J'ACCUSE!
“Of course, there could be but one ending to it all. The man to whom
you have promised yourself--Garth Trent--was court-martialled and
cashiered.”
As she finished speaking, Elisabeth's hands, which had been tightly
locked together upon her knee, relaxed and fell stiffly apart, cramped
with the intensity of their convulsive pressure.
Sara sat silent, staring with unseeing eyes across the familiar bay to
that house on the cliff where lived the man whose past history--that
history he had guarded so strenuously and completely from the ears of
their little world--had just been revealed to her.
Mentally she was envisioning the whole scene of the story which
hesitatingly--almost unwilling, it seemed--Elisabeth had poured out. She
could see the lonely fort on the Indian Frontier, sparsely held by its
indomitable little band of British soldiers, and ringed about on every
side by the hill tribes who had so suddenly and unexpectedly risen in
open rebellion. In imagination she could sense the hideous tension as
day succeeded day and each dawning brought no sign of the longed-for
relief forces. Indeed, it was not even known if the messengers sent by
the officer in command had got safely through to the distant garrison to
deliver his urgent message asking succour. And each evening found
those who were besieged within the fort with diminished rations, and
diminished hope, and with one or more dead to mark the enemy's unceasing
vigilance.
And then had come the mysterious apparent withdrawal of the tribesmen.
For hours no sign of the enemy had been seen, nor a single fugitive
shot fired when one or other of the besieged had risked themselves at
an unguarded aperture, whereas, until that morning, for a man to show
himself, even for a moment, had been to court almost certain death.
Could the rebels have received word of the approach of a relieving
force, whispers of a punitive expedition on its way, and so stolen
stealthily, discreetly away in the silence of the night?
The hearts of the little beleaguered force rose high with hope, but
again morning drew to evening without bringing sight or sound of
succour. Only the enemy persisted in that strange, unbroken silence,
and, at last, a hasty council of war was held within the fort, and
Garth Trent, together with a handful of men, had been detailed to make a
reconnaissance.
Sara could picture the little party stealing out on their dangerous
errand--dangerous, indeed, if the withdrawal of the tribesmen were but
a bluff, a scheme devised to lull the besieged into a false sense of
security in order to attack them later at a greater disadvantage. And
then--the sudden spit of a rifle, a ringing fusillade of shots in the
dense darkness! The reconnaissance party had run into an ambuscade!
Sara could guess well the frayed nerves, the low vitality of men who
were short of food, short of sleep, and worn with incessant watching
night and day. But--Could it be possible that Englishmen had flinched
at the crucial moment--lost their nerve and fled in wild disorder?
Englishmen--who held the sacred trust of empire in their hands--to show
the white feather to a horde of rebel natives! It was inconceivable!
Sara, reared in the great tradition by that gallant gentleman, Patrick
Lovell, refused to credit it.
She drew a long, shuddering breath.
“I don't believe it,” she said.
Elisabeth looked at her with a pitying comprehension of the blow she had
just dealt her.
“I'm afraid,” she said gently, almost deprecatingly, “that there is no
questioning the finding of the court-martial. Garth must have lost
his head at the unexpectedness of the attack. And panic is a curious,
unaccountable kind of thing, you know.”
“I don't believe it,” reiterated Sara stubbornly.
Elisabeth bent forward.
“My dear,” she said, “there is no possibility of doubt. Garth was
wounded; they brought him in afterwards--_shot in the back_! . . . Oh!
It was all a horrible business! And the most wretched part of it all was
that in reality they were only a few stray tribesmen whom our men had
encountered. Perhaps Garth thought they were outnumbered--I don't know.
But anyway, coming on the top of all that had gone before, the surprise
attack in the darkness broke his nerve completely. He didn't even
attempt to make a stand. He simply gave way. What followed was just a
headlong scramble as to who could save his skin first! I shall never
forget Garth's return after--after the court-martial.” She shuddered a
little at the memory. “I--I was engaged to him at the time, Sara, and I
had no choice but to break it off. Garth was cashiered--disgraced--done
for.”
Sara's drooping figure suddenly straightened.
“_You--you_--were engaged to Garth?” she said in a queer, high voice.
“Yes”--simply. “I had promised to marry him.”
Sara was silent for a long moment. Then--
“He never told me,” she muttered. “He never told me.”
“No? It was hardly likely he would, was it? He couldn't tell you that
without telling you--the rest.”
Sara made no answer. She felt stunned--beaten into helpless silence
by the quiet, inexorable voice that, bit by bit, minute by minute,
had drawn aside the veil of ignorance and revealed the dry bones and
rottenness that lay hidden behind it.
“I don't believe it!” she had cried in a futile effort to convince
herself by the sheer reiteration of denial. But she _did_ believe it,
nevertheless. The whole miserable story tallied too accurately with the
bitterly significant remarks that Garth himself had let fall from time
to time.
That day of the dog-fight, for instance. What was it he had said? “_A
certain amount of allowance must be made for nerves_.”
And again: “_I suppose no man can be dead sure of himself--always_.”
The implication was too horribly clear to be evaded.
He had told her, moreover, that he was a man who had made a shipwreck of
his life, that in a moment of folly--a moment of funk she knew now to be
the veridical description!--he had flung away the whole chances of
his life. The man whom she had loved, and, in her love, idealized, had
proved himself, when the test came, that most despicable of things, a
coward! The pain of realization was almost unbearable.
Suddenly, across the utter desolation of the moment there shot a single
ray of hope. She turned triumphantly to Elisabeth.
“But if it were true that Garth--had shown cowardice, why was he not
shot? They shoot men for cowardice”--grimly.
“There are many excuses to be made for him, Sara,” replied Elisabeth
gently.
“Excuses! For cowardice!” The low-spoken words were icy with a biting
contempt. “I'm afraid I could not find them.”
“The court-martial did, nevertheless. At the trial, the 'prisoner's
friend'--in this instance, Garth's colonel, who was very fond of him
and had always thought very highly of him--pleaded extenuating
circumstances. Garth's youth, his previous good record, the conditions
of the moment--the continuous mental and physical strain of the days
preceding his sudden loss of nerve--all these things were urged by
the 'prisoner's friend,' and the sentence was commuted to one of
cashiering.”
“It would have been better if he had been shot,” said Sara dully. Then
suddenly she clapped both hands to her mouth. “Ah--h! What am I saying?
Garth! . . . Garth! . . .”
She stumbled to her feet, her white, ravaged face turned for a moment
yearningly towards Far End, where it stood bathed in the mocking morning
sunlight. Then she spun half-round, groping for support, and fell in a
crumpled heap on the floor.
When Sara came to herself again, she was lying on the bed in Elisabeth's
room at the hotel. Some one had drawn the blinds, shutting out the crude
glare of the sunlight, and in the semi-darkness she could feel soft
hands about her, bathing her face with something fragrantly cool and
refreshing. She opened her eyes and looked up to find Elisabeth's face
bent over her--unspeakably kind and tender, like that of some Madonna
brooding above her child.
“Are you feeling better?” The sweet, familiar voice roused her to the
realization of what had happened. It was the same voice that, before
unconsciousness had wrapped her in its merciful oblivion, had been
pouring into her ears an unbelievably hideous story--a nightmare tale of
what had happened at some far distant Indian outpost.
The details of the story seemed to be all jumbled confusedly together in
Sara's mind, but, as gradually full consciousness returned, they began
to sort themselves and fall into their rightful places, and all at once,
with a swift and horrible contraction of her heart, the truth knocked at
the door of memory.
She struggled up on to her elbow, her eyes frantically appealing.
“Elisabeth, was it true? Was it--all true?”
In an instant Elisabeth's hand closed round hers.
“My dear, you must try and face it. And”--her voice shook a little--“you
must try and forgive me for telling you. But I couldn't let you marry
Garth Trent in ignorance, could I?”
“Then it is true? Garth was court-martialled and--and cashiered?” Sara
sank back against her pillows. Still, deep within her, there flickered
a faint spark of hope. Against all reason, against all common sense the
faith that was within her fought against accepting the bitter knowledge
that Garth was guilty of what was in her eyes the one unpardonable sin.
Unpardonable! The word started a new and overwhelming train of thought.
She remembered that she had told Garth she did not care what sin he had
been guilty of, had forced him to believe that nothing could make any
difference to her love for him, to her willingness to become his wife,
and share his burden. Yet now, now that the hidden thing in his life
had been revealed to her, she found herself shrinking from it in utter
loathing! Her promises of faith and loyalty were already crumbling under
the strain of her knowledge of the truth.
She flinched from the recognition of the fact, seeking miserably
to palliate and excuse it. When she had given Garth that impetuous
assurance of her confidence, she had not, in her crudest imaginings,
dreamed of anything so hideous and ignoble as the actual truth had
proved to be. Vaguely, she had deemed him outcast for some big, reckless
sin that by the splendour of its recklessness almost earned its own
forgiveness.
And instead--_this_! This drab-hued, pitiful weakness for which she
could find no pardon in her heart.
Through the turmoil of her thoughts she became conscious that Elisabeth
was stooping over her, answering her wild incredulous questioning.
“Yes, it is true,” she was saying steadily. “He was court-martialled and
cashiered. But, if you still doubt it, ask him yourself, Sara.”
Sara's hands clenched themselves. Her eyes were feverishly brilliant in
her white, shrunken face.
“Yes, I'll ask him myself.” She panted a little. “You must be
wrong--there must be some horrible mistake somewhere. I've been mad--mad
to believe it for a single moment.” She slipped from the bed to her
feet, and stood confronting Elisabeth with a kind of desperate defiance.
“Do you hear what I say?” she said loudly. “I don't believe it. I will
never believe it till Garth himself tells me that it is true.”
“Oh, my dear”--Elisabeth shrank away a little, but her eyes were kind
and infinitely pitying. Sara felt frightened of the pitying kindness in
those eyes--its rejection of Garth's innocence was so much stronger than
any asseveration of mere words. Vaguely she heard Elisabeth's patient
voice: “I think you are right. Ask him yourself--but, Sara, he will not
be able to deny it.”