Chapter X: Part 10

He was standing, legs wide apart, on the hearthrug, and glared at his niece as she wheeled round on the threshold for her usual Parthian shot.

"It's rather a pity that he does not happen to be Muhammed any more; isn't it, Runkle?" she cried spitefully; "that he never was Muhammed, but always Harry English, Harry English, Harry English, who never was dead at all!"

She closed the door with a slam upon a picture of her uncle's suddenly stricken face, of Lady Aspasia's swift advance towards him with outstretched hands.

"She'll manage him!" said Baby to herself, with a sobbing giggle, as she ran down the dark passage.

*CHAPTER VI*

The Old Ancient House lay in silence--a sinister silence, Bethune thought--after the rumours and alarms of the night. The dawn was breaking yellow over a grey, still world. What did it herald? he wondered, as he looked out of his dormer window under the roof.

One thing it was bringing, he told his sullen heart--the new day of the new life of Raymond Bethune. Raymond Bethune, the disgraced, who had failed his comrade.

When that wild cry had rung out into the night, "Harry, Harry, Harry!" it had sounded, in his ears, like the death-cry of his honour; a parting from all that he had held dear; a parting from his highest and closest, than which no parting between soul and body could be more bitter.

He had sat on his bed, and listened--listened, expecting he knew not what. What, indeed, had he now to expect? He had heard the running of feet, the opening and shutting of doors, all the busy noises of a house alarmed. Was she dead? Dead of her joy, in that supreme moment of reunion? Would there not be a heaven, even in his anguish, for him who could thus take her dying kiss!

By-and-by he had roused himself; and, after a look of horror upon that bed of dreams, mechanically dressed for his departure. To go away--that was all that was left to him--the last decency. He put a grim control upon his nerves as he wielded the razor and the brushes that Harry English's fingers had so recently touched.

Harry English ... out of the grave!

Bethune could not yet face the marvel of the situation. He had yet no power over his dazed brain to bring it to realise that for so long he had been living near his old comrade in the flesh, and had not known--he who had not passed a day, since their parting, without living with him in the spirit! Still less could he speculate upon the reasons of English's incognito, upon his singular scheme, his recklessness of his own reputation; nor by what miracle he had been saved from death; nor by what freakish cruelty of fate he had been buried from their ken till the irreparable had been worked on other lives.

No; Bethune had no single thought to spare from the overwhelming fact of what he had himself done.

How silent was this house, now, in the dawn! And how much worse was silence than the most ominous sounds. Was it not his own silence that had betrayed both himself and his friend?

He packed deliberately, feeling the while a fleeting childish warmth of comfort in the thought that Harry wore his old shooting-jacket--that Harry had still something of his about him. He folded the discarded babu garments with almost tender touch. Then he paused and hesitated.

There were the papers--the damnable, foolish papers that had started all the mischief; and these he must sort. Some must be destroyed; some, not his to deal with, must be laid by before he could leave the place.

He stole to the door, carrying his portmanteau. There was no fear of his meeting any of those whom he dreaded; for, in the rambling old house, his floor had a little breakneck stairs to itself which landed him in a passage outside the hall.

There was a stir of life and a leap of firelight behind the half-open door of the kitchen; but, in a panic, he passed quickly out of reach of the voices lest he should hear. Was she dying ... or dead? Or, since joy does not kill, was she happy in a sublime egotism of two? He had no courage for the tidings--whatever they might be.

The little room where he had worked with such fervour was filled with a grey glimmer that filtered in through the mist-hung orchard trees. The fire had been set but not yet lit. He put a match to it; he would have much to burn. Then he sat down by the table and drew forth his manuscripts. The last line he had written--that line set only yesterday from a full heart--met his eye:

English was then in the perfection of his young manhood--a
splendid specimen of an Englishman, athletic, handsome,
intellectual, a born leader of men, and withal, the truest
comrade ever a man had.

Out of the half-finished page, the past rose at Raymond Bethune and smote him in the face. So had he written, so had he thought of Harry English yesterday, when he believed him dead.

A man of more sanguine temperament, of more imaginative mind, might well have comforted himself with explanatory reflections, with reasons so plausible for his own behaviour, that he must end by believing in them himself, regarding his own act in a gradually changing light, till it assumed a venial, not to say meritorious, aspect. But Raymond Bethune, with his narrow conception of life, with his few, deep-cut affections, had this in him--virtue or deficiency--that he could not lie. And now he knew the naked truth. He knew that, when his only friend had come from out the dead and laid claim upon him, in the overwhelming surprise of the moment he had betrayed friendship--that some unknown base self had sprung into life. He had not been glad--he had not been glad ... and Harry had seen it. Harry had read into his heart--and there had read, not gladness but dismay.

The sweat started again upon Bethune's forehead as he re-lived that moment and again saw his failing soul mirrored in the wide pupils of English's eyes.

* * * * *

Outside, upon the grey-brown twisted boughs of the apple-tree nearest the window, a robin began to sing. The insidious sweetness of the little voice pierced the lonely man to the marrow, with an intolerable pang of self-pity. He looked out on the bleak winter scene of the garden, where the mist hung in shreds across the sodden grass, over the bare boughs. It was an old, old orchard and the trees were leprous with grey lichen. It seemed as though they could not bear flower or fruit again. Vaguely, for his brain was not apt to image, he thought: "In some such desolation lies the future for me." And if the robin sang--oh, if the robin sang--its message never could be for him!

His eye wandered back into the room. Here had he worked so many days, in austere, high ardour of loyalty. Aye, and yonder, in the armchair, had she sat; and he had judged her from this same altitude of mind. Now he knew himself better, saw the earthy soul of him as it really was. All his anger, all his scorn, all his antagonism, from the very first instant when her pale luminous beauty had dawned upon him, had been but fine-sounding words in his own mind to hide the thing, the fact--his passion for Harry English's wife!

He took some of the manuscript into his hands, rough sheets as well as neatly typed copy; and, standing before the now leaping fire, began slowly to tear it, page by page, and fling it into the blaze. He smiled as he watched the red twists fly up the chimney. There was subtle irony in the situation. Major Bethune calling upon his friend's widow to wake from her sleep of oblivion, forcing her back to the sorrow she would fain forget, sparing her no pang, watching her as the warder watches the convict to see that not a jot of her task escape her; seeing, as he watched, the old love reclaim her with strong hands, so that, wooed once more and once more won, she was ready, as surely no woman was before, to greet the dead returned! ... "Harry, Harry, Harry!" He would never get that cry out of his head.

He let himself fall into the chair upon the hearth, his hands resting listlessly from their task. How was he to endure life, how carry out the most trivial business with this sick distaste of all things upon him?

* * * * *

Aspasia opened the door and looked in. She gave a cry of pleasure as she saw him.

"How cosy!" she said, and came over to the fire.

Then she stood, gazing down at him, with a small smile trembling on her lips. She had evidently been crying, and the curves of these same lips looked softer and more childish than ever. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes darkly shadowed.

Bethune sat motionless. After a pause she spoke, still staring reflectively at the flames.

"I wondered where you had been all this dreadful night. You know what has happened? Of course you know."

"I know."

Nothing in his voice or manner struck her--she was so full of the tremendous occasion.

"Ah!" she cried, suddenly flashing upon him, "I think I'm sorry you already know. I should have liked to have been the first to tell you. For you--for you, at least, it's all glorious. Oh, how glad you must be! What it must mean to you!"

He sat like stone: she was worse than the robin. He had thought he had suffered to the fullest capacity; but the girl, with her clear voice and her honest eyes, was tearing his heart to pieces. Then she became conscious that in his silence, though she had known him ever as a silent man, there was something almost sinister.

"What is it?" she asked him. "Oh, I suppose you knew all along? No--you didn't, you couldn't!"

He shook his head.

"Ah!" Her bright face clouded. "It is because of her, of poor Aunt Rosamond--of him, rather? You think he has come back to her too late, only to lose her?"

He resumed the tearing up of his manuscript with fingers clenched upon the page.

"What are you doing?" she cried, quickly diverted. "Oh, Major Bethune, why? Don't tear up all that beautiful life--all you've been working at so long. Oh, what a pity--what a pity!"

He crumpled a mass of paper violently together and flung it into the flames, thrusting it down among the embers with his hand. He felt the startled amazement growing upon her, and forced his pale lips to speak.

"He would hate it."

Saying this, he tried to smile. Aspasia contemplated him for a while, her eyes wondering. Then she stretched out her hand and touched his timidly.

"Don't be unhappy--let me tell you; I think I understand. Oh! I'm sure I understand, for we have been friends a little, too, have we not? You think it's worse for him to come back. You think he had better be dead, if she is to die. But she won't." Aspasia nodded confidently. "I tell you she won't die. I've just seen Dr. Châtelard; he's quite satisfied. I have seen him--Captain English--too. I said to him: 'She won't die.' And he said to me: 'I know it.' He is there outside her room--so strong and patient. Now," said the girl, and was not, in her innocent wish to comfort, aware how tenderly she spoke, "now you will let yourself be glad for yourself, since you've got him back, will you not?"

Bethune suddenly turned and caught the gentle hand that touched him in both his. He broke into sobs--a man's difficult, ugly, tearing sobs, that surprise no one more than him whom they overtake. For an instant Aspasia was terrified. But for that desperate clutch she would have fled. The next moment, however, all the woman in her awoke.

"Oh, don't cry!" she said, as if she were speaking to a child, and laid her free hand upon his close-cropped hair.

And then--neither of them knew how it happened--her arm was round his shoulder, and his head was lying upon her tender breast. The dry agony that shook him passed; and tears that fell like balm rolled down his cheeks.

Baby, carried quite out of herself in this astounding whirl of events, began to weep, too, quite softly, to herself. And, as he lifted his face to hers and drew her down to him, their lips met upon the bitter of their tears, and yet in sweetness undreamed of. At the touch of that child-mouth and at her voiceless surrender, Bethune knelt before her in his heart and consecrated himself to her for ever. Closed henceforth for him the magic casement on "perilous seas" of passion, "on faëry lands forlorn." Gone those visions, exquisite and deadly! A faithful loving hand, a child's hand, had been held out to him in his moment of utmost misery; it had lifted him from the deeps; it he would clasp and go to meet life's duty, content--aye, humbly grateful--that his winter should have harboured a robin after all; ready to open his heart to its song of spring.

* * * * *

Afterwards, he knew, he would blame himself for that moment of weakness which had won him, unworthy, so true and unsuspecting a heart. But the deed was irrevocable, and he would not have been human not to rejoice.

* * * * *

The secret of the sorrow that had given to Aspasia the man she loved, she would never know. And even her frank lips could never seek the story. As sacred as the memory of their first kiss, she would hide in her heart the memory of those strange and terrible sobs.

Wiser than Psyche she would light no lamp, but keep this first mystery of love in unprofaned shadow.

*CHAPTER VII*

Bethune and Aspasia quickly parted.

Love had come as a messenger of comfort; but to linger under its wings in anything that approached to joy, in that stricken house would have seemed desecration. Bethune, moreover, was glad to be alone. His own trouble was too strong upon him. He felt as if he must have the cold clean air upon his face, gather the winter solitude about the nameless confusion of his thoughts. He wanted to meet himself face to face and have it out with Raymond Bethune; Raymond Bethune, who had gained an unlooked-for love, but had lost--everything else. He went forth into the orchard--seeking himself in those barren spaces, that, but a while ago, had seemed to hold the image of his future.

But he was no longer the shamed, hopeless man of that hour of dawn, with his eye fixed on some near death, as the savage instinct of some sick wild creature is fixed upon the hole that shall hide the last struggle. Henceforth he would be no longer alone; and if the thought of the gentle comradeship brought solace, it brought also its own serious responsibility, almost its terror--the weight of another life, the loss of his soul's freedom....

Presently, as he tramped up and down the drenched grass, a chill and numbing touch seemed to be laid upon him and to invade him with the blankness of the universal winter sleep. The recurrent waves of a lover's exaltation that had seized him at each reminiscence of the young bosom beneath his cheek, of the tear-wet face pressed so close to his, died down within him; and died, too, those spasms of horror over that moment when, by a single evil thought, he had betrayed the true facts of a lifetime.

His mind seemed to become nearly as dull as the sky above him--iron grey, flecked with meaningless wrack; his heart to grow cold, like the inert sod beneath his feet. And he let himself go to the respite of this mood. The robin was silent. He was glad of that. There was no sound but the drip of the boughs as he passed. Disjointed visions, foolish tags of memory, flashed through his brain--the echo of Baby's thrumming, the picture of the Eastern palace room, with its English illusions, as he stood waiting; Lady Gerardine, in the rosy radiance of the Indian evening, fitting her slender hand into the imprint of the queens' death-touches on the stone; her smile upon him over the languid Niphotis roses in the narrow varnished cabin, the open port-holes and the green sea-foam springing up across them in the lamplight, the mingled smell of the brine and the flowers; Aspasia dancing on the frozen grass, brown and red like a robin; Muhammed standing before him in his soldier-pride, the ironic smile on his face--son of the East, with the winter-lichened boughs of the English orchard above him!

At the end of his beat Raymond wheeled round and looked down the moss-grown avenue where that day the red-turbaned Eastern had met his gaze; and now, with the fantastic effect of a dream, he beheld the selfsame square-shouldered figure swing into sight between the grey boles with their ghostly look of age. Advancing with quick strides, it was bearing straight upon him.

Bethune stood as if held by a resistless force. He knew life would have no more crucial moment for him; yet his heart beat not a stroke the faster. He turned his face towards the inevitable. After all, a man can but endure. The illusion of Muhammed had quickly passed, as the steady step drew closer, into that reality that was stranger than any fantasm.

Harry English, with head bare to the tart airs, with strong line of clean-shaven chin catching the bleak light, and deep eyes lit with a very human lire--the old comrade in the flesh! He halted within a pace, and the two looked at each other for a second's silence. Then, while Bethune's countenance remained set in that iron dulness, the other's face was suddenly stirred.

"What the devil is the meaning of this?" cried Harry English, in a loud voice of anger. "I see your portmanteau packed. Do you think for a second that you can leave me now?"

The deepest reproach, the utmost note of sorrow or scorn, could not have touched Bethune so keenly as this familiar explosion. A thousand memories awoke and screamed. How often had not his captain rated him with just such a rough tongue and just such a kindly gleam of the eye! All the ice of his cold humour of reaction was shivered into bits under the rush of upheaving blood.

"Harry!" he stammered. "Harry ... I ... my God!" ...

He saw, as before, in that hideous moment in the little bedroom, but now blessedly, a reflection of his own thought on the face opposite to him.

Harry English put out his hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

"My God!" said Bethune again. He turned his head sharply away and his jaw worked. The cry broke from him. "I ought to have died for you! Would to Heaven I had died for you at Inziri! ..."

The grasp of his shoulder was tightened. English shook his comrade almost fiercely.

"Old man, you were never one of the talkers. Hold your tongue now."

Bethune drew a deep breath. The intolerable weight rolled from his heart. English's hand dropped. It was over and done with; the two friends had met again, soul to soul.

In silence they turned and walked towards the house, side by side, steps together, as so often--God, so often!--in the good old days of hardship.

"Let us go in," said English, at the door. "They tell me that there can be no change, up there, and she's in good hands, thank Heaven, but I cannot find a moment's peace out of the house. Come, we'll have a cup of tea together."

The sun had risen just clear of the moor line into a space of clarity, and shone, a white dazzling disc, sending faint spears into their eyes. It shone, too, pale yet brisk, through the open window of the little dining-room, where, as yet, the board was but half spread, where an ill-kindled fire had flickered into death. (What self-respecting servant could do her work as usual when the family is in affliction?)

"Just see to the fire, Ray," said English, and went out of the room.

Bethune, with the bachelor's expediency, had recourse to a candle culled from a sconce, and produced a cheerful, if somewhat acrid flame, to greet his friend when he returned, black kettle in one hand, brown teapot in the other. Soon the hot fragrance circled into the room.

"If we'd had a brew of this up at Inziri, those last days, it would have made a difference, eh?" said the master of the house.

They drew their chairs to the hearth and sat, each with his cup in his hand, even as in times bygone, with their tin mugs before the camp fire at dawn. In spite of the sense of that hushed room above and the suspense of its brooding over them, Bethune had not felt so warm in his heart these many years.

"Man!" he exclaimed suddenly, reverting unconsciously to the Scotch idiom of his youth, "why in the name of Heaven did you do it?"

Harry English, staring at the red coals, answered nothing for a while. Not that he had failed to understand the train of thought that ended in the vague-seeming, yet comprehensive question--but that the answer was difficult if not painful.

"You see," he said slowly, at last, without shifting his abstracted gaze, "there was so much to find out and so much to consider...."

"To find out?"

"I had to be sure."

Bethune laid his cup on the hob and leaned over towards his friend, his fingers lightly touching the arm of the other's chair. After a while: "I think I understand," he said, knitting his rugged brows.

English gave him a fleeting smile of peculiar sadness.

"When one has been dead eight years, it is wiser, before coming to life again, to make sure that one's resurrection will be a benefit."

Bethune fell back into his place, with a grey shade about the lips. English dropped his eyes and there came silence between them. After a pause, he began to mend the fire from the scuttle; and, placing the lumps of coals one by one, he spoke again:

"It was all a story of waiting, you see, from beginning to end."

"Rajab--Rajab is gone, by the way, poor old chap. He swore he'd seen you fall, more dead than the prophet himself," said Bethune, with the harsh laugh that covers strong emotion. "And from the fort, through the glass, we watched those devils chucking the bodies into the torrent--dead and wounded, too. We thought the great river was your grave with many another's! Never a bone could we find of all the good chaps."

Harry English straightened himself and laughed, too, not very mirthfully. Then he pulled open the loose collar of his shirt and laid bare a jagged scar that ran from the column of the throat across the collar bone.

"I'm confoundedly hard to kill, you know. Just missed the jugular. I must have been spouting blood like a fountain. And then I got a blow on the head from a hilt that knocked me into nothingness. Rajab was about right--I was as dead as the prophet for the time being. If I had not had nine lives----"

Again the silence. Then Bethune inquired, casually, fumbling in his pocket for a pipe:

"And how is it you weren't chucked overboard with the rest?"

"Old Yufzul had a fancy for keeping me alive. Ah, if he could have caught the chap that cut me down, he would not have left much skin on him. He'd given stringent orders to spare mine. The old beggar took a notion that I was a sort of mascot, or something, that I carried luck--that it was the influence of my precious person kept things going so triumphantly at the fort.... You may remember he was always sending envoys to me with flattering offers? By the Lord, Ray, I believe it was half to get me that he stuck to the business so long. So much for my carrying luck!"

The speaker smiled, with a bitter twist of the lip, and poked the fire unnecessarily.

"Remember," he added, "that business about the flag on the roof, when the bullets were going so lively? It seems our friend was watching and was much struck to see that I was not."

"I remember," answered Bethune's deep bass.

Did he not remember? Had he been of the nationality of M. Châtelard, with what a hand-clasp, with what a flow of rhetoric would he not now emphasise his vivid recollection of that hour!

English, lying back in his armchair, with his head resting on the top, closed his eyes wearily. His face looked very pallid and sharp-featured thus upturned and relaxed from its usual stern control; and Bethune shot many an anxious look at it as he sat silent, the pipe he forgot to draw hanging loosely between his teeth.

Presently the other resumed, in low, reminiscent tones:

"I became the Khan's fetish. So long as he had me he was sure of his luck. He thought himself safe. In the end, I think, he thought he could not die."

"Well?" said Bethune, as the pause grew over long.

"Well, that's all. I was a fetish, very well looked after. Too well. God!" said the man, sitting up, a sudden passion on eye and lip, "I was kept prisoner, if you like. For five years, Raymond Bethune, I was chained to that old Khan's carcase, night and day."

"For five years," echoed Bethune, stupidly; "and what were you doing?"

English did not answer till the silence seemed to have obliterated the question. Then he said slowly:

"I was waiting."

"Then?"

"Then the old devil died--and I escaped. Oh, you don't want me to spin you that yarn now! You can imagine it for yourself, if you ever imagine anything, you old dunderhead. There was blood spilt, if you care to know. I had waited a long time, you see."

"But," objected the Major of Guides, after some minutes devoted to calculation, "that was three years ago."

"Aye," laughed English, good-naturedly contemptuous, "but a man doesn't walk off the Karakoram on to the English lines in a day, especially if he's an Afghan captive. I had to take a little round through Turkestan, and back through Baluchistan--on foot, Raymond, every yard of the way--as a dervish."

"Good Lord!" said Bethune.

"I flatter myself I know more of the Karakorams and the Turkoman frontier than any white man yet. And I can speak the lingo of every tribe that calls Ali chief. Aye, and I know their tricks and customs, their very habit of thought. There was not a camp or hut where they did not take me for one of themselves. It was just a year after Yufzul's death that I landed at Kurrachee."

"Oh, Harry," cried his friend, impulsively, "why did you not come to me?"

"Have I not told you already?" answered English, after one of his deep pauses. "I had things to find out first. Where is your canniness? If live men have to go slow, what about dead men? ... No--no." The bitter smile came back to his lips. "I lay low, and lived in the bazaar, as good a servant of the prophet as ever salaamed to the East; and then"--his voice changed--"oh, then--I got all the news I wanted!"

Bethune dared not raise his eyes.

"More than I wanted," added Harry English, with his bleak laugh. "You don't need to be told why I remained a Pathan, do you?"

When Bethune once more found courage to speak to his friend, it was because the stillness, pregnant with so much meaning, seemed intolerable.

"Well?" he queried hoarsely.

"Well, then," said Harry English, "I waited--again." ...

And his comrade felt more than this he was never to know of the hardest moment of all the man's hard life.

"I dare say," resumed English, his old air of serenity coming back to him, "you wonder why I did not extend that botched business as far as the jugular this time, and have done with it. But, you see, there was just a chance, I told myself; and so," he repeated, falling back into his significant formula, "I waited. I got work with an old babu; and by-and-by my opportunity came, and I took it."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Bethune, shifting restlessly in his chair. "It was the maddest business!"

"Perhaps," said English, a shade of pain sweeping across his face. "But I had to know. Any other course was too dangerous. Oh, I am not speaking of myself--think how dangerous!"

"But, man--man," cried the other, "it need not have taken you all that time! When you'd seen with your own eyes, when you had found that the old fellow was killing her, when you were here in this house, and had seen her in her sorrow--then----"

English flung one lightning glance upon the speaker.

"And even then," he said slowly, "I had still to know--more."

A moment Bethune stared at him open-mouthed; then his own unclear conscience pointed the otherwise inconceivable idea to his slow-working wits. He felt the dark blood mount to his forehead.

"Now I've told you all," said Harry English, and got up from his chair.

"Thank you," said Bethune.

* * * * *

Aspasia's bright presence was suddenly with them. English wheeled round; but her smiling face was reassurance sufficient.

"I've come as I promised," she said, "to give you the last report. Dr. Châtelard says all is going as he wishes. He will be down immediately for some breakfast, and then he will tell you himself. Isn't he a darling little man?" she went on. "I am sorry I said he had a pink head! What should we do now without it? By the way, some one must send a wire to Melbury Towers for his luggage."

"Let me go," said Bethune, starting forward.

"Let him go," echoed Baby, saucily, turning to Captain English.

With such new happiness before her, the natural buoyancy of her nature was triumphant over all present doubt and anxiety. Bethune put out his hand, and she slipped her own confidingly into it.

"Harry," said he, and the girl wondered and was highly flattered at the sudden emotion that shook his voice, "you see how things stand between us?"

Again English flashed that glance of vivid scrutiny. This time his friend met it steadily, though again with a heightening colour. Then, after a perceptible pause:

"I am glad," said Captain English, simply.

And Bethune dropped the girl's hand to meet the strong clasp held out to him.

He knew that from henceforth all misunderstanding was swept away from between them. If he had felt before for his friend that love closer than a brother's, it was cemented now by the strongest bond that can exist between generous natures--that of forgiver and forgiven. He was forgiven with the only real forgiveness--that which understands.

"Have they not brought breakfast?" cried Baby, the housekeeper, very bustling all at once, to cover her pretty confusion. She sprang to the bell, then checked herself, with finger on lip, and tripped from the room, pointing her feet and laughing over her shoulder, as if to her happy years even that sad precaution of quietness must have its mirthful side.

Both men looked after her indulgently. Then Bethune's face clouded.

"She is but a child, after all," he said doubtfully.

"Nay," said Harry, "it seems to me she has a woman's heart."

"She is as true as steel," asserted her lover.

When the girl returned, English went restlessly forth. He would wait for M. Châtelard, he said, in the hall. The newly betrothed were alone; and, for a second or two, eyed each other shyly. Then Bethune's face softened in the old, good way; and yet with something, too, that had never been there before, something which made Aspasia drop her lids.

"Well, Robin?" said he, and beckoned. She came to him sidling.

It would always be thus between them. He would beckon and she would come. Had the impossible happened, had that mistress of his hidden ideal condescended to him, he would have gone far to crave the least favour, and always with a trembling soul. But the life that touches the transcendent joy, the rare ecstasy is fated to know but little happiness. Providence, perhaps, was not dealing unkindly with this man.

"Why do you call me Robin?" she asked.

He was not of those who explain. With a kiss on her hand he told her simply that she was like a robin.

"Then I hope you'll remember, sir," she said, briskly disengaging herself, "that the robin is a bird that makes music in season and out of season."

*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 be _du dernier intérét_ to see _ce fameux Farrar_ at 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."