"Il y a des hommes qu'on trompe, et d'autres qu'on trahit, en
accomplissant le même acte."
Richard Maule heard the door of his bedroom close behind Jane Oglander.
He had been so ailing the last day or two that he had been obliged to
stay upstairs with Dick's companionship as his only solace, and his
cousin had persuaded him to say good-bye to Jane there.
She was only going as far as the Small Farm, to look after Mabel Digby
who was ill. She would still be at Rede Place every day, but she was
old-fashioned and punctilious; she did not wish to leave Mr. Maule's
house without thanking him for his hospitality, not only to herself but
to General Lingard, who had been asked there for her sake.
She had come upstairs about six, already dressed in her outdoor things,
and Dick had left her for a few moments with Richard in order that she
might say good-bye.
The few moments had prolonged themselves into half an hour, only half an
hour, though the time had seemed a great deal longer to them both, and
then she had left him with a gentle "Good-bye, Richard."
As he stared at the door which she had closed quietly behind her,
Richard Maule wondered whether he would ever see her again. Indeed, he
was not sure that he wished ever to see Jane Oglander again.
He had stood up to bid his guest good-bye, but, though he felt weak and
a little dazed, he did not sit down again in his padded armchair near
the fire. Instead, he went over to a glass case where were kept a number
of fine old snuff-boxes collected by Theophilus Joy before there was a
craze for such things.
Opening the case, he brought out from the back a snuff-box which had an
interesting history. It was believed to have been a gift from Madame du
Barri to Louis the Fifteenth. It was of dull gold, embossed with
fleurs-de-lys.
Richard Maule's faithful valet thought he knew everything about his
master that there was to know, but there was one thing, a trifling
thing, that Mr. Maule had managed to keep entirely secret over many
years. It was an innocent, in fact a womanish secret; it was simply that
sometimes, not very often, he used a little rouge.
He kept the small supply he required, which lasted him a long time, in
the snuff-box he now held in his hand. This box possessed the rare
peculiarity of a false bottom.
What the careful valet never suspected, had naturally never entered into
Dick Wantele's mind. All he noted was that on certain occasions his
cousin was more flushed, and so looked in better health than usual.
Richard Maule's usual colouring was a curious chalky white, and those of
his visitors whose breeding was perhaps not quite so perfect as it might
have been, almost always commented, either to Mrs. Maule or to Dick
Wantele, on Mr. Maule's peculiar complexion.
He closed the glass case, and went over to a narrow mirror near the
fireplace. There, in a few moments, he achieved his very rudimentary
"make up" with the aid of a small piece of cotton-wool.
Yes--now he looked better; placing the snuff-box on the table which was
drawn up close to his chair, he rang, and then sat down.
He wished his man would come. He felt physically very uncomfortable and
oppressed. The talk with Jane Oglander had shaken him almost as much--he
was quite honest about the matter--as it had shaken her.
Poor Jane! Dick's pretty Jane! How strange that a woman like Athena
should possess the power of putting such a creature as was Jane Oglander
to torture.
Modern medical science has standardised the body much as mechanical
science has standardised the most intricate machinery. Richard Maule,
fortunate in a physician who kept in touch with every new discovery and
palliative, had it in his power to fit his physical self for any special
effort, especially if that effort were mental rather than physical.
The valet received careful instructions. Mr. Maule would rest both
before and after his light dinner, till ten o'clock. Then, and not
before, he would be glad to see Mr. Wantele. He felt, however, too far
from well to receive General Lingard, as he so often did for a few
moments in the evening.
Everything fell out as the master of Rede Place had ordained it should
do. With the help of certain colourless and odourless drops, he relieved
the oppression which was troubling him. He forced himself to eat more
than usual. He read with what seemed to him fresh zest an idyll of
Theocritus, and then he waited, doing nothing, his eyes on the door,
till he heard his kinsman's light, familiar step on the bare floor
outside.
* * * * *
Dick Wantele came into his cousin's bedroom very unwillingly. He
wondered why Jane had stayed so long with Richard. He feared she had
told him of her intention of breaking her engagement.
Wantele felt convinced that Richard Maule had seen nothing of the drama
which had been going on round him--though never actually in his
presence--during Lingard's long sojourn at Rede Place.
Every day Lingard spent about an hour with his invalid host, and Wantele
was aware that those hours had been very pleasant to Richard Maule. The
Greek Room had become a place where they all, with the exception of
Athena, had fled now and again as if into sanctuary. There Jane, so
Wantele had soon divined, spent her only peaceful moments, for her host
was very dependent on her; when with him, she played chess or read
aloud, always doing, in a word, something which perforce distracted her
mind from everything but the matter in hand.
But Richard Maule had been very unwell during the last few days;
compelled to take each night the opiate which was the one habit--the bad
habit--he and his wife had in common. Conversation after half-past nine
or ten o'clock, even of the mildest type, excited him, and gave him,
even with the aid of a powerful opiate, a restless, bad night. Why then
had he put off seeing Dick till ten o'clock?
The young man was in no mood to control himself, to assume the quiet,
equable manner he always assumed. The hour just spent with those
two,--with Athena and Lingard alone,--had tried his nerves.
Mr. Maule was dressed in the evening clothes he had put on early before
saying good-bye to Jane Oglander. It was a little matter, but it
surprised Wantele; his cousin, as a rule, was always eager to get into
the dressing-gown in which he lived when upstairs.
"I had an odd conversation with Jane this evening----"
Wantele nodded his head. Then it was as he had feared,--she had told
Richard.
"----and I wish to talk the matter over with you, Dick." He motioned
the younger man to sit down, and there was a long moment of silence
between them before he spoke again.
"Jane Oglander has got a very strange notion into her head; and I should
like to know if she said anything of it to you. Perhaps"--a slight smile
came over his unsmiling lips--"perhaps I ought not to call it Jane
Oglander's notion, it is evidently the notion--plot would be the better
name--of another person. Do you know anything of it, Dick?" He looked
fixedly at Wantele.
"No, Jane said nothing to me--nothing that could be described in the
terms you have used, Richard."
Wantele's face was overcast with an expression of anxiety and unease.
"Are you quite sure of that, Dick? I beg of you not to spare me."
"Quite sure, Richard."
"Jane seems to think----" Richard Maule was still looking at his cousin
intently, and Dick Wantele moved under that look uncomfortably in his
chair. "Jane seems to think," Mr. Maule repeated deliberately, "that it
would be possible for my marriage with Athena to be annulled. From what
I could make out, but Jane was--well, I'm afraid she was very much
distressed at proposing such a thing to me,--she evidently thinks I
ought to free my wife, that is my duty to make it possible, in fact, for
Athena to start afresh--to marry again."
"Good God!"
"Yes, it's an odd notion--a very odd suggestion to come from a nice
young woman. And it gratifies me to see that you too are surprised,
Dick." There was an edge of irony in his low, tired voice. "I was very
much surprised myself--surprised, first, that the notion had never
before presented itself to Athena's active brain; and even more
surprised," he spoke more slowly and all the irony was gone, "that the
suggestion should have come in any way through Jane Oglander."
Dick Wantele turned deliberately away and stared into the fire.
"I did not explain to her that what she was good enough to suggest was
quite--well, impossible. That she had been, to put it crudely,
misinformed."
Dick Wantele stared at his cousin. "You did _not_ explain that to her,
Richard?"
"No, I wished to consult you about the matter, and hear what you had to
say. The scheme of course originated with Athena. Our English marriage
laws make life very difficult to the sort of woman I have the honour to
have for my wife."
The other made no answer.
"You never even suspected that such a plot was in the hatching?"
insisted Richard Maule. "I want a true answer, mind!"
Dick Wantele got up from his chair. He put his hand on the back of it
and stared down into his cousin's face.
"Once, many years ago, Athena spoke to me as if such a thing would be
possible," he said.
He never lied, he never had lied--in words--to Richard Maule, and he was
not going to begin now.
"You mean in Italy, when I was ill?"
Wantele nodded his head, and then he felt gripped--in the throes of a
horrible fear. It was as if a pit had suddenly opened between his cousin
and himself, between the man whom he loved,--whose affection and respect
he wished above all things to retain, for they were all that remained to
him,--and his miserable self. He wondered whether the secret thing he
feared showed itself in his face.
Richard Maule slowly got up. Wantele made an instinctive movement to
help him, but the other waved him off, not unkindly, but a little
impatiently.
"Dick?" he said. "My boy, I want to ask you a question--an indiscreet
question. You need not answer it, but if you answer it, please answer it
truly."
Wantele opened his mouth and then closed it again. He could not think of
the words with which to entreat the other man to desist----
Richard Maule, looking at him, knew the answer to his question before he
had uttered it, but even so he spoke, obsessed by the cruel wish _to
know_.
"In Italy----?" His voice sank to a muffled whisper, but he did not
take his eyes, his suffering, sunken eyes, from Wantele's tortured face.
Still the other did not--could not--speak.
"I knew it. At least I felt sure of it." He sighed a quick convulsive
sigh, and then in mercy averted his eyes.
"But never here?" he muttered questioningly. "Everything was over by the
time we came back here?"
"Yes, Richard. I swear it."
"I knew that too--at least I felt sure of it. I'm afraid you must have
suffered a good bit, Dick?"
The younger man nodded his head. "I have loathed and I have despised
myself ever since."
"I'm sorry you did that. I'm sorry I waited till now to tell you that I
knew, that I understood."
"How you must have hated me!" said Wantele sombrely.
"Never, Dick. I--I knew her by then. If you had been the first"--he
quickly amended his phrase--"if I had been fool enough to believe you
were the first, I think it would have killed me. As it was," his voice
hardened, "it only made me curse myself for my blind folly--folly which
brought wretchedness and shame on you, Dick, and--and now, I fear, on
Jane Oglander"--he saw the confirmation he sought on the other's face.
"It's about Jane I wish to speak to you to-night. For a moment I ask of
you to think of me as God----"
Wantele stared at Richard Maule; it was the first time his cousin had
ever uttered the word in his presence.
"If I were God--Providence--Fate--and gave you your choice, would you
choose that Lingard should marry Jane or that you should marry her?"
And as Wantele still stared at him in amazement: "Take it from me--I
have never deceived you--that the choice is open to you. I don't wish to
hurry you. Take a few moments to think it over."
"I--I don't understand," stammered Wantele.
"There is no necessity for you to understand. In fact I hope that, after
to-night, you will dismiss the whole of this conversation from your
mind. But I repeat--the choice is open to you."
And he added, musingly, "I think, Dick, that with the others out of the
way you could make Jane happy--in time." But there was doubt--painful,
deliberating doubt, in his tone.
Wantele shook his head.
"I don't agree," he said shortly. "You see, Richard, Jane"--he moistened
his lips--"Jane's never loved me. She loves Lingard. And so, if God gave
me the choice, I would give her to Lingard."
"You think well of the man?" Maule spoke lightly, and as if he himself
had no reason to dissent from any word commending the soldier.
"You mustn't ask me to judge Lingard"--the words were difficult to
utter, and he brought them out with difficulty. "I've been there, you
see. I know what the poor devil's going through. I loved you,
Richard--but that didn't save me. Lingard loved Jane, I believe he still
loves her, and--and I should take him to be a man jealous of his
honour--but neither his love nor his honour has saved him."
Wantele began walking up and down the room with long nervous strides.
Then he stopped short--"What is it you mean to do, Richard?" he asked.
Richard Maule hesitated. He knew very well what he now meant to do, but
he did not intend that his cousin should have any inkling, either now or
hereafter, of his decision. And Dick, as he knew well, was not easily
deceived. Still, he put his mind, the mind which was in some ways
clearer, harder, than it had been before his illness, to the task.
"There are three courses open to me," he said slowly. "The one is to
allow matters to remain as they are, _in statu quo_; the second is to do
what Jane Oglander suggests--allow my wife to bring a suit for the
dissolution of our marriage, and to allow it to go undefended--it is
that which I should have done, Dick, had your answer been other than it
was."
"And the third course?" Wantele was looking at his cousin fixedly.
"The third course, which I may probably adopt, will be for me to begin
proceedings for divorce. I take it that Lingard knows nothing of the
real woman? I mean, he looks at Athena as she looks at herself?"
Wantele nodded. That was certainly a good way in which to describe
Lingard's mental attitude.
"But I have not quite made up my mind as to the best course," said
Richard Maule. "I shall think the matter over for a day or two. But I
fear--and I don't mind telling you, Dick, that the thought isn't exactly
a pleasant one to me--that it must be what I said just now."
He beckoned to the other to come nearer, and Wantele did so, his pale
face full of pain and anger.
"I want you to understand," his cousin added, in a low voice, "that when
I've said that I've said all. The business won't affect me as it would
most men. I never gave a thought to the world's opinion in old days, and
why should I do so now?"
He spoke hesitatingly, awkwardly. It was disagreeable to him to be thus
lying to his cousin--to be filling the heart of the man who loved him
with a flood of indignant pity and pain. But the tragi-comedy had to be
played out.
"I shall really feel very much more comfortable when it's all over," he
said. "I don't fancy even lawyers waste as much time as they used to do
over this kind of thing. And this case is so simple, so straightforward.
I shall be sorry for the Kayes. But they must have known it. I fancy
everybody in this neighbourhood knew it. People will pity Athena; they
will agree that she had every excuse----"
He leant back in his chair. There was nothing more to say.
"Shall I call Carver?" asked Wantele solicitously.
"No. Not now. But I should be obliged if you will tell him that I shall
want him in an hour. I shall try and read for a while by the fire."
* * * * *
Richard Maule waited till he heard the sounds of his cousin's quick
footsteps die away. Then he rose feebly and walked over to the recess
which had been fitted up as a medicine cupboard in the days of his
childhood, when drugs were more the fashion than they are now.
In a wide-necked, glass-stoppered bottle were the crystals of chloral
which he had long used in preference to the more usual liquid form. He
knew to a nicety the dose which he himself could take with safety, the
dose which sometimes failed to induce sleep.
He now measured out in his hand some three times his usual dose.
Had Dick Wantele's answer been different, Richard Maule would have
administered to himself the crystals he now held in his hand. But Dick's
decision--what the man of average morality would have regarded as his
noble and unselfish decision--had signed another human being's
death-warrant.
The thought that this was so suddenly struck Richard Maule as the most
ironic of the many avenging things he had known to happen in our strange
world. And, almost for the first time since he had formed his awful
conception of the meaning of life, he knew the cruel joy of laughing
with the gods, instead of writhing under their lash.
As he shook the crystals into an envelope and slipped it into his
waistcoat pocket, he told himself that revenge was at last to be his.
The gods were yielding him one of their most cherished attributes.