture of sweetness and sorrow on the face of him whom life and death had equally betrayed.Suddenly they clasped hands, for the first time since their parting in the Baroghil passes. Then they stood awhile without speaking. Harry English once more fixing visions in the fire, and Bethune looking at his comrade.For most of his years he had known no deeper affection than his friendship for this man. He had mourned him with a grief which, now to think on, seemed like a single furrow across the plain field of his life; and there he stood!"Captain, my Captain..." said Raymond. His rough voice trembled, and he laughed loud to conceal it.The other flashed round upon him with his rarely beautiful smile."Ah," said he, "it's like old times at last to hear you at your rags and tags of quotation again!"There fell again between them the pause that to both was so eloquent.Then, from the far distance, into their silence penetrated a faint uncouth sound: from the moorland road, the motor, carrying for ever out of their lives him who had had so much power upon them, and was now so futile a figure, seemed to raise a last impotent hoot.Sir Arthur Gerardine was gone. Raymond rubbed his hands and smiled as since boyhood he had scarcely smiled."It is good," cried Harry, then, boyishly in his turn, "to see your nut-cracker grin once more, Ray. As Muhammed, I've looked for it many a time in vain—I thought I had lost my old sub."* * * * *"But there's one thing we must remember," said Bethune, suddenly earnest again, in the midst of the welcome relaxation. "We must remember the old fellow's threat. You will have a bit of a job to keep out of trouble with the powers that be, won't you, after Sir Arthur's meddling?"The anxiety on his countenance was not reflected upon English's face."I shall have my own story to tell," he said, "and I think that I have knowledge of sufficient value to make me apersona gratain high quarters just now. They will be rather more anxious, I take it, to retain my services rather than dispense with them—in spite of Sir Arthur."He broke off, his brow clouded again. He sighed heavily."But what does that matter?" he cried; "just now there is only one thing that matters in the whole world."BOOK IVCHAPTER IIt was the most interesting case I have ever had (wrote M. Châtelard, in the third volume of his "Psychologie Féminine"), and the most abnormal. The illness, caused by shock, concussion—call it what you will—was benign, yet it was long. There was a little fever, a little delirium: un petit délire très doux, tout poétique, que, plongé dans mon vieux fauteuil de chêne, au milieu du silence de cet antique manoir, j'écoutais presqu'avec plaisir. Un gazouillement d'oiseau; une âme de femme, errant comme Psyché elle-même, sur les fleurs dans les jardins embaumés; délicates puerilitiés parfumées de la vie. Jamais une note de passion. Jamais un cri de ce coeur si profondement blessé....And when later, by almost imperceptible steps, we drew the gentle creature back to health, the singular phenomenon persisted.We physicians are, of course, accustomed in similar circumstances, to find a strong distaste in the patient suffering from shock to any effort of memory. Memory, indeed, by one of those marvellous dispensations of nature, is reluctant to bring back the events which have caused the mischief. But, with the beautiful Lady G—— (it is always thus I must recall her) there was something more than the mere recoil of weakness....On eût pu croire que cette âm ebrisée de passion, abreuvée de douleur, s'était dit qu'elle n'en voulait plus; qu'elle n'en pouvait plus. Co n'était pas, ici, les souvenirs, qui faisaient défaut. Je l'ai trop observée pour m'y méprendre. En avait-elle des souvenirs et d'assez poignants, mon Dieu! ... But with a strength of will which surprised me in her state, she put these memories from her and deliberately lived in the present. Elle goutait son présent, elle savourait la paix voluptueuse de sa convalescence....Je n'ai qu'à fermer les yeux, pour la revoir, sur son lit—longue, blanche et belle. Je revois ce jeune teint—divinement jeune sous cette grande chevelure d'argent; cet air de lys au soleil, à la fois languissant et mystérieusement heureux. Ces yeux noyés dans une pensée profonde. Ces lévres entr'ouvertes par un léger sourire. A qui rêvaitelle—à quoi? Cette belle bouche muette n'en soufflait jamais mot....Of the three who had loved her, for whom was that smile? Certes, not for the poor Sir! And of the other two? (I must here frankly set down the humiliating admission, to me, that woman was, and remains Sphynx—yes, Sphynx, even to me, her physician, who beheld her, watched, tended her, through all those moments of suffering, weakness,défaillancewhere the soul reveals itself.) Which of the two, then, reigned in her secret dream? The sardonic Major, who had tracked her till she could escape him no longer, whose love was merciless. There are women, and many, who would never know passion but for defeat. The husband? The reincarnated ghost? Well reincarnated, that one!—The most virile type that I ever met. Nature of fire, born lover, under all his reticence of English gentleman and soldier. I have seen that face of his, half bronze, half marble, grow crimson and white within the minute, as I spoke to him of the woman, the while there would not be a tremble in the hand that held this pipe. I will confess he had all my sympathy; he was worthy of her. But she—why, to this day I ask myself: does the man who possesses her know the secret of her heart?The day after the damaged motor had carried away the poor Governor—machine détraquée, clopin-clopant, symbole de cette vie qui jusqu'ici semblait rouler en triomphe et qui, desormais, se trainera si gauchement—the day following Sir G——'s departure, I say, the Major B—— also left. It was the very least he could have done. And after the astounding fact of his betrothal to the pretty little Miss C——, I myself felt his presence antipathetic.... Ah, but a strategist, that officer of Guides, strategist of the first order! A masterly move, that betrothal, to disarm any possible suspicion of his friend and keep the while a footing in his beloved's house! But the little one, she deserved better ...delicieuse enfant! With what innocent eyes she looked at me when I told her that, above all things, she must not whisper to my patient a word of her engagement. "Understand well, Miss," said I to her; and was ashamed of myself thus to join with him who was deceiving her. "It is because the least agitation, even a happy one, must be avoided." "Ah, that is why," said she, "you will not let her poor husband go to her?" "That is why," I replied, dissembling, "above all things, above all things, she must not be hurried."* * * * *She must not be hurried!"If she wants me?" had said Harry English to Dr. Châtelard, in that dawn hour of dire omen."My dear sir," had answered the other, "immediately, of course!"Rosamond lay, restored to those that loved her, a pale rose among her white tresses, and Harry English still waited her summons.Still waiting!* * * * *"Above all," repeated the genial physician, who had stood by them so stoutly in their hour of trouble, as he took his reluctant departure from a house where his presence was, obviously, no longer needed, and where yet—unfortunate psychologist—he had failed to probe the story to the core, "above all, she must not be hurried!"These were his farewell instructions.It seemed to him that the patient husband had a strange smile on hearing this admonition."How much does he know?" asked Châtelard of himself, clinging with characteristic pertinacity to his peculiar interpretation of events. "How much does he suspect?"Never before, perhaps, had the active-minded and gregarious Frenchman found himself thus regretting the prospect of a return to the congenial movement of his native city. But it was with a definite sense of reluctance that, on this March morning, he drove away through the budding orchard trees, leaving the Old Ancient House and all the desolate moorland behind him. This lonely antique habitation still held close the enigma of lives in which he had become deeply interested—interested, not only with that vivid intelligence which was ever eager to know, but with the warmth of a very excellent heart.He would dearly have loved to know, true; but, above all, he would dearly have loved to help."Eh, Dieu sait," he sighed, as the fly jingled and bumbled over the grass-grown avenue, "Dieu sait ce qui va se passer là-bas, maintenant que je n'y suis plus!"He gave a lingering look at the twisted chimney-stacks against the pale sky, before setting his face for Paris, Ville Lumière, once more.* * * * *"She must not be hurried!—Until she asks for me; then," had resolved Harry English, "I will wait."And at first, indeed, it seemed as if the waiting could not be hard. For with the young year had come new hopes to the Old Ancient House. And with Rosamond turning to life in her room upstairs under the gables, he who loved her could well afford to sit with patience below.Yet time went by, and the summons came not.Upon that first blessed morning, indeed, when after all these long days she had awakened at last, and looked upon the world with seeing eyes once more, Rosamond had whispered to Aspasia:"Harry—is he here?"The girl's heart had leaped with joy."Yes," came her eager answer. "Will you see him?"Like a little Mercury, one foot poised, hand outstretched to grasp the happy moment, Aspasia stood ready to take flight upon her errand of comfort. But the pale woman in the bed shrank. The old shy withdrawal from the thought of emotion—as once from sorrow, now from joy—seemed to be upon her."Not yet," she faintly sighed.And, day by day, the singular little scene was re-enacted. In defiance of doctor's orders, Baby—with the sense of that other's hungry disappointment heavy upon her heart—would put her query ever more pleadingly:"Will you not see him? Can you not see him? May it not be for to-day?"But ever would come the same reply, while the lids sank over the timid eyes, and colour mounted slowly in the transparent face:"Not yet."Then the woman would fall back into her secret dream, lying hours in that quietude at which her physician marvelled, while he welcomed its healing power. It was a pause in life. So the young mother may lie and hold her infant in her languid arms and be happy because of its very weakness and incompleteness; and deem it more safely her own that it has yet no speech for her, no will to meet hers, even no power of love with which to answer hers.It is harder to be patient in happiness than in sorrow. These days of waiting began to tell upon Harry English more than all the years had done.Yet it was idle to say: "She must not be hurried," since time marches with us all, whether we will or no; and with time, the events which change our destiny. The most guarded being cannot escape the influence of those lives with which Fate has thrown his fortune, and Rosamond was destined at last to be shaken out of her dreams by the combined energies of other fortunes.M. Châtelard had been gone some time. The green buds were swelling over the March land. The convalescent had been promoted to her armchair for an hour or two daily, when a telegram summoned Harry English to London.Bethune had undertaken all the preliminary official steps for his friend. Now the moment could not be delayed when the missing officer must give his personal explanations. The excuse of his wife's danger could no longer be maintained for his absence: he had to leave the Old House without having seen her again.For two mornings after his departure Baby entered her aunt's room to find her lying among a bower of flowers. The husband was pleading for himself, wooing his love, for the third time. At first he sent no word with his gift, but let these most gracious messengers speak in fragrance. Aspasia was wise enough to hold her tongue upon the subject. Even to her downright perceptions the silence which enwrapped the invalid seemed stirred, palpitating with the awakening of emotions, just as, all over the land, after her winter sleep, the earth was stirred, palpitating, to the promise of spring.The third morning the girl was unwontedly late in making her appearance. But Rosamond did not seem to miss her. She rested, smiling among her pillows, her diaphanous hand enfolding the letter that Mary had (with a subdued look of triumph) brought her on top of an open box overflowing with lily-of-the-valley.Rosamond's first love-letter had come to her blent with the same perfume. The acrid sweetness rose like a greeting, an intangible intermingling of past and present. It spoke more eloquently than even his words. She drew the flowers slowly from their case. Below all, nestling beneath the waxen bells, she found one deep-hearted dark crimson rose.She held it to her lips, the while she read his letter.* * * * *And so Baby's presence was not missed. At mid-day she rushed into the room and flung herself upon the bed with so much of her old impetuosity that Rosamond sat up, startled at first, then smiling, shaken from her languor."What is it, Baby? What a little face of blushes!"In the midst of her own turmoil of emotion, Baby's faithful heart leaped with joy. Rosamond had not spoken with that natural air these months."What is it?" repeated the woman, smiling.Aspasia edged along the bed till her hot cheeks were hidden on Rosamond's neck. Then she thrust out her left hand blindly for inspection."Look!""What——?"Yes, in very truth, Rosamond was laughing."What is it, Baby? ... Ah——"Baby moved her long musician fingers slowly one after the other and finally stuck out the third."Ah," cried Rosamond again, sharply."She has seen," thought Aspasia, and was fain to raise her head to behold the effect of the great surprise."Is it possible," said the other, slowly, "or are you playing me some trick?""A trick," echoed Aspasia, indignantly. "No such thing!" She surveyed the important hand, with head on one side and an air of great complacency. Yet never had it appeared a more childish object. Upon the pink out-thrust finger the wedding-ring seemed absurdly misplaced."Baby, Baby, how is it you have never told me? Major Bethune, of course?""Yes," said the bride, suddenly shy. "They would not let me tell you. Idiots!"The next instant the two women were clasped in each other's arms—both crying a little, as they kissed."There now," cried the new wife, at last, awakening to the conviction that she was hardly carrying out the doctor's instructions; and, indeed, it was evident that, left to her own devices, Aspasia had peculiar views upon the art of breaking news. "There now, this won't do. You lie still, and I'll tell you everything."Placidly enough to reassure a more anxious nurse, Rosamond obeyed, her hand creeping down to her letter once more. This was but a surface agitation, after all—there was only one in the world who had power to stir the deeps.Aspasia knelt down by the bed, and began to pour forth her story.... They had been engaged, oh, ever so long; but she never would have dreamed of anything so preposterous as marriage, especially now—not for ages, at least, but Raymond had ramped so....It was only from the youthful Mrs. Bethune's picturesque tongue that such a description of Bethune's reticent wooing could have fallen.And then something had happened, out there, and his blessed leave was curtailed, and, he had said, he positively would not go without her. "And so," said Baby, laughing and crying together, as pretty and absurd a spring bride as it was possible to see; "so he came down from London yesterday—with a special licence in his pocket—he went to the Inn, but he came to see me last night. I don't know how it happened, but we were married this morning, at the little church—you know, your little church, Aunt Rosamond.... Did you ever hear of such a thing? Without a trousseau, without a present, without a lawyer, without a cake! And I am going to Vienna for my honeymoon."She laughed a little wildly, and dabbed her wet cheeks with a corner of the sheet. Then she stopped suddenly, abashed. Rosamond's eyes were lost in space; she was not even listening."I knew you did not want me," said Aspasia—a very different quality of tears welling up.Rosamond started:"I, not want you! Why, Baby, what makes you say that?""Oh," cried the girl, with a swift change of mood, "how can you want me, have you not got him? Dear Aunt Rosamond, darling Aunt Rosamond, don't keep him waiting any more!"She was going to cast herself upon the bed in another fervent embrace, when something in Rosamond's look arrested her. Here were the deeps astir! It was as if a flame enkindled in a fragile lamp, as if she could see it tremble and burn.She drew back before a mystery to which she vaguely felt she would never have the key."You know, he will return to-day," stammered she at last. "It's all right about his business. He is coming back.""I know," answered Harry English's wife, in a low vibrating voice. Then she hesitated, and turned to look at the girl, a wistful inquiry in her shadowed eyes."Have they told him?" she asked, under her breath, raising one of the heavy white locks that lay across her breast."Oh," exclaimed Aspasia, springing to her meaning, "but you are beautiful with it, you are more beautiful than ever! No—I don't know if they've told him. Oh, darling," she cried, melting all into tenderness, pity, and amusement, as over a child, "it wasn't for that, it could not be for that, you wouldn't see him?""For that!" said Rosamond. A flame seemed to pass over her again. She quivered from head to foot, and a deep flush rose to the very roots of her blanched hair. "Oh, Baby, no. How could you guess, how could you understand—poor little bride of an hour?"And, as once before, upon that crucial morning in the distant Indian palace, she had taken all her golden hair to cover her face and hide its misery from violating eyes, Rosamond now swept the silver veil across the betrayal of her blood, that even Baby might not look upon the tumult of her heart.The scent of the dark rose, stronger even than the lilies, filled the room.
CHAPTER VIII
Bethune went off in the cart, at the best speed of Aspasia's pony, carrying a second telegram, more weighty than that concerning M. Châtelard's luggage. This was a summons for a London specialist.
Although unaware that the Frenchman had himself a world-wide reputation for such cases, English, with his habit of quick judgment, had decided to trust the proffered skill. But, in the course of their conversation, he had tentatively touched upon the advantage of a consultation; and the suggestion was accepted; with so much alacrity, indeed, that a more livid pallor spread over the husband's countenance.
M. Châtelard saw the impression he had unwittingly produced. With fat forefinger thrown out in emphasis, he promptly endeavoured to remove it.
"In cases of obscure diagnosis, two heads are always better than one," said he, kindly. "Yet your great Farrar will, I have no doubt—so much confidence have I in myself, my dear sir—merely confirm my treatment—a treatment, in parenthesis, purely negative. Paradoxical, yet true, sir, the slower our fair patient recovers the better."
To himself, as he sat down to his coffee, the genial physician remarked complacently, that it would bedu dernier intérétto seece fameux Farrarat work.
M. Châtelard was entirely satisfied with the situation, as far as it concerned himself. He kept Harry English at his elbow, and, while enjoying the excellent fare (les émotions, ça creuse!), discoursed learnedly upon the brain, that terrible and fragile organism which he had made his own especial study. His insatiable curiosity the while was anticipating with gusto the moment when it could gratify itself upon the enigmatic personality of his new-found host.
Fate played into his hand. For, ere he could insinuate the first leading question, there entered upon them Sir Arthur. M. Châtelard was forthwith made witness to a scene between the "two husbands" which was to give him, in the most dramatic manner, all the information he desired.
There they stood opposite each other—the old and the young. The most complete contrast, perhaps, that it was possible to imagine. Harry English, erect, square-shouldered, extraordinarily quiet, with head held high and pendant arms, in an attitude not unlike that of the soldier in the orderly-room, the oriental composure of his countenance occasionally contradicted by a flash of the eye and a twist of the lip. Sir Arthur, swinging between bluster and authority, both equally futile, painfully conscious of a hopelessly ungraceful position. It is only the young that the stress of passion becomes. When a man is past the prime of life, every emotion that shakes him from the dignified self-control of his years betrays him on to senility.
"Here, then, do we behold his Excellency as he is," thought the judicial looker-on. "Without toilet, without what milady Aspasia so brutally calls 'grooming'; without the support of a commanding position—here stands the natural man. And he is an old man, impotently angry—a sorry spectacle, while the rival—ah,belle jeunesse!"
To the elderly Frenchman Harry English, still in the thirties, was to be reckoned among the youthful. Sir Arthur began the interview by a renewal of his last night's threat of the police. Harry English smiled, and the smile instantly worked havoc upon the Governor's assumption of confident authority. Rage broke forth.
"Look at him, Châtelard! There's a pretty fellow to call himself an Englishman. Look at the colour of his skin; look at his hair! By God, man," he yelled, "look at his teeth! The trick's been done before, sir. The wily servant, with his thieving knowledge of family secrets, playing the part of his dead master. This is a new Tichborne case, and the babu Muhammed will find what comes of such tricks."
"Muhammed!" interrupted M. Châtelard, rising from his seat, "Muhammed! dites-vous? Ma parole!"
His fingers flew up to steady his spectacles; his shrewd eyes fixed themselves upon English with a gaze in which admiration contended with amazement.
"Muhammed! ... Ah, what the devil—a wonderful disguise! Even now I hardly recognise, save, indeed, that he has worn a beard recently, as is revealed by that pallid chin and throat—I protest I do not even recognise Muhammed now in Captain English. No wonder," thought the Frenchman, in a rapid parenthesis, "that we French were as children in India compared to these English. English he remains," he chuckled, playing on the name, "and yet, to suit his purpose, he can assimilate himself to the black devil."
"Ha, we've had a Tichborne case!" repeated Sir Arthur.
The silent man opposite looked at him, still silent, still smiling; but into his eyes there crept a shade of pity. There was, indeed, something pitiable in this pomposity so fallen, in this tyranny so powerless—in Sir Arthur, brandishing his rag of defiance, standing the while in all the nakedness of his cause.
"You are witness, Châtelard," he was insisting.
M. Châtelard, pinching the wire of his glasses, lifted his gaze to inspect the portrait which hung in the panel over the mantelpiece; then brought it solemnly back to Harry English's countenance. He turned and spoke, not without enjoying the consciousness of the weight of his own adverse verdict.—Expect no bowels of mercy from one whose life-work is the study of other people's brains.
"Alas! my excellent Sir Gerardine; I fear there above hangs a witness with a testimony more emphatic than ever mine could be."
Sir Arthur rolled his bloodshot eye towards the picture—another of those infernal daubs! From the first instant he had set eyes on them, all over the place, he had thought it in bad taste—in confoundedly bad taste. Last night, in the bedroom, the sight of one of them had put him off his balance altogether. But he had been, then, in a nervous state. He knew better now.
"Pooh!" He tried to laugh, but his mouth twitched down at the corners, with a childish tremble. "If every black-haired man is going to claim to be my wife's first husband——"
But everything was against Sir Arthur this morning. Who knows how far he might have gone in convincing the inconvenient English that he could not possibly be himself, if that objectionable person, Bethune—it was most reprehensible of Rosamond to have received the fellow in her husband's absence—had not marched in upon them.
The Major of Guides stood a second, with beetling brows, measuring the situation. Then, without a word, he strode across the room and took up his post beside his comrade, so close that their shoulders touched. It was mute testimony, but more convincing than spoken phrase.
M. Châtelard experienced one of those spasms of satisfaction which the discovery of some fresh trait characteristic of the race under his microscope never failed to cause him.
Those two silent ones, with what force they imposed themselves! "Voilâ bien, l'Angleterre—sa morgue, son arrogance! She steps in—her mere presence is enough. She disdains argument, she stands passive, massive, she smiles—she remains. As for my poor Sir Gerardine, he represents here the enemy. Ah,sapristi, it is not astonishing if it makes him enraged."
Sir Arthur, in truth, turned to an apoplectic purple, stammered wildly, shook his balled hand—the telling retort failed him. Upon this, at last, Captain English spoke:
"Sir Arthur," said he, "believe me, you will, in due time, be furnished with every proof of my identity that you can desire to see. Meanwhile you will be wise if you accept the evidence of"—he paused, and there was a subtle alteration in the clear steady voice—"the evidence of all that has occurred this night—of my friend here, Major Bethune, and of the old servant of my house."
Sir Arthur turned sharply and met the vindictive stare of Bethune's pale eyes.
"I have recognised my friend, Captain English," said Bethune, with harsh decision.
Sir Arthur's glance went quickly from one to the other. It was typical of the man that, for the moment, the secondary irritation of having a pair of twopenny-halfpenny Indian officers brow-beating him—browbeating him, egad! the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province—for the moment, almost outweighed the fact that his own huge personal tragedy was being irremediably established.
"You are a witness, are you?" he snarled.
Bethune nodded.
"Then," cried Sir Arthur, springing to his feet and thumping the table so that all the china rattled, "you are a witness, sir, to as peculiar a business as I think has ever been heard of in his Majesty's service. Captain English, I think—since it is agreed that this man is Captain English—will find some little difficulty in explaining his proceedings all these years."
"You have heard of people being held prisoners," said English, quietly.
"Yes," screamed Sir Arthur, "but what about this disguise—this Muhammed business?"
"I don't expect you to understand my reasons," pursued the other, in the same manner; while, beside him, Bethune kept his taciturn watch. "But you have, I recognise, the right to be told of them. I had to find out if my wife was happy."
"You had to find out if——" Sir Arthur pouncing upon the new suggestion, to lay bare its folly, was suddenly arrested midway by a glimmer of the other's meaning and its extraordinary bearing upon himself.
"If you wish, I shall put the matter clearer," said the first husband, incisively. "I had to find out if your wife was happy."
"If my wife was happy!"
A vision rose before Sir Arthur—his wife, the wife of Sir Arthur Gerardine, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor, her Excellency, Lady Gerardine, queen of her world, flashing in the glory of his diamonds and emeralds, treading palace rooms, herself the centre of a court—his wife petted, adulated, envied, the object of his chivalrous attention, of his lavish indulgence, his constant solicitude—not happy! He broke into boisterous laughter.
"Not happy! For that was your conclusion, I suppose?"
Still laughing, he flung a glance at M. Châtelard—eloquent. "Did you ever hear such an absurdity in your life?" it said, in all languages.
M. Châtelard unaccountably dropped his eyes before that triumphant appeal; and a dry cough of unwonted embarrassment escaped him. Sir Arthur's mirth changed from its first genuine note of sarcastic fury to something that rang hollow and forced. Abruptly withdrawing his eyes from the unresponsive Frenchman, he caught sight of his own countenance reflected, in all the cruel morning light, by a mirror that hung between the two windows. He stood staring. For a second he could not recognise himself—an unkempt old man, with yellow trembling cheeks and vacant mouth.
In such moments the body works unconsciously. Had Sir Arthur had proper control over himself, the swift look at his rival, the immediate comparison, was the last thing his vanity would have condescended to. But his treacherous eyes had done their work before self-esteem could intervene. And, for once, Sir Arthur Gerardine saw.
The braced figure of Henry English, with its noble lines of still young manhood; the romantic head, refined, not aged, by suffering and endurance, the vital flame in the eye. What a contrast! Sir Arthur swayed, fell into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. Acrid tears of self-pity were burning his lids. This is what they have brought me to!
Of the other three in the room, there was not one who could find a word. To see the strong suffer may be a painful yet inspiring sight, but there are tragedies of the weak, before the sordid pity of which the mind instinctively recoils.
"And you thought it honourable and gentlemanly to come into my house and eat my bread and—and spy?" said the Lieutenant-Governor, raising his head at last, turning dull orbs upon his whilom secretary.
The blood raced into Harry English's face.
"Here," thought Châtelard, scarcely breathing in his quiet corner of observation, "here it is the old one scores at last."
"I could not choose my methods, Sir Arthur."
The ancient Chippendale clock, with a sigh between its ticks, measured half a minute of heavy waiting. Then English spoke again, decisively, vigorously, stepping to the table with the air of one determined to put an end to an unbearable situation.
"Useless, all this. You shall have full evidence, as I said, in due time. Meanwhile, here is a house of sorrow, and your presence in it adds grievously to its burdens."
A gleam lit the watery depths of Sir Arthur's eyes.
"Here is a house of sorrow." He was suddenly reminded of what, in the absorption of his own misery, he had well-nigh forgotten—that the woman lay in danger of death.
Were she to die now—who had committed this inconceivable indiscretion—the situation might yet be saved. If she were to die, the affair could be hushed up. He jumped to his feet.
"Well, and what do you think of her state, doctor?" cried he.
The greedy glance was a revelation. The whole mind of the man was laid bare in its odious pettiness. With a dignified gesture the physician refused answer.
But the soul of Harry English leaped forth in wrath, as the blade leaps from the scabbard.
"Out of my house!" said he, his arm flung wide, pointing to the door. Voice, gesture, look, spoke of a passion so intense that for a second Sir Arthur quailed before it as one may before an unexpected flash of lightning.
He retreated hurriedly a few steps, then wheeled round, his natural combativeness reasserting itself.
"Your story is strange, singularly strange, Captain English," he sneered. "I shall consider it my duty to report it in proper quarters without delay. You will have to produce some better explanations there, sir, I fancy, than those which seem to satisfy a couple of silly women and an ignorant foreigner—I mean," his old habit of courtesy tugging against the impulsiveness of his irritation—"I mean a foreigner ignorant of our customs." (M. Châtelard had an indulgent smile for the correction.) "I shall report you, sir, and your accomplice there."
A withering look included the stolid Bethune in this last indictment.
"Raymond, see that he goes," said English, "that he goes at once—and quietly."
"Ah, yes, I beg," interposed the doctor, with gravity. "Quiet is imperative, Sir Gerardine."
English walked over to the window and began to drum on the pane. Dr. Châtelard removed his spectacles, and put them into his pocket.
"One is reminded of the history of the judgment of Solomon," he remarked genially, as he followed Bethune to the door. "Permettez, cher capitaine? I return to your wife."
CHAPTER IX
"They're going!" said Bethune, triumphantly. "Their fellow has patched up the motor; it will take them as far as the station at least."
Harry English, pacing the little study much after the manner of Muhammed the night before, halted abruptly.
"They ought to have gone an hour ago," he answered. And, when he looked like that, for a certainty Captain English wore no pleasant countenance. "What has he been doing?"
The relaxation of the muscles, which was Bethune's usual substitute for a smile, came over his face.
"First, he's been trying to persuade Aspasia to go away with him. And secondly, he's been reproaching her for her unfilial behaviour in refusing to leave us; and thirdly, he has been bestowing his avuncular curse upon her and repudiating her for ever and ever. All this naturally took some time."
A flash of pleasure swept across the other's gloom.
"So the girl sticks to us. That is right," he said. Then the frown came back. "You've warned them to be quiet, I hope, with their infernal car?"
"I've told the chauffeur if he makes a sound more than he can help, he'll have me to deal with. I made the fellow swear to wait for them halfway down the avenue. Lady Aspasia's a good sort too, take her all in all—has her head screwed on the right way. She'll keep the old man in order."
English took a couple of turns again, and halted, his head bent. There were voices passing in the hall without: Sir Arthur's querulous tones, Lady Aspasia's unmistakable accents, strident even under her breath. Bethune went to the window.
"There they go," said he, presently. "She's giving him her arm. By George," he went on, "she, for one, won't be anxious to dispute your identity, Harry!"
The other had sat down by the fire and was gazing into the flames after his old attitude. Bethune, at the window, remained gazing upon the departure of the undesired guests. In a second or two he broke forth again:
"The motor's jibbing! Good Lord, they'll have it into the gate—now into the apple-tree!" He gave a single note of mirth. "Lady Aspasia is holding down Sir Arthur by main force. Of course he wants to teach the chauffeur how to do it. But she knows better. By George," ejaculated Bethune, in a prophetic burst, "she's the very woman for him! Ah, here comes Miss Aspasia, hatless, to offer her opinion. I'd give something to hear her; she does not want them back upon us—I warrant." There was a pause. "They're off! Thank God, they're off!" Still the man lingered by the window.
Aspasia was waving her handkerchief ironically after the departing company, as the car proceeded down the avenue, fitfully, at a speed which (as she subsequently remarked) "would have made any self-respecting cart-horse smile."
When she turned to re-enter the house, Bethune had the vision of her rosy face, all brightening with smiles. The interchange of mute greetings, the swift impression of her fair light youth as she flashed by, left him lost in a muse.
Harry English stirred in his chair and, on the moment, his friend was at his side.
"They're gone," repeated he, rubbing his hands.
The other made no direct reply; but, stooping forward, picked up one of the fragments of paper that had escaped Bethune's hand in the morning's work of destruction.
He looked at it for a few seconds, abstractedly, and then laughed.
"So you were writing a life of me, old man?" said he.
Bethune stood, looking as if he had been convicted of the most abject folly. And English lightly flicked the scrap into the blaze:
"The life that counts is the life that no other soul can know," said he.
But he had no sooner said the words than he corrected himself, and his voice took that altered note which marked any reference to his wife.
"At least," he said, "no other soul but one."
Those friends, who were so much to each other, in speech communicated less than the most ordinary acquaintances. Bethune stood, in his wooden way, looking down at the armchair. Just now he had something to say, and it was difficult to him. At last, pointing to the hearth, as if he still beheld the fruit of his labour of friendship being consumed in it, he spoke, awkwardly:
"It did its work, though."
English flashed an upward look, half humorous, half searching.
"What did its work?"
"The—my—oh, the damned Life!"
The other man pondered over the words a little while. Then, with a smile that had something almost tender in it, he looked up at his friend again:
"I am afraid you will have to explain a little more, Ray."
Bethune shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The colour mounted to his face. He stared down at English, wistfully.
"It's a bit hard to explain," he said, "yet I'd like you to know—that diary, those letters of yours, I had to have them, extracts of them, for the work, you see.... Well——"
Here came a pause of such length that English was fain to repeat:
"Well?"
Then Bethune blurted it out:
"She had never read them——"
"Ah!"
"She never wanted to read them. Oh!"—quickly, "it's not that she didn't care."
"You need not explain that."
English's head was bent. His voice was very quiet, but Bethune's whole being thrilled to the tumult he inarticularly felt in the other's soul. He half put out his hand to touch him, then drew it back.
"Go on with your story—with your own part of the story," said Harry.
"She did not want to read them," said Bethune. "I made her."
The husband offered no comment; and, drawing a long breath like a child, his friend went on:
"And when she read at last—oh! even I could see it—it was as if her heart broke."
Still the bent head, the hands clasped over the knees, the silence. Bethune could bear it no longer, and took courage to lay that touch of timid eager sympathy upon English's shoulder.
"Harry, I'm such a fool, I can't explain things."
"Oh, I understand," answered English then, in a deep vibrating voice. He rose suddenly and squared himself, drawing in the air in a long sigh. "Do you think I could misunderstand—her?"
Their looks met. There was a wonderful mixture of sweetness and sorrow on the face of him whom life and death had equally betrayed.
Suddenly they clasped hands, for the first time since their parting in the Baroghil passes. Then they stood awhile without speaking. Harry English once more fixing visions in the fire, and Bethune looking at his comrade.
For most of his years he had known no deeper affection than his friendship for this man. He had mourned him with a grief which, now to think on, seemed like a single furrow across the plain field of his life; and there he stood!
"Captain, my Captain..." said Raymond. His rough voice trembled, and he laughed loud to conceal it.
The other flashed round upon him with his rarely beautiful smile.
"Ah," said he, "it's like old times at last to hear you at your rags and tags of quotation again!"
There fell again between them the pause that to both was so eloquent.
Then, from the far distance, into their silence penetrated a faint uncouth sound: from the moorland road, the motor, carrying for ever out of their lives him who had had so much power upon them, and was now so futile a figure, seemed to raise a last impotent hoot.
Sir Arthur Gerardine was gone. Raymond rubbed his hands and smiled as since boyhood he had scarcely smiled.
"It is good," cried Harry, then, boyishly in his turn, "to see your nut-cracker grin once more, Ray. As Muhammed, I've looked for it many a time in vain—I thought I had lost my old sub."
* * * * *
"But there's one thing we must remember," said Bethune, suddenly earnest again, in the midst of the welcome relaxation. "We must remember the old fellow's threat. You will have a bit of a job to keep out of trouble with the powers that be, won't you, after Sir Arthur's meddling?"
The anxiety on his countenance was not reflected upon English's face.
"I shall have my own story to tell," he said, "and I think that I have knowledge of sufficient value to make me apersona gratain high quarters just now. They will be rather more anxious, I take it, to retain my services rather than dispense with them—in spite of Sir Arthur."
He broke off, his brow clouded again. He sighed heavily.
"But what does that matter?" he cried; "just now there is only one thing that matters in the whole world."
BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
It was the most interesting case I have ever had (wrote M. Châtelard, in the third volume of his "Psychologie Féminine"), and the most abnormal. The illness, caused by shock, concussion—call it what you will—was benign, yet it was long. There was a little fever, a little delirium: un petit délire très doux, tout poétique, que, plongé dans mon vieux fauteuil de chêne, au milieu du silence de cet antique manoir, j'écoutais presqu'avec plaisir. Un gazouillement d'oiseau; une âme de femme, errant comme Psyché elle-même, sur les fleurs dans les jardins embaumés; délicates puerilitiés parfumées de la vie. Jamais une note de passion. Jamais un cri de ce coeur si profondement blessé....And when later, by almost imperceptible steps, we drew the gentle creature back to health, the singular phenomenon persisted.We physicians are, of course, accustomed in similar circumstances, to find a strong distaste in the patient suffering from shock to any effort of memory. Memory, indeed, by one of those marvellous dispensations of nature, is reluctant to bring back the events which have caused the mischief. But, with the beautiful Lady G—— (it is always thus I must recall her) there was something more than the mere recoil of weakness....On eût pu croire que cette âm ebrisée de passion, abreuvée de douleur, s'était dit qu'elle n'en voulait plus; qu'elle n'en pouvait plus. Co n'était pas, ici, les souvenirs, qui faisaient défaut. Je l'ai trop observée pour m'y méprendre. En avait-elle des souvenirs et d'assez poignants, mon Dieu! ... But with a strength of will which surprised me in her state, she put these memories from her and deliberately lived in the present. Elle goutait son présent, elle savourait la paix voluptueuse de sa convalescence....Je n'ai qu'à fermer les yeux, pour la revoir, sur son lit—longue, blanche et belle. Je revois ce jeune teint—divinement jeune sous cette grande chevelure d'argent; cet air de lys au soleil, à la fois languissant et mystérieusement heureux. Ces yeux noyés dans une pensée profonde. Ces lévres entr'ouvertes par un léger sourire. A qui rêvaitelle—à quoi? Cette belle bouche muette n'en soufflait jamais mot....Of the three who had loved her, for whom was that smile? Certes, not for the poor Sir! And of the other two? (I must here frankly set down the humiliating admission, to me, that woman was, and remains Sphynx—yes, Sphynx, even to me, her physician, who beheld her, watched, tended her, through all those moments of suffering, weakness,défaillancewhere the soul reveals itself.) Which of the two, then, reigned in her secret dream? The sardonic Major, who had tracked her till she could escape him no longer, whose love was merciless. There are women, and many, who would never know passion but for defeat. The husband? The reincarnated ghost? Well reincarnated, that one!—The most virile type that I ever met. Nature of fire, born lover, under all his reticence of English gentleman and soldier. I have seen that face of his, half bronze, half marble, grow crimson and white within the minute, as I spoke to him of the woman, the while there would not be a tremble in the hand that held this pipe. I will confess he had all my sympathy; he was worthy of her. But she—why, to this day I ask myself: does the man who possesses her know the secret of her heart?The day after the damaged motor had carried away the poor Governor—machine détraquée, clopin-clopant, symbole de cette vie qui jusqu'ici semblait rouler en triomphe et qui, desormais, se trainera si gauchement—the day following Sir G——'s departure, I say, the Major B—— also left. It was the very least he could have done. And after the astounding fact of his betrothal to the pretty little Miss C——, I myself felt his presence antipathetic.... Ah, but a strategist, that officer of Guides, strategist of the first order! A masterly move, that betrothal, to disarm any possible suspicion of his friend and keep the while a footing in his beloved's house! But the little one, she deserved better ...delicieuse enfant! With what innocent eyes she looked at me when I told her that, above all things, she must not whisper to my patient a word of her engagement. "Understand well, Miss," said I to her; and was ashamed of myself thus to join with him who was deceiving her. "It is because the least agitation, even a happy one, must be avoided." "Ah, that is why," said she, "you will not let her poor husband go to her?" "That is why," I replied, dissembling, "above all things, above all things, she must not be hurried."
It was the most interesting case I have ever had (wrote M. Châtelard, in the third volume of his "Psychologie Féminine"), and the most abnormal. The illness, caused by shock, concussion—call it what you will—was benign, yet it was long. There was a little fever, a little delirium: un petit délire très doux, tout poétique, que, plongé dans mon vieux fauteuil de chêne, au milieu du silence de cet antique manoir, j'écoutais presqu'avec plaisir. Un gazouillement d'oiseau; une âme de femme, errant comme Psyché elle-même, sur les fleurs dans les jardins embaumés; délicates puerilitiés parfumées de la vie. Jamais une note de passion. Jamais un cri de ce coeur si profondement blessé....
And when later, by almost imperceptible steps, we drew the gentle creature back to health, the singular phenomenon persisted.
We physicians are, of course, accustomed in similar circumstances, to find a strong distaste in the patient suffering from shock to any effort of memory. Memory, indeed, by one of those marvellous dispensations of nature, is reluctant to bring back the events which have caused the mischief. But, with the beautiful Lady G—— (it is always thus I must recall her) there was something more than the mere recoil of weakness....
On eût pu croire que cette âm ebrisée de passion, abreuvée de douleur, s'était dit qu'elle n'en voulait plus; qu'elle n'en pouvait plus. Co n'était pas, ici, les souvenirs, qui faisaient défaut. Je l'ai trop observée pour m'y méprendre. En avait-elle des souvenirs et d'assez poignants, mon Dieu! ... But with a strength of will which surprised me in her state, she put these memories from her and deliberately lived in the present. Elle goutait son présent, elle savourait la paix voluptueuse de sa convalescence....
Je n'ai qu'à fermer les yeux, pour la revoir, sur son lit—longue, blanche et belle. Je revois ce jeune teint—divinement jeune sous cette grande chevelure d'argent; cet air de lys au soleil, à la fois languissant et mystérieusement heureux. Ces yeux noyés dans une pensée profonde. Ces lévres entr'ouvertes par un léger sourire. A qui rêvaitelle—à quoi? Cette belle bouche muette n'en soufflait jamais mot....
Of the three who had loved her, for whom was that smile? Certes, not for the poor Sir! And of the other two? (I must here frankly set down the humiliating admission, to me, that woman was, and remains Sphynx—yes, Sphynx, even to me, her physician, who beheld her, watched, tended her, through all those moments of suffering, weakness,défaillancewhere the soul reveals itself.) Which of the two, then, reigned in her secret dream? The sardonic Major, who had tracked her till she could escape him no longer, whose love was merciless. There are women, and many, who would never know passion but for defeat. The husband? The reincarnated ghost? Well reincarnated, that one!—The most virile type that I ever met. Nature of fire, born lover, under all his reticence of English gentleman and soldier. I have seen that face of his, half bronze, half marble, grow crimson and white within the minute, as I spoke to him of the woman, the while there would not be a tremble in the hand that held this pipe. I will confess he had all my sympathy; he was worthy of her. But she—why, to this day I ask myself: does the man who possesses her know the secret of her heart?
The day after the damaged motor had carried away the poor Governor—machine détraquée, clopin-clopant, symbole de cette vie qui jusqu'ici semblait rouler en triomphe et qui, desormais, se trainera si gauchement—the day following Sir G——'s departure, I say, the Major B—— also left. It was the very least he could have done. And after the astounding fact of his betrothal to the pretty little Miss C——, I myself felt his presence antipathetic.... Ah, but a strategist, that officer of Guides, strategist of the first order! A masterly move, that betrothal, to disarm any possible suspicion of his friend and keep the while a footing in his beloved's house! But the little one, she deserved better ...delicieuse enfant! With what innocent eyes she looked at me when I told her that, above all things, she must not whisper to my patient a word of her engagement. "Understand well, Miss," said I to her; and was ashamed of myself thus to join with him who was deceiving her. "It is because the least agitation, even a happy one, must be avoided." "Ah, that is why," said she, "you will not let her poor husband go to her?" "That is why," I replied, dissembling, "above all things, above all things, she must not be hurried."
* * * * *
She must not be hurried!
"If she wants me?" had said Harry English to Dr. Châtelard, in that dawn hour of dire omen.
"My dear sir," had answered the other, "immediately, of course!"
Rosamond lay, restored to those that loved her, a pale rose among her white tresses, and Harry English still waited her summons.
Still waiting!
* * * * *
"Above all," repeated the genial physician, who had stood by them so stoutly in their hour of trouble, as he took his reluctant departure from a house where his presence was, obviously, no longer needed, and where yet—unfortunate psychologist—he had failed to probe the story to the core, "above all, she must not be hurried!"
These were his farewell instructions.
It seemed to him that the patient husband had a strange smile on hearing this admonition.
"How much does he know?" asked Châtelard of himself, clinging with characteristic pertinacity to his peculiar interpretation of events. "How much does he suspect?"
Never before, perhaps, had the active-minded and gregarious Frenchman found himself thus regretting the prospect of a return to the congenial movement of his native city. But it was with a definite sense of reluctance that, on this March morning, he drove away through the budding orchard trees, leaving the Old Ancient House and all the desolate moorland behind him. This lonely antique habitation still held close the enigma of lives in which he had become deeply interested—interested, not only with that vivid intelligence which was ever eager to know, but with the warmth of a very excellent heart.
He would dearly have loved to know, true; but, above all, he would dearly have loved to help.
"Eh, Dieu sait," he sighed, as the fly jingled and bumbled over the grass-grown avenue, "Dieu sait ce qui va se passer là-bas, maintenant que je n'y suis plus!"
He gave a lingering look at the twisted chimney-stacks against the pale sky, before setting his face for Paris, Ville Lumière, once more.
* * * * *
"She must not be hurried!—Until she asks for me; then," had resolved Harry English, "I will wait."
And at first, indeed, it seemed as if the waiting could not be hard. For with the young year had come new hopes to the Old Ancient House. And with Rosamond turning to life in her room upstairs under the gables, he who loved her could well afford to sit with patience below.
Yet time went by, and the summons came not.
Upon that first blessed morning, indeed, when after all these long days she had awakened at last, and looked upon the world with seeing eyes once more, Rosamond had whispered to Aspasia:
"Harry—is he here?"
The girl's heart had leaped with joy.
"Yes," came her eager answer. "Will you see him?"
Like a little Mercury, one foot poised, hand outstretched to grasp the happy moment, Aspasia stood ready to take flight upon her errand of comfort. But the pale woman in the bed shrank. The old shy withdrawal from the thought of emotion—as once from sorrow, now from joy—seemed to be upon her.
"Not yet," she faintly sighed.
And, day by day, the singular little scene was re-enacted. In defiance of doctor's orders, Baby—with the sense of that other's hungry disappointment heavy upon her heart—would put her query ever more pleadingly:
"Will you not see him? Can you not see him? May it not be for to-day?"
But ever would come the same reply, while the lids sank over the timid eyes, and colour mounted slowly in the transparent face:
"Not yet."
Then the woman would fall back into her secret dream, lying hours in that quietude at which her physician marvelled, while he welcomed its healing power. It was a pause in life. So the young mother may lie and hold her infant in her languid arms and be happy because of its very weakness and incompleteness; and deem it more safely her own that it has yet no speech for her, no will to meet hers, even no power of love with which to answer hers.
It is harder to be patient in happiness than in sorrow. These days of waiting began to tell upon Harry English more than all the years had done.
Yet it was idle to say: "She must not be hurried," since time marches with us all, whether we will or no; and with time, the events which change our destiny. The most guarded being cannot escape the influence of those lives with which Fate has thrown his fortune, and Rosamond was destined at last to be shaken out of her dreams by the combined energies of other fortunes.
M. Châtelard had been gone some time. The green buds were swelling over the March land. The convalescent had been promoted to her armchair for an hour or two daily, when a telegram summoned Harry English to London.
Bethune had undertaken all the preliminary official steps for his friend. Now the moment could not be delayed when the missing officer must give his personal explanations. The excuse of his wife's danger could no longer be maintained for his absence: he had to leave the Old House without having seen her again.
For two mornings after his departure Baby entered her aunt's room to find her lying among a bower of flowers. The husband was pleading for himself, wooing his love, for the third time. At first he sent no word with his gift, but let these most gracious messengers speak in fragrance. Aspasia was wise enough to hold her tongue upon the subject. Even to her downright perceptions the silence which enwrapped the invalid seemed stirred, palpitating with the awakening of emotions, just as, all over the land, after her winter sleep, the earth was stirred, palpitating, to the promise of spring.
The third morning the girl was unwontedly late in making her appearance. But Rosamond did not seem to miss her. She rested, smiling among her pillows, her diaphanous hand enfolding the letter that Mary had (with a subdued look of triumph) brought her on top of an open box overflowing with lily-of-the-valley.
Rosamond's first love-letter had come to her blent with the same perfume. The acrid sweetness rose like a greeting, an intangible intermingling of past and present. It spoke more eloquently than even his words. She drew the flowers slowly from their case. Below all, nestling beneath the waxen bells, she found one deep-hearted dark crimson rose.
She held it to her lips, the while she read his letter.
* * * * *
And so Baby's presence was not missed. At mid-day she rushed into the room and flung herself upon the bed with so much of her old impetuosity that Rosamond sat up, startled at first, then smiling, shaken from her languor.
"What is it, Baby? What a little face of blushes!"
In the midst of her own turmoil of emotion, Baby's faithful heart leaped with joy. Rosamond had not spoken with that natural air these months.
"What is it?" repeated the woman, smiling.
Aspasia edged along the bed till her hot cheeks were hidden on Rosamond's neck. Then she thrust out her left hand blindly for inspection.
"Look!"
"What——?"
Yes, in very truth, Rosamond was laughing.
"What is it, Baby? ... Ah——"
Baby moved her long musician fingers slowly one after the other and finally stuck out the third.
"Ah," cried Rosamond again, sharply.
"She has seen," thought Aspasia, and was fain to raise her head to behold the effect of the great surprise.
"Is it possible," said the other, slowly, "or are you playing me some trick?"
"A trick," echoed Aspasia, indignantly. "No such thing!" She surveyed the important hand, with head on one side and an air of great complacency. Yet never had it appeared a more childish object. Upon the pink out-thrust finger the wedding-ring seemed absurdly misplaced.
"Baby, Baby, how is it you have never told me? Major Bethune, of course?"
"Yes," said the bride, suddenly shy. "They would not let me tell you. Idiots!"
The next instant the two women were clasped in each other's arms—both crying a little, as they kissed.
"There now," cried the new wife, at last, awakening to the conviction that she was hardly carrying out the doctor's instructions; and, indeed, it was evident that, left to her own devices, Aspasia had peculiar views upon the art of breaking news. "There now, this won't do. You lie still, and I'll tell you everything."
Placidly enough to reassure a more anxious nurse, Rosamond obeyed, her hand creeping down to her letter once more. This was but a surface agitation, after all—there was only one in the world who had power to stir the deeps.
Aspasia knelt down by the bed, and began to pour forth her story.... They had been engaged, oh, ever so long; but she never would have dreamed of anything so preposterous as marriage, especially now—not for ages, at least, but Raymond had ramped so....
It was only from the youthful Mrs. Bethune's picturesque tongue that such a description of Bethune's reticent wooing could have fallen.
And then something had happened, out there, and his blessed leave was curtailed, and, he had said, he positively would not go without her. "And so," said Baby, laughing and crying together, as pretty and absurd a spring bride as it was possible to see; "so he came down from London yesterday—with a special licence in his pocket—he went to the Inn, but he came to see me last night. I don't know how it happened, but we were married this morning, at the little church—you know, your little church, Aunt Rosamond.... Did you ever hear of such a thing? Without a trousseau, without a present, without a lawyer, without a cake! And I am going to Vienna for my honeymoon."
She laughed a little wildly, and dabbed her wet cheeks with a corner of the sheet. Then she stopped suddenly, abashed. Rosamond's eyes were lost in space; she was not even listening.
"I knew you did not want me," said Aspasia—a very different quality of tears welling up.
Rosamond started:
"I, not want you! Why, Baby, what makes you say that?"
"Oh," cried the girl, with a swift change of mood, "how can you want me, have you not got him? Dear Aunt Rosamond, darling Aunt Rosamond, don't keep him waiting any more!"
She was going to cast herself upon the bed in another fervent embrace, when something in Rosamond's look arrested her. Here were the deeps astir! It was as if a flame enkindled in a fragile lamp, as if she could see it tremble and burn.
She drew back before a mystery to which she vaguely felt she would never have the key.
"You know, he will return to-day," stammered she at last. "It's all right about his business. He is coming back."
"I know," answered Harry English's wife, in a low vibrating voice. Then she hesitated, and turned to look at the girl, a wistful inquiry in her shadowed eyes.
"Have they told him?" she asked, under her breath, raising one of the heavy white locks that lay across her breast.
"Oh," exclaimed Aspasia, springing to her meaning, "but you are beautiful with it, you are more beautiful than ever! No—I don't know if they've told him. Oh, darling," she cried, melting all into tenderness, pity, and amusement, as over a child, "it wasn't for that, it could not be for that, you wouldn't see him?"
"For that!" said Rosamond. A flame seemed to pass over her again. She quivered from head to foot, and a deep flush rose to the very roots of her blanched hair. "Oh, Baby, no. How could you guess, how could you understand—poor little bride of an hour?"
And, as once before, upon that crucial morning in the distant Indian palace, she had taken all her golden hair to cover her face and hide its misery from violating eyes, Rosamond now swept the silver veil across the betrayal of her blood, that even Baby might not look upon the tumult of her heart.
The scent of the dark rose, stronger even than the lilies, filled the room.