"Ah, waiting for me! You have shown her what kindness you could during
my slavery?"
He spoke in a wavering voice, as if he were not sure of his ground,
and as he spoke he felt Scrope shiver beneath his hand, and saw upon
the faces of his companions an unmistakable shrinking. He turned away
and staggered, rather than walked, to the window, where he stood
leaning against the sill.
"The day is breaking," he said quietly. Wyley looked up; outside the
window the colour was fading down the sky. It was purple still towards
the zenith, but across the Straits its edges rested white upon the
hills of Spain.
"Love that can flow ..." murmured Knightley, and of a sudden he flung
back into the room. "Let me have the truth of it," he burst out,
confronting his brother-officers gathered about the table--"the truth,
though it knell out my damnation. If you only knew how up there, at
Fez, at Mequinez, I have pictured your welcome when I should get back!
I made of my anticipation a very anodyne. The cudgelling, the chains,
the hunger, the sun, hot as though a burning glass was held above my
head--it would all make a good story for the guard-room when I got
back--when I got back. And yet I do get back, and one and all of you
draw away from me as though I were one of the Tangier lepers we
jostle in the streets. 'Love that can flow ...'" he broke off. "I ask
myself"--he hesitated, and with a great cry, "I ask you, did I play
the coward on that night I was captured two years ago?"
"The coward?" exclaimed Shackleton in bewilderment.
Wyley, for all his sympathy, could not refrain from a triumphant
glance at Scrope. "Here is the instance you needed," he said.
"Yes, did I play the coward?" Knightley seated himself sideways on the
edge of the table, and clasping his hands between his knees, went on
in a quick, lowered voice. "'Love that can flow'--those are the last
words I remember. You sent me, Major, to the Governor with a message.
I delivered it; I started back. On my way back I passed my house. I
went in. I stood in the _patio_. My wife was singing that song. The
window of the room in which she sang opened on to the _patio_. I stood
there listening for a second. Then I went upstairs. I turned the
handle of the door. I remember quite clearly the light upon the room
wall as I opened the door. Those words 'love that can flow' came
swelling through the opening; and--and--the next thing I am aware of,
I was riding chained upon a camel into slavery."
Tessin and Major Shackleton looked suddenly towards Wyley in
recognition of the accuracy of his guess. Scrope simply wiped the
perspiration from his forehead and waited.
"But how does that--forgetfulness, shall we say?--persuade you to the
fear that you played the coward?" asked Wyley.
"Well," replied Knightley, and his voice sank to a whisper, "I played
the coward afterwards at Mequinez. At the first it used to amuse me to
wonder what happened after I opened the door and before I was captured
outside Tangier; later it only puzzled me, and in the end it began to
frighten me. You see, I could not tell; it was all a blank to me, as
it is now; and a man overdriven--well, he nurses sickly fancies.
No need to say what mine were until the day I played the coward in
Mequinez. They set me to build the walls of the Emperor's new Palace.
We used the stones of the old Roman town and built them up in
Mequinez, and in the walls we were bidden to build Christian slaves
alive to the glory of Allah. I refused. They stripped the flesh off my
feet with their bastinadoes, starved me of food and drink, and brought
me back again to the walls. Again I refused." Knightley looked up at
his audience, and whether or no he mistook their breathless silence
for disbelief,--"I did," he implored. "Twice I refused, and twice they
tortured me. The third time--I was so broken, the whistle of a cane
in the air made me cry out with pain--I was sunk to that pitch of
cowardice--" He stopped, unable to complete the sentence. He clasped
and unclasped his hands convulsively, he moistened his dry lips with
his tongue, and looked about him with a weak, almost despairing laugh.
Then he began in another way. "The Christian was a Portuguee from
Marmora. He was set in the wall with his arms outstretched on either
side--the attitude of a man crucified. I built in his arms--his right
arm first--and mortised the stones, then his left arm in the same way.
I was careful not to look in his face. No, no! I didn't look in his
face." Knightley repeated the words with a horrible leer of cunning,
and hugged himself with his arms. To Wyley's thinking he was strung
almost to madness. "After his arms I built in his feet, and upwards
from his feet I built in his legs and his body until I came to his
neck. All this while he had been crying out for pity, babbling
prayers, and the rest of it. When I reached his neck he ceased his
clamour. I suppose he was dumb with horror. I did not know. All I knew
was that now I should have to meet his eyes as I built in his face.
I thought for a moment of blinding him. I could have done it quite
easily with a stone. I picked up a stone to do it, and then, well--I
could not help looking at him. He drew my eyes to his like a steel
filing to a magnet. And once I had looked, once I had heard his eyes
speaking, I--I tore down the stones. I freed his body, his legs, his
feet and one arm. When the guards noticed what I was doing I cannot
tell. I could not tell you when their sticks began to beat me. But
they dragged me away when I had freed only one arm. I remember seeing
him tugging at the other. What happened to me,"--he shivered,--"I
could not describe to you. But you see I had played the coward finely
at Mequinez, and when that question recurred to me as to what had
happened after I had opened the door, I began to wonder whether by any
chance I had played the coward at Tangier. I dismissed the thought as
a sickly fancy, but it came again and again; and I came back here, and
you draw aloof from me with averted faces and forced welcomes on your
lips. Did I play the coward on that night I was captured? Tell me!
Tell me!" And so the torrent of his speech came to an end.
The Major rose gravely from his seat, walked round the table and held
out his hand.
"Put your hand there, lad," he said gravely.
Knightley looked at the outstretched hand, then at the Major's face.
He took the hand diffidently, and the Major's grasp was of the
heartiest.
"Neither at Mequinez nor at Tangier did you play the coward," said the
Major. "You fell by my side in the van of the attack."
And then Knightley began to cry. He blubbered like a child, and with
his blubbering he mixed apologies. He was weak, he was tired, his
relief was too great; he was thoroughly ashamed.
"You see," he said, "there was need that I should know. My wife is
waiting for me. I could not go back to her bearing that stigma.
Indeed, I hardly dared ask news of her. Now I can go back; and,
gentlemen, I wish you good-night."
He stood up, made his bow, wiped his eyes, and began to walk to the
door. Scrope rose instantly.
"Sit down, Lieutenant," said the Major sharply, and Scrope obeyed with
reluctance.
The Major watched Knightley cross the room. Should he let the Ensign
go? Should he keep him? He could not decide. That Knightley would seek
his wife at once might of course have been foreseen; and yet it had
not been foreseen either by the Major or the others. The present
facts, as they had succeeded one after another had engrossed their
minds.
Knightley's hand was on the door, and the Major had not decided. He
pushed the door open, he set a foot in the passage, and then the roar
of a gun shook the room.
"Ah!" remarked Wyley, "the signal for your sortie."
Knightley stopped and listened. Major Shackleton stood in a fixed
attitude with his eyes upon the floor. He had hit upon an issue, it
seemed to him by inspiration. The noise of the gun was followed by ten
clear strokes of a bell.
"That's for the King's Battalion," said Knightley with a smile.
"Yes," said Tessin, and picking up his sword from a corner he slung
the bandolier across his shoulder.
The bell rang out again; this time the number of the strokes was
twenty.
"That's for my Lord Dunbarton's Regiment," said Knightley.
"Yes," said two of the remaining officers. They took their hats and
followed Captain Tessin down the stairs.
A third time the bell spoke, and the strokes were thirty.
"Ah!" said Knightley, "that's for the Tangier Foot. Well, good luck to
you, Major!" and he passed through the door.
"A moment, Knightley. The regiment first. You wear Ensign Barbour's
uniform. You must do more than wear his uniform. The regiment first."
Major Shackleton spoke in a husky voice and kept his eyes on the
floor. Scrope looked at him keenly from the table. Knightley hardly
looked at him at all. He stepped back into the room.
"With all my heart, Major: the regiment first."
"Your station is at Peterborough Tower. You will go there--at once."
"At once," replied Knightley cheerfully. "So she would wish," and he
went down the stairs into the street. Major Shackleton picked up his
hat.
"I command this sortie," he said to Wyley; but as he turned he found
himself confronted by Scrope.
"What do you intend?" asked Scrope.
Major Shackleton looked towards Wyley. Wyley understood the look and
also what Shackleton intended. He went from the room and left the two
men together.
The grey light poured through the window; the candles still burnt
yellow on the table.
"What do you intend?"
The Major looked Scrope straight in the face.
"I have heard a man speak to-night in a man's voice. I mean to do that
man the best service that I can. These two years at Mequinez cannot
mate with these two years at Tangier. Knightley knows nothing now; he
never shall know. He believes his wife a second Penelope; he shall
keep that belief. There is a trench--you called it very properly a
grave. In that trench Knightley will not hear though all Tangier
scream its gossip in his ears. I mean to give him his chance of
death."
"No, Major," cried Scrope. "Or listen! Give me an equal chance."
"Trelawney's Regiment is not called out. Again, Lieutenant, I fear me
you will have the harder part of it."
Shackleton repeated Scrope's own words in all sincerity, and hurried
off to his post.
Scrope was left alone in the guard-room. A vision of the trench,
twelve feet deep, eight yards wide, yawned before his eyes. He closed
them, but that made no difference; he still saw the trench. In
imagination he began to measure its width and depth. Then he shook his
head to rid himself of the picture, and went out on to the balcony.
His eyes turned instinctively to a house by the city wall, to a corner
of the _patio_ the house and the latticed shutter of a window just
seen from the balcony.
He stepped back into the room with a feeling of nausea, and blowing
out the candles sat down alone, in the twilight, amongst the empty
chairs. There were dark corners in the room; the broadening light
searched into them, and suddenly the air was tinged with warm gold.
Somewhere the sun had risen. In a little, Scrope heard a dropping
sound of firing, and a few moments afterwards the rattle of a volley.
The battle was joined. Scrope saw the trench again yawn up before his
eyes. The Major was right. This morning, again, Lieutenant Scrope had
the harder part of it.