Chantry's wonder grew, swelled, and burst.
"Do you mean to say that that safety-deposit vault of a Ferguson told
you all this?"
"As I am telling it to you. Only much more detail, of course--and much,
much faster. It wasn't like a story at all: it was like--like a
hemorrhage. I didn't interrupt him as you've been interrupting me. Well,
the upshot of it was that she spurned him quite in the grand manner. She
found the opposites of all the nice things she had been saying for six
months, and said them. And Ferguson--your cocky Ferguson--stood and
listened, until she had talked herself out, and then went away. He never
saw her again; and when he sent for me, he had made up his mind that
she never intended to take any of it back. So he stepped out, I tell
you."
"As hard hit as that," Chantry mused.
"Just as hard hit as that. Ferguson had had no previous affairs; she was
very literally the one woman; and he managed, at forty, to combine the
illusions of the boy of twenty and the man of sixty."
"But if he thought he was so precious to the world, wasn't it more than
ever his duty to preserve his existence? He could see other people die
in his place, but he couldn't see himself bucking up against a broken
heart. Isn't that what the strong man does? Lives out his life when he
doesn't at all like the look of it? Say what you like, he was a coward,
Havelock--at the last, anyhow."
"I won't ask for your opinion just yet, thank you. Perhaps if Ferguson
had been sure he would ever do good work again, he wouldn't have taken
himself off. That might have held him. He might have stuck by on the
chance. But I doubt it. Don't you see? He loved the girl too much."
"Thought he couldn't live without her," snorted Chantry.
"Oh, no--not that. But if she was right, he was the meanest skunk alive.
He owed the world at least two deaths, so to speak. The only approach
you can make to dying twice is to die in your prime, of your own
volition." Havelock spoke very slowly. "At least, that's the way I've
worked it out. He didn't say so. He was careful as a cat."
"You think"--Chantry leaned forward, very eager at last--"that he
decided she was right? That I'm right--that we're all of us right?"
Havelock the Dane bowed his head in his huge hands. "No. If you ask me,
I think he kept his own opinion untarnished to the end. When I told him
I thought he was right, he just nodded, as if one took that for granted.
But it didn't matter to him. I am pretty sure that he cared only what
_she_ thought."
"If he didn't agree with her? And if she had treated him like a
criminal? He must have despised her, in that case."
"He never said one word of her--bar quoting some of _her_ words--that
wasn't utterly gentle. You could see that he loved her with his whole
soul. And--it's my belief--he gave her the benefit of the doubt. In
killing himself, he acted on the hypothesis that she had been right. It
was the one thing he could do for her."
"But if no one except you thinks it was suicide--and you can't prove
it--"
"Oh, he had to take that chance--the chance of her never knowing--or
else create a scandal. And that would have been very hard on her and on
his family. But there were straws she could easily clutch at--as I have
clutched at them. The perfect order in which everything happened to be
left--even the last notes he had made. His laboratory was a scientist's
paradise, they tell me. And the will, made after she threw him over,
leaving everything to her. Not a letter unanswered, all little bills
paid, and little debts liquidated. He came as near suggesting it as he
could, in decency. But I dare say she will never guess it."
"Then what did it profit him?"
"It didn't profit him, in your sense. He took a very long chance on her
guessing. That wasn't what concerned him."
"I hope she will never guess, anyhow. It would ruin her life, to no good
end."
"Oh, no." Havelock was firm. "I doubt if she would take it that way. If
she grasped it at all, she'd believe he thought her right. And if he
thought her right, of course he wouldn't want to live, would he? She
would never think he killed himself simply for love of her."
"Why not?"
"Well, she wouldn't? She wouldn't be able to conceive of Ferguson's
killing himself merely for that--with _his_ notions about survival."
"As he did."
"As he did--and didn't."
"Ah, she'd scarcely refine on it as you are doing, Havelock. You're
amazing."
"Well, he certainly never expected her to know that he did it himself.
If he had been the sort of weakling that dies because he can't have a
particular woman, he'd have been also the sort of weakling that leaves a
letter explaining."
"What then did he die for? You'll have to explain to me. Not because he
couldn't have her; not because he felt guilty. Why, then? You haven't
left him a motive."
"Oh, haven't I? The most beautiful motive in the whole world, my dear
fellow. A motive that puts all your little simple motives in the shade."
"Well, what?"
"Don't you see? Why, I told you. He simply assumed, for all practical
purposes, that she had been right. He gave himself the fate he knew she
considered him to deserve. He preferred--loving her as he did--to do
what she would have had him do. He knew she was wrong; but he knew also
that she was made that way, that she would never be right. And he took
her for what she was, and loved her as she was. His love--don't you
see?--was too big. He couldn't revolt from her: she had the whole of
him--except, perhaps, his excellent judgment. He couldn't drag about a
life which she felt that way about. He destroyed it, as he would have
destroyed anything she found loathsome. He was merely justifying himself
to his love. He couldn't hope she would know. Nor, I believe, could he
have lied to her. That is, he couldn't have admitted in words that she
was right, when he felt her so absolutely wrong; but he could make that
magnificent silent act of faith."
Chantry still held out. "I don't believe he did it. I hold with the
coroner."
"I don't. He came as near telling me as he could without making me an
accessory before the fact. There were none of the loose ends that the
most orderly man would leave if he died suddenly. Take my word for it,
old man."
A long look passed between them. Each seemed to be trying to find out
with his eyes something that words had not helped him to.
Finally Chantry protested once more. "But Ferguson couldn't love like
that."
Havelock the Dane laid one hand on the arm of Chantry's chair and spoke
sternly. "He not only could, but did. And there I am a better authority
than you. Think what you please, but I will not have that fact
challenged. Perhaps you could count up on your fingers the women who are
loved like that; but, anyhow, she was. My second cousin once removed,
damn her!" He ended with a vicious twang.
"And now"--Havelock rose--"I'd like your opinion."
"About what?"
"Well, can't you see the beautiful sanity of Ferguson?"
"No, I can't," snapped Chantry. "I think he was wrong, both in the
beginning and in the end. But I will admit he was not a coward. I
respect him, but I do not think, at any point, he was right--except
perhaps in 'doing' the coroner."
"That settles it, then," said Havelock. And he started towards the door.
"Settles what, in heaven's name?"
"What I came to have settled. I shan't tell her. If I could have got one
other decent citizen--and I confess you were my only chance--to agree
with me that Ferguson was right,--right about his fellow passengers on
the _Argentina_, right about tow-head on the track,--I'd have gone to
her, I think. I'd rather like to ruin her life, if I could."
A great conviction approached Chantry just then. He felt the rush of it
through his brain.
"No," he cried. "Ferguson loved her too much. He wouldn't like that--not
as you'd put it to her."
Havelock thought a moment. "No," he said in turn; but his "no" was very
humble. "He wouldn't. I shall never do it. But, my God, how I wanted
to!"
"And I'll tell you another thing, too." Chantry's tone was curious. "You
may agree with Ferguson all you like; you may admire him as much as you
say; but you, Havelock, would never have done what he did. Not even"--he
lifted a hand against interruption--"if you knew you had the brain you
think Ferguson had. You'd have been at the bottom of the sea, or under
the engine wheels, and you know it."
He folded his arms with a hint of truculence.
But Havelock the Dane, to Chantry's surprise, was meek. "Yes," he said,
"I know it. Now let me out of here."
"Well, then,"--Chantry's voice rang out triumphant,--"what does that
prove?"
"Prove?" Havelock's great fist crashed down on the table. "It proves
that Ferguson's a better man than either of us. I can think straight,
but he had the sand to act straight. You haven't even the sand to think
straight. You and your reactionary rot! The world's moving, Chantry.
Ferguson was ahead of it, beckoning. You're an ant that got caught in
the machinery, I shouldn't wonder."
"Oh, stow the rhetoric! We simply don't agree. It's happened before."
Chantry laughed scornfully. "I tell you I respect him; but God Almighty
wouldn't make me agree with him."
"You're too mediæval by half," Havelock mused. "Now, Ferguson was a
knight of the future--a knight of Humanity."
"Don't!" shouted Chantry. His nerves were beginning to feel the strain.
"Leave chivalry out of it. The _Argentina_ business may or may not have
been wisdom, but it certainly wasn't cricket."
"No," said Havelock. "Chess, rather. The game where chance hasn't a
show--the game of the intelligent future. That very irregular and
disconcerting move of his.... And he got taken, you might say. She's an
irresponsible beast, your queen."
"Drop it, will you!" Then Chantry pulled himself together, a little
ashamed. "It's fearfully late. Better stop and dine."
"No, thanks." The big man opened the door of the room and rested a foot
on the threshold. "I feel like dining with some one who appreciates
Ferguson."
"I don't know where you'll find him." Chantry smiled and shook hands.
"Oh, I carry him about with me. Good-night," said Havelock the Dane.