So, in drawing a bow at a venture, I had hit the mark. You may remember that I had rapped out the word "blackmail" at Gedge; now Randall justified the charge. Boyce was worth a thousand a year to him. The more I speculated on the danger that might arise from Gedge, the easier I grew in my mind. Your blackmailer is a notorious saver of his skin. Gedge had no desire to bring Boyce to justice and thereby incriminate himself. His visit to Sir Anthony was actuated by sheer malignity. Without doubt, he counted on his story being believed. But he knew enough of the hated and envied aristocracy to feel assured that Sir Anthony would not subject his beloved dead to such ghastly disinterment as a public denunciation of Boyce would necessitate. He desired to throw an asphyxiating bomb into the midst of our private circle. He reckoned on the Mayor taking some action that would stop the reception and thereby put a public affront on Boyce. Sir Anthony's violent indignation and perhaps my appearance of cold incredulity upset his calculations. He went out of the room a defeated man, with the secret load (as I knew now) of blackmail on his shoulders.
I snapped my fingers at Gedge. Randall seemed to do the same, undesirable father-in-law IN PROSPECTU as he was. But that was entirely Randall's affair. The stomach that he had for fighting with Germans would stand him in good stead against Gedge, especially as he had formed so contemptuous an estimate of the latter's valour.
I emerged again into my little world. I saw most of my friends. Phyllis lay in wait for me at the hospital, radiant and blushing, ostensibly to congratulate me on recovery from my illness, really (little baggage!) to hear from my lips a word or two in praise of Randall. Apparently he had come, in his warrior garb, seen, and conquered on the spot. I saw Mrs. Holmes, who, gladdened by the Distinguished Conduct Medallist's return, had wiped from her memory his abominably unfilial behaviour. I saw Betty and I saw Boyce.
Now here I come to a point in this chronicle where I am faced by an appalling difficulty. Hitherto I have striven to tell you no more about myself and my motives and feelings than was demanded by my purpose of unfolding to you the lives of others. Primarily I wanted to explain Leonard Boyce. I could only do it by showing you how he reacted on myself—myself being an unimportant and uninteresting person. It was all very well when I could stand aside and dispassionately analyse such reactions. The same with regard to my dear Betty. But now if I adopted the same method of telling you the story of Betty and the story of Boyce—the method of reaction, so to speak—I should be merely whining into your ears the dolorous tale of Duncan Meredyth, paralytic and idiot.
The deuce of it is that, for a long time, nothing particular or definite happened. So how can I describe to you a very important period in the lives of Betty and Boyce and me?
I had to resume my intimacy with Boyce. The blind and lonely man craved it and claimed it. It would be an unmeaning pretence of modesty to under-estimate the value to him of my friendship. He was a man of intense feelings. Torture had closed his heart to the troops of friends that so distinguished a soldier might have had. He granted admittance but to three, his mother, Betty and—for some unaccountable reason—myself. On us he concentrated all the strength of his affection. Mind you, it was not a case of a maimed creature clinging for support to those who cared for him. In his intercourse with me, he never for a moment suggested that he was seeking help or solace in his affliction. On the contrary, he ruled it out of the conditions of social life. He was as brave as you please. In his laughing scorn of blindness he was the bravest man I have ever known. He learned the confidence of the blind with marvellous facility. His path through darkness was a triumphant march.
Sometimes, when he re-fought old battles and planned new ones, forecast the strategy of the Great Advance, word-painted scenes and places, drew character sketches of great leaders and quaint men, I forgot the tragedy of Althea Fenimore. And when the memory came swiftly back, I wondered whether, after all, Gedge's story from first to last had not been a malevolent invention. The man seemed so happy. Of course you will say it was my duty to give a hint of Gedge's revelation. It was. To my shame, I shirked it. I could not find it in my heart suddenly to dash into his happiness. I awaited an opportunity, a change of mood in him, an allusion to confidences of which I alone of human beings had been the recipient.
Betty visited me as usual. We talked war and hospital and local gossip for a while and then she seemed to take refuge at the piano. We had one red-letter day, when a sailor cousin of hers, fresh from the North Sea, came to luncheon and told us wonders of the Navy which we had barely imagined and did not dare to hope for. His tidings gave subject for many a talk.
I knew that she was seeing Boyce constantly. The former acquaintance of the elders of the two houses flamed into sudden friendship. From a remark artlessly let fall by Mrs. Boyce, I gathered that the old ladies were deliberately contriving such meetings. Boyce and Betty referred to each other rarely and casually, but enough to show me that the old feud was at an end. And of what save one thing could the end of a feud between lovers be the beginning? What did she know? Knowing all, how could she be drawn back under the man's fascination? The question maddened me. I suffered terribly.
At last, one evening, I could bear it no longer. She was playing Chopin. The music grated on me. I called out to her:
"Betty!"
She broke off and turned round, with a smile of surprise. Again she was wearing the old black evening dress, in which I have told you she looked so beautiful.
"No more music, dear. Come and talk to me."
She crossed the room with her free step and sat near my chair.
"What shall I talk about?" she laughed.
"Leonard Boyce."
The laughter left her face and she gave me a swift glance.
"Majy dear, I'd rather not," she said with a little air of finality.
"I know that," said I. "I also know that in your eyes I am committing an unwarrantable impertinence."
"Not at all," she replied politely. "You have the right to talk to me for my good. It's impertinence in me not to wish to hear it."
"Betty dear," said I, "will you tell me what was the cause of your estrangement?"
She stiffened. "No one has the right to ask me that."
"A man who loves you very, very dearly," said I, "will claim it. Was the cause Althea Fenimore?"
She looked at me almost in frightened amazement.
"Is that mere guesswork?"
"No, dear," said I quietly.
"I thought no one knew—except one person. I was not even sure that Leonard Boyce was aware that I knew."
Another bow at a venture. "That one person is Gedge."
"You're right. I suppose he has been talking," she said, greatly agitated. "He has been putting it about all over the place. I've been dreading it." Then she sprang to her feet and drew herself up and snapped her fingers in an heroical way. "And if he has said that Althea Fenimore drowned herself for love of Leonard Boyce, what is there in it? After all, what has Leonard Boyce done that he can't be forgiven? Men are men and women are women. We've tried for tens of thousands of years to lay down hard and fast lines for the sexes to walk upon, and we've failed miserably. Suppose Leonard Boyce did make love to Althea Fenimore—trifle with her affections, in the old-fashioned phrase. What then? I'm greatly to blame. It has only lately been brought home to me. Instead of staying here while we were engaged, I would have my last fling as an emancipated young woman in London. He consoled himself with Althea. When she found he meant nothing, she threw herself into the canal. It was dreadful. It was tragic. He went away and broke with me. I didn't discover the reason till months afterwards. She drowned herself for love of him, it's true. But what was his share in it that he can't be forgiven for? Millions of men have been forgiven by women for passing loves. Why not he? Why not a tremendous man like him? A man who has paid every penalty for wrong, if wrong there was? Blind!"
She walked about and threw up her hands and halted in front of my chair. "I'll own that until lately I accused him of unforgivable sin—deceiving me and making love to another girl and driving her to suicide. I tore him out of my heart and married Willie. We won't speak of that .... But since he has come back, things seem different. His mother has told me that one day when he was asleep she found he was still wearing his identification disc ... there was an old faded photograph of me on the other side ... it had been there all through the war .... You see," she added, after a pause during which her heaving bosom and quivering lip made her maddeningly lovely, "I don't care a brass button for anything that Gedge may say."
And that was all my clean-souled Betty knew about it! She had no idea of deeper faithlessness; no suspicion of Boyce's presence with Althea on the bank of the canal. She stood pathetic in her half knowledge. My heart ached.
From her pure woman's point of view she had been justified in her denunciation of Boyce. He had left her without a word. A wall of silence came between them. Then she learned the reason. He had trifled with a young girl's affections and out of despair she had drowned herself .... But how had she learned? I had to question her. And it was then that she told me the story of Phyllis and her father to which I have made previous allusion: how Phyllis, as her father's secretary, had opened a letter which had frightened her; how her father's crafty face had frightened her still more; how she had run to Betty for the easing of her heart. And this letter was from Leonard Boyce. "I cannot afford one penny more," so the letter ran, according to Betty's recollection of Phyllis's recollection, "but if you remain loyal to our agreement, you will not regret it. If ever I hear of your coupling my name with that of Miss Fenimore, I'll kill you. I am a man of my word." I think Betty crystallised Phyllis's looser statement. But the exact wording was immaterial. Here was Boyce branding himself with complicity in the tragedy of Althea, and paying Gedge to keep it dark. Like Sir Anthony, Betty remembered trivial things that assumed grave significance. There was no room for doubt. Catastrophe following on his villainy had kept Boyce away from Wellingsford, had terrified him out of his engagement. And so her heart had grown bitter against him. You may ask why her knowledge of the world had not led her to suspect blacker wrong; for a man does not pay blackmail because he has led a romantic girl into a wrong notion of the extent of his affection. My only answer is that Betty was Betty, clean-hearted and clean-souled like the young Artemis she resembled.
And now she proclaimed that he had expiated his offence. She proclaimed her renewed and passionate interest in the man. I saw that deep down in her heart she had always loved him.
After telling me about Phyllis, she returned to the point where she had broken off. She supposed that Gedge had been talking all over the place.
"I don't think so, dear," said I. "So far as I know he has only spoken, first to Randall Holmes—that was what made him break away from Gedge, whose society he had been cultivating for other reasons than those I imagined (you remember telling me Phyllis's sorrowful little tale last year?)." She nodded. "And secondly to Sir Anthony and myself, a few hours before the Reception."
She clenched her fists and broke out again. "The devil! The incarnate devil! And Sir Anthony?"
"Pretended to treat Gedge's story as a lie, threw into the fire without reading it an incriminating letter—possibly the letter that Phyllis saw, ordered Gedge out of the house and, like a great gentleman, went through the ceremony."
"Does Leonard know?"
"Not that I'm aware of," said I.
"He must be told. It's terrible to have an enemy waiting to stab you in the dark—and you blind to boot. Why haven't you told him?"
Why? Why? Why?
It was so hard to keep to the lower key of her conception of things. I made a little gesture signifying I know not what: that it was not my business, that I was not on sufficient terms of intimacy with Boyce, that it didn't seem important enough .... My helpless shrug suggested, I suppose, all of these excuses. Why hadn't I warned him? Cowardice, I suppose.
"Either you or I must do it," she went on. "You're his friend. He thinks more of you than of any other man in the world. And he's right, dear—" she flashed me a proud glance, sweet and stabbing—"Don't I know it?"
Then suddenly a new idea seemed to pass through her brain. She bent forward and touched the light shawl covering my knees.
"For the last month or two you've known what he has done. It hasn't made any difference in your friendship. You must think with me that the past is past, that he has purged his sins, or whatever you like to call them; that he is a man greatly to be forgiven."
"Yes, dear," said I, with a show of bravery, though I dreaded lest my voice should break, "I think he is a man to be forgiven."
Her logic was remorseless.
With her frank grace she threw herself, in her old attitude, by the side of my chair.
"I'm so glad we have had this talk, Majy darling. It has made everything between us so clear and beautiful. It is always such a grief to me to think you may not understand. I shall always be the little girl that looked upon you as a wonderful hero and divine dispenser of chocolates. Only now the chocolates stand for love and forbearance and sympathy, and all kinds of spiritual goodies."
I passed my hand over her hair. "Silly child!"
"I got it into my head," she continued, "that you were blaming me for—for my reconciliation with Leonard. But, my dear, my dear, what woman's heart wouldn't be turned to water at the sight of him? It makes me so happy that you understand. I can't tell you how happy."
"Are you going to marry him?" I think my voice was steady and kind enough.
"Possibly. Some day. If he asks me."
I still stroked her hair. "I wouldn't let it be too soon," said I.
Her eyes were downcast. "On account of Willie?" she murmured.
"No, dear. I don't dare touch on that side of things."
Again a whisper. "Why, then?"
How could I tell her why without betrayal of Boyce? I had to turn the question playfully. I said, "What should I do without my Betty?"
"Do you really care about me so much?"
I laughed. There are times when one has to laugh—or overwhelm oneself in dishonour.
"Now you see my nature in all its vile egotism," said I, and the statement led to a pretty quarrel.
But after it was over to our joint satisfaction, she had to return to the distressful main theme of our talk. She harked back to Sir Anthony, touched on his splendid behaviour, recalled, with a little dismay, the hitherto unnoted fact that, after the ceremony he had held himself aloof from those that thronged round Boyce. Then, without hint from me, she perceived the significance of the Fenimores' retirement from Wellingsford.
"Leonard's ignorance," she said, "leaves him in a frightful position. More than ever he ought to know."
"He ought, indeed, my dear," said I. "And I will tell him. I ought to have done so before."
I gave my undertaking. I went to bed upbraiding myself for cowardice and resolved to go to Boyce the next day. Not only Fate, but honour and decency forced me to the detested task.
Alas! Next morning I was nailed to my bed by my abominable malady. The attacks had become more frequent of late. Cliffe administered restoratives and for the first time he lost his smile and looked worried. You see until quite lately I had had a very tranquil life, deeply interested in other folks' joys and sorrows, but moved by very few of my own. And now there had swooped down on me this ravening pack of emotions which were tearing me to pieces. I lay for a couple of days tortured by physical pain, humiliation and mental anguish.
On the evening of the second day, Marigold came into the bedroom with a puzzled look on his face.
"Colonel Boyce is here, sir. I told him you were in bed and seeing nobody, but he says he wants to see you on something important. I asked him whether it couldn't wait till to-morrow, and he said that if I would give you a password, Vilboek's Farm, you'd be sure to see him."
"Quite right, Marigold," said I. "Show him in."
Vilboek's Farm! Fate had driven him to me, instead of me to him. I would see him though it killed me, and get the horrible business over for ever.
Marigold led him in and drew up a chair for him by the bedside. After pulling on the lights and drawing the curtains, for the warm May evening was drawing to a close.
"Anything more, sir, for the present?" he asked.
"Could I have materials for a whisky and soda to hand?" said Boyce.
"Of course," said I.
Marigold departed. Boyce said:
"If you're too ill to stand me, send me away. But if you can stand me, for God's sake let me talk to you."
"Talk as much as you like," said I. "This is only one of my stupid attacks which a man without legs has to put up with."
"But Marigold—"
"Marigold's an old hen," said I.
"Are you sure you're well enough? That's the curse of not being able to see. Tell me frankly."
"I'm quite sure," said I.
I have never been able to get over the curious embarrassment of talking to a man whose eyes I cannot see. The black spectacles seemed to be like a wall behind which the man hid his thoughts. I watched his lips. Once or twice the odd little twitch had appeared at the corners.
Even with his baffling black spectacles he looked a gallant figure of a man. He was precisely dressed in perfectly fitting dinner jacket and neat black tie; well-groomed from the points of his patent leather shoes to his trim crisp brown hair. And beneath this scrupulousness of attire lay the suggestion of great strength.
Marigold brought in the tray with decanter, siphon and glasses, and put them on a table, together with cigars and cigarettes, by his side. After a few deft touches, so as to identify the objects, Boyce smiled and nodded at Marigold.
"Thanks very much, Sergeant," he said.
If there is one thing Marigold loves, it is to be addressed as "Sergeant." "Marigold" might indicate a butler, but "Sergeant" means a sergeant.
"Perhaps I might fetch the Colonel a more comfortable chair, sir," said he.
But Boyce laughed, "No, no!" and Marigold left us.
Boyce's ear listened for the click of the door. Then he turned to me.
"I was rather mean in sending you in that password. But I felt as if I should go mad if I didn't see you. You're the only man living who really knows about me. You're the only human being who can give me a helping hand. It's strange, old man—the halt leading the blind. But so it is. And Vilboek's Farm is the damned essence of the matter. I've come to you to ask you, for the love of God, to tell me what I am to do."
I guessed what had happened. "Betty Connor has told you something that I was to tell you."
"Yes," said he. "This afternoon. And in her splendid way she offered to marry me."
"What did you say?"
"I said that I would give her my answer to-morrow."
"And what will that answer be?"
"It is for you to tell me," said Boyce.
"In order to undertake such a terrible responsibility," said I, "I must know the whole truth concerning Althea Fenimore."
"I've come here to tell it to you," said he.
It was to a priest rather than to a man that he made full confession of his grievous sin. He did not attempt to mitigate it or to throw upon another a share of the blame. From that attitude he did not vary a hair's breadth. Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa. That was the burthen of his avowal.
I, knowing the strange mingling in his nature of brutality and sensitiveness, of animal and spiritual, and knowing something of the unstable character of Althea Fenimore, may more justly, I think, than he, sketch out the miserable prologue of the drama. That she was madly, recklessly in love with him there can be no doubt. Nor can there be doubt that unconsciously she fired the passion in him. The deliberate, cold-blooded seducer of his friend's daughter, such as Boyce, in his confession, made himself out to be, is a rare phenomenon. Almost invariably it is the woman who tempts—tempts innocently and unknowingly, without intent to allure, still less with thought of wrong—but tempts all the same by the attraction which she cannot conceal, by the soft promise which she cannot keep out of her eyes.
That was the beginning of it. Betty, whom he loved, and to whom he was engaged, was away from Wellingsford. In those days she was very much the young Diana, walking in search of chaste adventures, quite contented with the love that lay serenely warm in her heart and thinking little of a passionate man's needs—perhaps starting away from too violent an expression of them—perhaps prohibiting them altogether. The psychology of the pre-war young girl absorbed, even though intellectually and for curiosity's sake, in the feminist movement, is yet to be studied. Betty, then, was away. Althea, beata possidens, made her artless, innocent appeal for victory. Unconsciously she tempted. The man yielded. A touch of the lips in a moment of folly, the man blazed, the woman helpless was consumed. This happened in January, just before Althea's supposed visit to Scotland. Boyce was due at a Country House party near Carlisle. In the first flush of their madness they agreed upon the wretched plan. She took rooms in the town and he visited her there. Whether he or she conceived it, I do not know. If I could judge coldly I should say that it was of feminine inspiration. A man, particularly one of Boyce's temperament, who was eager for the possession of a passionately loved woman, would have carried her off to a little Eden of their own. A calm consideration of the facts leads to the suggestion of a half-hearted acquiescence on the part of an entangled man in the romantic scheme of an inexperienced girl to whom he had suddenly become all in all.
Such is my plea in extenuation of Boyce's conduct (if plea there can be), seeing that he raised not a shadow of one of his own. You may say that my plea is no excuse for his betrayal; that no man, even if he is tempted, can be pardoned for non-control of his passions. But I am asking for no pardon; I am trying to obtain your understanding. Remember what I have told you about Boyce, his great bull-neck, his blood-sodden life-preserver, the physical repulsion I felt when he carried me in his arms. In such men the animal instinct is stronger at times than the trained will. Whether you give him a measure of your sympathy or not, at any rate do not believe that his short-lived liaison with Althea was a matter of deliberate and dastardly seduction. Nor must you think that I am setting down anything in disparagement of a child whom I once loved. Long ago I touched lightly on the anomaly of Althea's character—her mid-Victorian sentimentality and softness, combined with her modern spirit of independence. A fatal anomaly; a perilous balance of qualities. Once the soft sentimentality was warmed into romantic passion, the modern spirit led it recklessly to a modern conclusion.
The liaison was short-lived. The man was remorseful. He loved another woman. Very quickly did the poor girl awaken from her dream.
"I was cruel," said Boyce, fixing me with those awful black spectacles, "I know it. I ought to have married her. But if I had married her, I should have been more cruel. I should have hated her. It would have been an impossible life for both of us. One day I had to tell her so. Not brutally. In a normal state I think I am as kind-hearted and gentle as most men. And I couldn't be brutal, feeling an unutterable cur and craving her forgiveness. But I wanted Betty and I swore that only one thing should keep me from her."
"One thing?" I asked.
"The thing that didn't happen," said he.
And so it seemed that Althea accepted the inevitable. The placid, fatalistic side of her nature asserted itself. Pride, too, helped her instinctive feminine secretiveness. She lived for months in her father's house without giving those that were dear to her any occasion for suspicion. In order to preserve the secrecy Boyce was bound to continue his visits to Wellings Park. Now and then, when they met alone, she upbraided him bitterly. On the whole, however, he concluded that they had agreed to bury an ugly chapter in their lives.
Yes, it was an ugly chapter. From such you cannot get away, bury it, as you will, never so deep.
"And all the time remember," he said, "that I was mad for Betty. The more shy she was, the madder I grew. I could not rest in Wellingsford without her. When she came here, I came. When she went to town, I went to town. She was as elusive as a dream. Finally I pinned her down to a date for our marriage in August. It was the last time I saw her. She went away to stay with friends. That was the beginning of June. She was to be away two months. I knew, if I had clamoured, she would have made it three. It was the shyness of the exquisite bird in her that fascinated me. I could never touch Betty in those days without dreading lest I might soil her feathers. You may laugh at a hulking brute like me saying such things, but that's the way I saw Betty, that's the way I felt towards her. I could no more have taken her into my bear's hug and kissed her roughly than I could have smashed a child down with my fist. And yet—My God, man! how I ached for her!"
Long as I had loved Betty in a fatherly way, deeply as I loved her now, the man's unexpected picture of her was a revelation. You see it was only after her marriage, when she had softened and grown a woman and come so near me that I felt the great comfort of her presence when she was by, the need of it when she was away. How could I have known anything of the elusiveness in her maidenhood before which he knelt so reverently?
That he so knelt is the keynote of the man's soul untainted by the flesh.
It made clear to me the tenderness that lay beneath that which was brutal; the reason of that personal charm which had captivated me against my will; his defencelessness against the Furies.
So far the narrative has reached the latter part of June. He had spent the month with his mother. As Betty had ordained that July should be blank, a month during which the moon should know no changes but only the crescent of Diana should shine supreme in the heavens, he had made his mundane arrangements for his fishing excursion to Norway. On the afternoon of the 23rd he paid a farewell call at Wellings Park. Althea, in the final settlement of their relations, had laid it down as a definite condition that he should maintain his usual social intercourse with the family. A few young people were playing tennis. Tea was served on the lawn near by the court. Althea gave no sign of agitation. She played her game, laughed with her young men, and took casual leave of Boyce, wishing him good sport. He drew her a pace aside and murmured: "God bless you for forgiving me."
She laughed a reply out loud: "Oh, that's all right."
When he told me that, I recalled vividly the picture of her, in my garden, on the last afternoon of her life, eating the strawberries which she had brought me for tea. I remembered the little slangy tone in her voice when she had asked me whether I didn't think life was rather rotten. That was the tone in which she had said to him, "Oh, that's all right."
During the early afternoon on the 25th, she rang him up on the telephone. Chance willed that he should receive the call at first hand. She must see him before he left Wellingsford. She had something of the utmost importance to tell him. A matter of life and death. With one awful thought in his mind, he placed his time at her disposal. For what romantic, desperate or tragic reason she appointed the night meeting at the end of the chestnut avenue where the towing-path turns into regions of desolate quietude, he could not tell. He agreed without argument, dreading the possible lack of privacy in their talk over the wires.
On that afternoon she came to me, as I have told you, with her strawberries and her declaration of the rottenness of life.
They met and walked along the towing-path. It was bright moonlight, but she could not have chosen a lonelier spot, more free from curious eyes or ears. And then took place a scene which it is beyond my power to describe. I can only picture it to myself from Boyce's broken, self-accusing talk. He was going away. She would never see him again until he returned to marry another woman. She was making her last frantic bid for happiness. She wept and sobbed and cajoled and upbraided—You know what women at the end of their tether can do. He strove to pacify her by the old arguments which hitherto she had accepted. Suddenly she cried: "If you don't marry me I am disgraced for ever." And this brought them to a dead halt.
When he came to this point I remembered the diabolical accuracy of Gedge's story.
Boyce said: "There is one usual reason why a man should marry a woman to save her from disgrace. Is that the reason?"
She said "Yes."
The light went out of the man's life.
"In that case," said he, "there can be no question about it. I will marry you. But why didn't you tell me before?"
She said she did not know. She made the faltering excuses of the driven girl. They walked on together and sat on the great bar of the lock gates.
"Till then," said he, "I had never known what it was to have death in my heart. But I swear to God, Meredyth, I played my part like a man. I had done a dastardly thing. There was nothing left for me but to make reparation. In a few moments I tore my life asunder. The girl I had wronged was to be the mother of my child. I accepted the situation. I was as kind to her as I could be. She laid her head on my shoulder and cried, and I put my arm around her. I felt my heart going out to her in remorse and pity and tenderness. A man must be a devil who could feel otherwise.... Our lives were bound up together.... I kissed her and she clung to me. Then we talked for a while—ways and means.... It was time to go back. We rose. And then—Meredyth—this is what she said:
"'You swear to marry me?'
"'I swear it,' said I.
"'In spite of anything?'
"I gave my promise. She put her arms round my neck.
"'What I've told you is not wholly true. But the moral disgrace is there all the time.'
"I took her wrists and disengaged myself and held her and looked at her.
"'What do you mean—not wholly true?' I asked.
"My God! I shall never forget it." He stuck both his elbows on the bed and clutched his hair and turned his black glasses wide of me. "The child crumpled up. She seemed to shrivel like a leaf in the fire. She said:
"'I've tried to lie to you, but I can't. I can't. Pity me and forgive me.'
"I started back from her in a sudden fury. I could not forgive her. Think of the awful revulsion of feeling. Foolishly tricked! I was mad with anger. I walked away and left her. I must have walked ten or fifteen yards. Then I heard a splash in the water. I turned. She was no longer on the bank. I ran up. I heard a cry. I just saw her sinking. AND I COULDN'T MOVE. As God hears me, it is true. I knew I must dive in and rescue her—I had run up with every impulse to do so; BUT I COULD NOT MOVE. I stood shivering with the paralysis of fear. Fear of the deep black water, the steep brick sides of the canal that seemed to stretch away for ever—fear of death, I suppose that was it. I don't know. Fear irresistible, unconquerable, gripped me as it had gripped me before, as it has gripped me since. And she drowned before my eyes while I stood like a stone."
There was an awful pause. He had told me the end of the tragedy so swiftly and in a voice so keyed to the terror of the scene, that I lay horror-stricken, unable to speak. He buried his face in his hands, and between the fleshy part of the palms I saw the muscles of his lips twitch horribly. I remembered, with a shiver, how I had first seen them twitch, in his mother's house, when he had made his strange, almost passionate apology for fear. And he had all but described this very incident: the reckless, hare-brained devil standing on the bank of a river and letting a wounded comrade drown. I remember how he had defined it: "the sudden thing that hits a man's heart and makes him stand stock-still like a living corpse—unable to move a muscle—all his will-power out of gear—just as a motor is out of gear.... It is as much of a fit as epilepsy."
The span of stillness was unbearable. The watch on the little table by my bedside ticked maddeningly. Marigold put his head in at the door, apparently to warn me that it was getting late. I waved him imperiously away. Boyce did not notice his entrance. Presently he raised his head.
"I don't know how long I stood there. But I know that when I moved she was long since past help. Suddenly there was a sharp crashing noise on the road below. I looked round and saw no one. But it gave me a shock—and I ran. I ran like a madman. And I thought as I ran that, if I were discovered, I should be hanged for murder. For who would believe my story? Who would believe it now?"
"I believe it, Boyce," I said.
"Yes. You. You know something of the hell my life has been. But who else? He had every motive for the crime, the lawyers would say. They could prove it. But, my God! what motive had I for sending all my gallant fellows to their deaths at Vilboek's Farm? ... The two things are on all fours—and many other things with them.... My one sane thought through the horror of it all was to get home and into the house unobserved. Then I came upon the man Gedge, who had spied on me."
"I know about that," said I, wishing to spare him from saying more than was necessary. "He told Fenimore and me about it."
"What was his version?" he asked in a low tone. "I had better hear it."
When I had told him, he shook his head. "He lied. He was saving his skin. I was not such a fool, mad as I was, as to leave him like that. He had seen us together. He had seen me alone. To-morrow there would be discovery. I offered him a thousand pounds to say nothing. He haggled. Oh! the ghastly business! Eventually I suggested that he should come up to London with me by the first train in the morning and discuss the money. I was dreading lest someone should come along the avenue and see me. He agreed. I think I drank a bottle of whisky that night. It kept me alive. We met in my chambers in London. I had sent my man up the day before to do some odds and ends for me. I made a clear breast of it to Gedge. He believed the worst. I don't blame him. I bought his silence for a thousand a year. I made arrangements for payment through my bankers. I went to Norway. But I went alone. I didn't fish. I put off the two men I was to join. I spent over a month all by myself. I don't think I could tell you a thing about the place. I walked and walked all day until I was exhausted, and got sleep that way. I'm sure I was going mad. I should have gone mad if it hadn't been for the war. I suppose I'm the only Englishman living or dead who whooped and danced with exultation when he heard of it. I think my brain must have been a bit touched, for I laughed and cried and jumped about in a pine-wood with a week old newspaper in my hands. I came home. You know the rest."
Yes, I knew the rest. The woman he had left to drown had been ever before his eyes; the avenging Furies in pursuit. This was the torture in his soul that had led him to many a mad challenge of Death, who always scorned his defiance. Yes, I knew all that he could tell me.
But we went on talking. There were a few points I wanted cleared up. Why should he have kept up a correspondence with Gedge?
"I only wrote one foolish angry letter," he replied.
And I told him how Sir Anthony had thrown it unread into the fire. Gedge's nocturnal waylaying of him in my front garden was another unsuccessful attempt to tighten the screw. Like Randall and myself, he had no fear of Gedge.
Of Sir Anthony he could not speak. He seemed to be crushed by the heroic achievement. It was the only phase of our interview during which, by voice and manner and attitude, he appeared to me like a beaten man. His own bravery at the reception had gone for naught. He was overwhelmed by the hideous insolence of it.
"I shall never get that man's voice out of my ears as long as I live," he said hoarsely.
After a while he added: "I wonder whether there is any rest or purification for me this side of the grave."
I said tentatively, for we had never discussed matters of religion: "If you believe in Christ, you must believe in the promise regarding the sins that be as scarlet."
But he turned it aside. "In the olden days, men like me turned monk and found salvation in fasting and penance. The times in which we live have changed and we with them, my friend. Nos mulamur in illis, as the tag goes."
We went on talking—or rather he talked and I listened. Now and again he would help himself to a drink or a cigarette, and I marvelled at the clear assurance with which he performed the various little operations. I, lying in bed, lost all sense of pain, almost of personality. My little ailments, my little selfish love of Betty, my little humdrum life itself dwindled insignificant before the tragic intensity of this strange, curse-ridden being.
And all the time we had not spoken of Betty—except the Betty of long ago. It was I, finally, who gave him the lead.
"And Betty?" said I.
He held out his hand in a gesture that was almost piteous.
"I could tear her from my life. I had no alternative. In the tearing I hurt her cruelly. To know it was not the least of the burning hell I lit for myself. But I couldn't tear her from my heart. When a brute beast like me does love a woman purely and ideally, it's a desperate business. It means God's Heaven to him, while it means only an earthly paradise to the ordinary man. It clutches hold of the one bit of immortal soul he has left, and nothing in this world can make it let go. That's why I say it's a desperate business."
"Yes, I can understand," said I.
"I schooled myself to the loss of her. It was part of my punishment. But now she has come back into my life. Fate has willed it so. Does it mean that I am forgiven?"
"By whom?" I asked. "By God?"
"By whom else?"
"How dare man," said I, "speak for the Almighty?"
"How is man to know?"
"That's a hard question," said I. "I can only think of answering it by saying that a man knows of God's forgiveness by the measure of the Peace of God in his soul."
"There's none of it in mine, my dear chap, and never will be," said Boyce.
I strove to help him. For what other purpose had he come to me?
"You think then that the sending of Betty is a sign and a promise? Yes. Perhaps it is. What then?"
"I must accept it as such," said he. "If there is a God, He would not give me back the woman I love, only to take her away again. What shall I do?"
"In what way?" I asked.
"She offered to marry me. I am to give her my answer to-morrow. If I were the callous, murdering brute that everyone would have the right to believe I am, I shouldn't have hesitated. If I hadn't been a tortured, damned soul," he cried, bringing his great fist down on the bed, "I shouldn't have come here to ask you what my answer can be. My whole being is infected with horror." He rose and stood over the bed and, with clenched hands, gesticulated to the wall in front of him. "I'm incapable of judging. I only know that I crave her with everything in me. I've got it in my brain that she's my soul's salvation. Is my brain right? I don't know. I come to you—a clean, sweet man who knows everything—I don't think there's a crime on my conscience or a foulness in my nature which I haven't confessed to you. You can judge straight as I can't. What answer shall I give to-morrow?"
Did ever man, in a case of conscience, have a greater responsibility? God forgive me if I solved it wrongly. At any rate, He knows that I was uninfluenced by mean personal considerations. All my life I have tried to have an honourable gentleman and a Christian man. According to my lights I saw only one clear course.
"Sit down, old man," said I. "You're a bit too big for me like that." He felt for his chair, sat down and leaned back. "You've done almost everything," I continued, "that a man can do in expiation of offences. But there is one thing more that you must do in order to find peace. You couldn't find peace if you married Betty and left her in ignorance. You must tell Betty everything—everything that you have told me. Otherwise you would still be hag-ridden. If she learned the horror of the thing afterwards, what would be your position? Acquit your conscience now before God and a splendid woman, and I stake my faith in each that neither will fail you."
After a few minutes, during which the man's face was like a mask, he said:
"That's what I wanted to know. That's what I wanted to be sure of. Do you mind ringing your bell for Marigold to take me away? I've kept you up abominably." He rose and held out his hand and I had to direct him how it could reach mine. When it did, he gripped it firmly.
"It's impossible," said he, "for you to realise what you've done for me to-night. You've made my way absolutely clear to me—for the first time for two years. You're the truest comrade I've ever had, Meredyth. God bless you."
Marigold appeared, answering my summons, and led Boyce away. Presently he returned.
"Do you know what time it is, sir?" he asked serenely.
"No," said I.
"It's half-past one."
He busied himself with my arrangements for the night, and administered what I learned afterwards was a double dose of a sleeping draught which Cliffe had prescribed for special occasions. I just remember surprise at feeling so drowsy after the intense excitement of the evening, and then I fell asleep.
When I awoke in the morning I gathered my wits together and recalled what had taken place. Marigold entered on tiptoe and found me already aroused.
"I'm sorry to tell you, sir," said he, "that an accident happened to Colonel Boyce after he left last night."
"An accident?"
"I suppose so, sir," said Marigold. "That's what his chauffeur says. He got out of the car in order to sit by the side of the canal—by the lock gates. He fell in, sir. He's drowned."