"Oh, yes I will, Wah-na-gi; yes I will. I couldn't stay away. It's in
my blood. I love this desolate land. It's my land. I love these
people. They are my people. McShay is here; Bill is here; John McCloud
is here; my mother is here; you are here. I couldn't stay away."
"If you do come back," said John McCloud with his eyes filled with
tears, "you must bring this Indian woman clean hands and a pure heart.
Promise me that."
"I'll do that or I won't come back; so help me God."
Upon the hands of the two men clasped in solemn pledge rested the small
brown hand of Wah-na-gi.
John McCloud turned away to hide the emotion that was mastering him.
Hal took the girl in his arms, held her long to his breast, then put her
at arms' length and, looking into her eyes, said through his own tears:
"I'm coming back, Wah-na-gi, dear; I'm coming back."
[Illustration: "I'm coming back, Wah-na-gi, dear; I'm coming back."]
Bill stood by with the horse. Hal leaped into the saddle.
"Explain it to the boys," he said to McCloud simply. Once more the girl
went to him as if she would drag him from the saddle. He leaned down
and kissed her and whispered "I'm coming back." Then he put spurs to
his horse, and was off.
No one who has not lived on a ranch or in the wilderness apart can ever
know what it is--the solemn aching void left by the one who goes away.
Hal turned as he reached the hill before descending into the Bad Lands
and waved his sombrero to them. Wah-na-gi was standing on the rock,
Nat-u-ritch's gravestone, to get the last glimpse of him. Bill and
McCloud were standing below. She stood there looking, looking, long
after he had disappeared. They had to lift her gently down. Still she
stood looking, looking.
"He's gone, Wah-na-gi, child," said John McCloud gently.
"Will he come back?" she said.
*CHAPTER XVII*
It is a trying moment when we face the wrong answer and realize that we
must go back step by step to find the mistake. There is a fascination
about the unknown. The future beckons.
Marching always onward, our courage each day finds an uplift in
accomplishment. We are farther ahead if only a few inches. Incredible
hardships and difficulties are put to flight.
Retracing one's steps, going back, requires more bravery than to go on.
Initial enthusiasm looks like a grinning skeleton. It is not the same
army in retreat. Doubt, despair hang on its flanks, worry and harass it
all the bleeding way.
The moment Hal had decided to go back to England the necessary
intermediate processes seemed wholly inadequate. He almost killed a
good horse to reach Carbon on the D.&R.G. Railroad, only to find that he
had eight hours to wait in that unmitigated by-product of civilization.
They were eight heavy, heavy hours. He walked about the station, he
gazed at the sage-brush and the water-tank, he went in and out of the
"hotel," he attempted unsuccessfully to eat its so-called food, he tried
to read its magazines six months old. The only possible object of
interest was a very painful object. In the shade of one corner of the
veranda on a stretcher lay a coal miner who had been hurt in the
company's mines. His breast was heaving as if the life within him was
struggling to get out. He was being removed to the company's hospital
at Pedro. He had to wait for the train too, and it looked as if his
impatient life refused to wait.
The few people in the desolate spot were fortunately busy or they would
have gone mad. So no one paid any attention to the sufferer.
"Some people are unlucky, born that way," explained the young company
doctor who had the dying man in charge. "Larry's just out of the
hospital, and now he's goin' back--to stay this time, I guess."
It seemed to Hal as if he, too, were carrying is maimed life back on a
stretcher, but he resisted the suggestion that it was to stay.
At last the train, late as usual, arrived. It was a relief at first.
At least it was in motion, and he was going, even if it was backward.
He was so preoccupied that it was some time before he was conscious of
his fellow-passengers; then he felt rather than saw that he was being
elaborately searched, optically swept, marked and staked out; coaxed,
petted, and allured. He looked across to see a formidable person of the
female sex who was half-pretending to read a book under the solicitous
title "Stolen Kisses." This person seemed the last word in modern
fixtures. An elaborate baby face peered out from under an elaborate hat
of huge dimensions, ornamented with an elaborate mixture of flowers,
fruit, and fur. Her face had had elaborate treatment. She wore an
elaborate gown with a wholly unnecessary wrap. She had on
patent-leather shoes with white cloth tops and exaggerated French heels,
and occasionally she unconsciously treated the patient observer to a
glimpse of an elaborate silk stocking. Except for the hat, it looked to
be a case of tight-fit. Indeed, she seemed a physical and moral protest
against restrictions.
"One of the products of John McCloud's 'glorious civilization,'"
commented Hal to himself as he got up and retreated to his own car.
From which it may be observed that the young man was not in a mood to be
altogether fair to civilization or John McCloud. He sat down at the
window but he did not see the telegraph poles flying past or the varying
monotony of the landscape rushing by. Each revolution of the wheels was
taking him farther and farther from Red Butte Ranch. What were they
doing there now--Wah-na-gi, John McCloud, Big Bill, and the others? She
was no longer at the Agency and the victim of the deviltry of David Ladd
and Appah. She was among friends. That was some consolation, much
consolation. And the time would pass; then he would be going the other
way, going back to pick up his life where he had now dropped it. He
wondered at what time of day he would arrive, whether he should notify
them or surprise them. Yes, the time would pass. London wouldn't keep
him long. Edith would be glad to release him. He felt absolutely
confident of that, and yet there was a shadow over all his thoughts. He
had a curious unreasonable foreboding of ill. What could happen? Then
he became aware that some one was speaking to him. Would the gentleman
care to make up a bridge party?
The invitation came to him from one of his fellow-travellers and it
seemed a refuge from his thoughts, so Hal was glad to play. It would
force him to think of other things. He played and lost quite a tidy sum
of money before it came to him that he was being exploited by unfair
means.
Having virtuously resolved to do what was right and much against his
will, he had a feeling that the way ought to be made smooth and easy.
Civilization had never been fair to him, and his return to it was
evidently not to be strewn with flowers. He began to grow morose.
He found on picking up a newspaper that he would have two days in New
York before his ship sailed, and he determined to spend those days in
Washington. He had Ladd on the run. He must see to it that he wasn't
allowed to stop short of losing his official head. He had offered to go
to Washington at any time to substantiate his charges, and now Ladd was
to face an investigation. The papers he had in his possession would go
far to establish the agent's connection with the Trust and other papers
he possessed would convict him of malfeasance in office. These papers
were high explosives and had to be handled with the greatest care, for
they involved not only Ladd but officials high in Government circles,
and some leaders in Congress and in both of the political parties.
Hal's train arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York at night.
He took a cab and ordered the driver to drive to the Hotel Astor. The
direct road to the hotel was of course through Forty-second street,
which was obviously slow and difficult of negotiation, and the situation
seemed to offer an inducement to go a roundabout way with the amiable
intention of boosting the fare. It was a trick with which the proposed
victim was familiar, and he resolved that while consenting to the extra
ride he would resist any effort to collect an extra fare. It was
election night, and as soon as the cab hit Broadway it was caught in a
whirlpool of humanity. It could neither go on nor go back.
The great city seemed to have resolved itself into a vast lunatic asylum
and to have emptied all the patients into the streets. The incoherent
maniacs seemed to be enjoying themselves and to be on the whole
good-natured. In its gentlest moments New York is a noisy place, but to
the ordinary din of traffic, the sag and smash of trucks, the rush and
roar of the elevated on its iron bed was added an indescribable
cacophony that was fiendish. Election night with its liberty and
license--Hooligan's holiday! It seemed to Hal that he had never seen so
many unpleasant faces in such a short distance or in so short a time.
The sweat-shops seemed to have emptied into the streets, and the
Tenderloin, and the submerged wreckage of the Bowery. They were mauling
each other, jostling, joking, babbling, hurrahing, hardly knowing for
whom or what, blowing fierce blasts on tin horns, ringing clusters of
cow-bells, pulling fantastic shrieks out of motor sirens, whirring
gigantic rattles--all struggling to see who could make the biggest
noise. Women seemed more elated with the spirit of the occasion than
men, and they evoked the attentions of strangers without the ceremony of
an introduction. The interchange of pleasantries was sometimes marked
by freedom and abandon. To Hal just from a country where it was
possible to be for days and weeks without the sight of a human being,
this seething, writhing mass of humanity, rubbing up against each other,
jostling, pulling at each other, handling each other, bawling into each
other's faces, was supremely obnoxious. His cab caught in the
slow-moving swirl was a fine temptation to horse-play. As he leaned out
of one window to try to understand the unusual tumult a vivacious young
woman leaned in at the other window and blew a megaphonic tin horn
directly into his ear. It seemed as if it would rip the drum of the
ear. A greasy-faced urchin blew an expanding and suggestive-looking toy
into his face. A buxom Amazon leaned in, gave his necktie a jerk, and
screamed through her nose: "Why, sweetheart! I didn't know you was
back!"
Other enthusiasts threw confetti over him.
This was civilization's welcome to him! He tried to take it
good-naturedly but upon his face was a fixed look of disgust.
The cab got ahead a few feet at a time, then stopped in another block,
and he went through the felicitations of these joyous citizens all over
again. To his immense relief they at last reached the hotel. Here at
last was a haven of refuge. How much was it, he inquired of the cabbie.
"Ten dollars!"
Hal smiled incredulously. He invited the jehu to guess again, to think
it over. That worthy reminded him that it was election night, which was
put forward as an argument that was in its nature unassailable. Hal
patiently explained that he didn't see why he personally should pay five
or six times the price because some one had been elected governor of a
State which apparently stood in sore need of government. He reminded
the obstinate and aggressive person that it was not over half a mile
from the station to the hotel and one dollar was ample--two extravagant.
He offered to compromise on two. This was received with profuse
profanity of a highly inflammable character. In the interstices between
expletives were interjected various allusions to the hours it had taken
to go the half-mile, to the fact that the cab was scratched, that the
horse's life had been endangered, and other more or less irrelevant
matters. Hal thought he saw the cab-person signal to a police-person
standing a little behind him. Finally the gathering waters of
affliction broke and poured forth in righteous wrath. Hal stated with
picturesque additions that the man was a crook and a thief.
The burly brute tried to strike the young man with the butt end of his
loaded whip. Hal avoided the blow and caught the man square on the jaw,
and he went down for the count.
That was all Hal knew until he came back to consciousness in a police
cell. It was a very painful consciousness, associated with bandages, a
head bursting with pain, and most unpleasant surroundings. Then little
by little he came to a vague realization of what had happened. He was
practically a stranger in New York. To whom could he turn? He was a
British subject. Perhaps he could communicate with the representatives
of His Majesty's Government.
In addition to having been very thoroughly beaten, he found that he had
been very thoroughly robbed. It was therefore with some difficulty that
he could persuade his jailer to communicate with the British Consulate.
The promise of a considerable reward finally held out inducements.
Fortunately for the prisoner, the British Vice-Consul, Mr. Percy Holmes
Tracy, proved to be an old friend of his father's family. Mr. Tracy
supplied the prisoner with immediate funds and bestirred himself in his
behalf. He found that Hal was accused of being drunk and disorderly,
resisting arrest, and striking an officer. Fortunately for the prisoner,
Mr. Tracy found that the hotel detective had been a witness of the
brutal assault. The detective told the Vice-Consul that the policemen's
use of the night-stick was totally unprovoked and unnecessary, that Hal
did not resist arrest, that he had no chance to do so, that the
policeman and cab-driver were pals who had been suspected of "working
together" before, etc., etc. Hal expressed the enthusiastic desire to
"make it warm" for all concerned, to have the policeman "broke," etc.,
etc. All of which Mr. Tracy admitted to be a perfectly natural and
justifiable feeling, but he reminded the young man that it would be a
somewhat tedious and exacting undertaking. How much time was he willing
to devote to it? Could he stay and give it his undivided attention?
No, he could not. In fact he was due to sail at once for London. Ah,
well, that was another matter, was it not? Under the circumstances it
was Mr. Holmes Tracy's advice to pocket his losses, swallow his pride,
smother his indignation, and set it down to valuable experience. It
would have been cheaper to have paid the ten dollars. These are some of
the disadvantages of a highly organized society. And so it happened
that the man who had, single-handed, arrested desperadoes in a country
where men carry a gun and know how to use it, was made the foolish
victim of the polished machinery of "a highly organized society."
Mr. Holmes Tracy's advice was too obviously wise to be ignored.
Confronted with the hotel detective the police-grafter was glad to
withdraw his charge, with the understanding that no countercharges
should be preferred against him. It wasn't altogether satisfying.
Community life was a series of compromises; its law expediency.
The two days Hal had intended to spend in Washington had been spent in
prison. Perhaps he was safer there. He and civilization had never been
friends. Hal welcomed his escape from New York. He was glad to get out
of her canyons and pigeon-holes into the light and air. He was glad to
reach the boat. When he left London and had turned his face to the West
there had seemed a conspiracy to help him on. The winds and waves had
romped about him in the sunshine, and hope and joy sang in his heart.
He had not felt lonely, but a great content had brooded over him. Now
the elements frowned on him. Head winds blew a hurricane the whole way
over. Huge waves smote the ship and shook her angrily. Now she rode
them down, now shouldered them aside, now cut her way through them, then
bowed her head to the blow, shook herself free, throbbing, quivering in
every joint, every muscle and nerve and sinew of her crying out against
the incessant wear and tear of it. And over all brooded a sky of
fleeing gray and black demons. Not a ray of sunlight crept through the
clouds. The voyage was a nightmare. Wind and wave were screaming to
him to go back; trying to force him back. He was ill and frightfully
depressed. He was as eager almost to get out of the ship as if Love's
welcome waited for him; as it seemed to do for all but him. But it was
scarcely better on shore. He rode up to London in a cold drenching
rain. The land looked old, tired, and discouraged. And London!--this
Mecca of the exiled Briton. How many hearts turn to it in far
off-India, China, Australia, Canada, and the waste places of the earth!
How many eager eyes look back to it or look forward to it! What
memories it holds for those who know in their souls they can never see
it again, and what radiant visions it offers to those who sweat and save
and suffer and perhaps lie and steal that one day they may come back to
it, and bring it the tribute of their blood and treasure. London is
compelling like some great sad song that tells of sorrows and wrongs.
But it had no message and no welcome to this returning pilgrim. Before
they reached the city they rode out of the rain and into one of those
fogs which creeps out of its tombs and graveyards and buried horrors,
and tries to materialize itself and once more take possession of the
actual life of the city.
Hal took a cab and they began to grope their way toward his father's
town house. Even in his thought he didn't call it home. Oh for the
land of sunshine, he thought, where one can look into the infinite sky,
and beyond and beyond and still beyond. Here he felt as if he were
knocking his head against it. One didn't breathe; one swallowed the air
in chunks and gulps. They almost rode down a procession of the
unemployed, an army with banners, but an army with none of the pride,
pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. Hal shrank back in his cab and
shivered in his great-coat. Their banners were dirty, but it was
evident that each soldier of despair had made some little effort with
bad success to make as decent an appearance in the public eye as
possible. They were a sad lot with their gaunt faces and soiled and
tattered clothes. They were of all ages and states of desperation, from
the young mechanic with youth and health still left, to the wretch who
had been submerged, who couldn't work if it were given him to do, fit
only to fertilize the soil. Hal's cabman lost his way for a moment and
they got into Hyde Park. One of its orators was about to dismiss his
small audience because he could scarcely see or be seen by them as they
huddled close to him and to each other, and the speaker complained that
the fog got into his throat and wellnigh choked him. Hal called to his
driver to stop and they drew up to the curb. Hal was not unfamiliar
with the Hyde Park meetings and their speakers, but never in his life
before had he stopped to listen. It was an admirable safety-valve where
cranks could talk to cranks. That they had or could have any message to
him or for the world had never entered his mind. The unemployed had
impressed him painfully. They were wandering hopelessly up and down
crying in unison: "Work, work! We want work." This dull cry and their
faces peering at him out of clammy shadows and yellow smears had got on
his nerves. He was curious to hear what the orator of such people had
to say on such a day.
"One moment and I'll close. You think I'm a layin' of it on, that I'm a
makin' it up, but I 'old in my 'and a report of Lord George 'amilton,
Royal Commissioner, on the condition of the English poor, and these is
_'is_ words, not mine, _'is_, moind ye.
"The conditions of life in London and other large cities 'ave produced a
degenerate race, morally and physically enfeebled."
Hal drove on. When he reached his father's house there was a new
servant at the door and he had to explain who he was. This was the
glorious civilization he was coming back to. This was its welcome to
him! Oh, John McCloud! Is this your Christian civilization?
*CHAPTER XVIII*
The Earl of Kerhill's town house was plain and formal on the outside.
Within, it was beautiful, but cold and stately. Even the arrangement of
its contents was apparently fixed and unalterable. At any rate no one
could remember when any one had had the courage to meddle with its
established order. Hal remembered that he had early gained the
impression that it was not a place for little boys to live in.
Thou-shalt and Thou-shalt-not seemed to divide the house between them.
And now amid its Boulle and Tudor tables, its Venetian carved chairs,
its Chippendales, its tapestries and portraits of knights and ladies,
its plate and glass, its marbles and carvings, Hal felt more of an
anachronism than ever. Cold and stately and solemn! It was as if it
felt superior to its tenants. "Look back," it seemed to say to any one
inclined to be familiar with it; "look back and tell me where are the
brave and beautiful and gallant lords and ladies who once danced here
and feasted here, loved, and made merry here? Gone and forgotten! The
present lord, he, too, will soon be with the others. I was before them
and I will be after them. I am a house with an individuality. People
come and people go, but I remain. Cold, stately, and solemn!" The
library was the most livable room and even the library was stately.
Perhaps there were people so lost to the eternal fitness of things, so
empty and shallow that they might be flippant in it, but it required an
effort, and even shallow people were not allowed to forget that Grinling
Gibbons had done the carvings about the noble fire-place.
The house seemed to have forgotten Gibbons and to arrogate the carvings
to itself. It was a proud house. The library at least looked
inhabited. Perhaps the books gave it the human touch that linked up the
past and the present and brought people and things into relations,
distant relations no doubt, but still relations. It is not surprising
that Nat-u-ritch's son had never liked the Earl's town house.
Lady Winifred was writing at a heavy oak table elaborately carved, the
light from a jewelled lamp falling over her high-bred face and her
abundant hair which had great snow patches lying gently on it. She
needed that softening touch of white, for there was a mocking light in
her eyes and a cynical play of the lips. Andrews had placed the coffee
service and the liqueurs on a small table before a high-backed Charles
II chair on the other side of the room.
"Andrews, ask the gentlemen to take their coffee here with me."
"Yes, my lady."
Back of the library was a recess from which sprang a graceful stairway
to the floor above. It was lit by panels of jewelled glass. Crowning
the newel post was an electric flambeau. As the butler left the room a
beautiful woman entered from the main hall and stood by the stairway,
looking quietly but nervously about. The light from the flambeau lit up
a face so colorless, so bloodless that it seemed almost transparent.
Out of the whiteness, crowned with glowing auburn hair, shone lustrous
agate eyes, hard, brilliant, with sensuous lights beneath the surface.
She had entered the room and looked about before Lady Winifred was aware
of her presence. Then she stole down rapidly but softly to the side of
the elder woman and said:
"Well, have you seen him?"
"Why, I thought you were dining with Lord Yester at the Carlton."
"So I was," assented the other, pulling nervously at her gloves.
"And going to the theatre afterward?"
"I couldn't sit still in the theatre. Even the thought of it upset me.
You have seen him?"
"Hal? Why, of course."
"What does he say?"
"About what?"
"About me."
"He hasn't mentioned you to me as yet."
"No? Oh!" and Edith, Viscountess Effington, Hal's wife, walked slowly
over to the coffee service and lit a cigarette. She watched the vagrant
smoke with a retrospective air.
"I had a curious sensation at dinner," she said. "I found I wasn't
hearing what Lord Yester was saying. All of a sudden I was frightened.
I felt as if I were choking. Hal seemed to stand behind and over Lord
Yester and I got a queer idea that he had come back to, to--Winifred,
you and he have always been pals; _you_ tell him. Tell him all there is
to tell, about Lord Yester and myself, so that he will be prepared, and
make him understand that if ne has come back to interfere with my
plans"--and her lips shut and her eyes glistened ominously--"well, don't
let him think of it."
"I think he knows you do as you please."
"Why shouldn't I?" said Edith with a little reckless laugh. "Why
shouldn't I? I've only one life to live and that's mine, to live my
way. I'm selfish; so is everybody else. Some people get a selfish
pleasure out of pretending to be unselfish. Well, let them! I'm not a
hypocrite, thank God!"
Edith took from her enormous ermine muff a gold and jewelled bonbon box,
extracted from it a tablet, and swallowed it with a drink of brandy
which she had poured from a decanter.
"Sir George's prescription for my headaches," she explained in answer to
the other's look of disapproval.
"The brandy part of the prescription, Edith?"
"Not having headaches, Winifred, you have a fine superiority to those
who have." And she pulled the long opera cloak of emerald green like
the breast of the humming-bird about her white shoulders, adjusted her
ermine stole as if she were cold, walked slowly toward the stairs. In
repose she was very soft, pliant, lambent, but, when moved, quick and
violent. She turned and stiffened, threw her head up into the air, and
came down swiftly to Lady Winifred's side.
"I must have this settled _now--to-night_! I can't stand this suspense.
If he attempts to upset my plans----"
"You may find him quite as eager to be free as you are."
"Do you think so, Winifred? Do you really think so?" she said, rising
at a bound to the extreme of elation. Then she crept softly out of the
room, purring to herself: "Oh, I hope so; I hope so."
There was a slight elevation to Lady Winifred's eyebrow and the
slightest tilt to one of her shoulders. It seemed to suggest that she
had ceased to be impressed with the moods and tenses of the other, that
it was a pity that men could not see past the surface of things
feminine, that Edith's egotism had the noble simplicity of all big
things.
"My dear, wasn't Cousin Hal to take his after-dinner coffee here with
us?"
It was Sir Gordon Stuckley who spoke as he came into the room. Sir
Gordon was known as Lady Winifred's husband. He was a retired army
officer and considerably older than his handsome wife. His mind was the
amiable repository of everything conventional and commonplace. He
walked over to the writing-table and picked up a cigarette.
"He has gone up to say good-night to his father," said Lady Winifred,
blotting and folding her finished letter.
"Well, Hal is back," said Sir Gordon sententiously, "and brings his
problem with him still unsolved."
"Whose life isn't a problem--'still unsolved'?" said his wife with an
enigmatical smile.
"And it's quite difficult enough to face one's own problem, to face
one's own mistakes," she continued. "It's rather hard to have to answer
for the mistakes of somebody else; mistakes that can't be remedied;
can't in the very nature of things. Hal can't help being a half-caste,
can he?"
"What is he back for?" asked her husband shortly.
"To see his father, I presume. Sir George, I believe, cabled him to
come."
"The Earl is no worse than he has been or may be for some time to come.
I hope, for his own sake, and for our sake Hal has no intention of
staying, because you know he is quite impossible here, now isn't he?"
"I suppose so," said Lady Winifred with a note of regret, for she was
fond of the boy, "and yet we pride ourselves here on being cosmopolitan,
on havin' no race prejudices."
"Officially? No! Socially? Most assuredly yes! Officially we treat
these Indian potentates as princes. Actually, my dear, we regard them as
niggers. Well, there you are."
"Yes," she admitted. "We are fairly tolerant of aliens because there
are not enough of them to annoy us. They don't crowd us off the
pavement, or take our places in the tram, or lay hands on the stipends
and positions we reserve for ourselves, but, as a matter of fact, we are
quite the most intolerant people in the world. Still it isn't his being
a half-breed that matters so much, I think. He was living that
down--it's his having to leave the Army."
"Quite so; but why did he have to leave the Army? Because he didn't know
how to obey; because he couldn't submit to discipline, and why couldn't
he submit to discipline? Because he had in his veins the blood of the
American Indian. It comes down to race at last."
"But why shouldn't a half-breed inherit the best of each type instead of
the worst and so be superior to either?"
"Oh, there is only one _best_, my dear," said Gordon as he walked to the
coffee with a superior smile. "There is only one best."
"And of course we assume that we are the superior type."
Lady Winifred looked after Sir Gordon with toleration. She was a woman
of unusual intelligence and it was hardly fair to ask her to maintain
any real illusions as to her husband.
"Well," she continued, "this dear boy is a half-breed; his wife is of
our best and purest blood. Yet, with all his peculiarities, Hal is
adorable, and Edith--well, if she's a type of superiority, God help the
British Empire."
"Edith isn't representative; oh, no; oh, _my_, no!" Sir Gordon's
enthusiasm in rejecting Edith on behalf of the British Empire almost
upset the coffee urn.
"Oh, _my_, no!" he kept repeating with comic insistence.
"Isn't she?" objected Lady Winifred coming forward to take the cup
offered by her husband. "Isn't she? Is the smoking, drinking, gambling
woman with a moral code of her own an exception, or is she getting to be
the London type?"
"By the way, where is Edith?"
"Dining with Lord Yester at the Carlton."
"Dining at the Carlton the first night her husband is at home?"
"My dear Gordon, you are hopelessly old-fashioned. Husbands are like the
vermiform appendix. They must have served some useful purpose once, but
no one knows now what it was. A busy woman has no time for such
trifles. Edith is just back from a house party at Groton Court, she had
to devote some time in the forenoon to her modiste; she went to the
races in the afternoon, had tea at the Austrian Embassy, played a little
bridge, and naturally she had to dress for dinner. If Hal is patient
they may eventually meet here or at some mutual friend's."
Gordon never tried to follow the intricacies of his wife's raillery.
"Well, I must be hopelessly old-fashioned," he said in the most
matter-of-fact way. "Modern matrimony is quite beyond me." Sir Gordon
was old-fashioned. He belonged to an epoch when men, by an unwritten
law, left the gossip to the women.
"Winifred," he began with much hesitation, and speaking with grave
deliberation, "are you aware that Lord Yester's attentions to Edith are
beginning to create talk?"
"Beginning?" laughed his wife. "Why, Gordon, that is so old that people
have ceased to talk about it."
"Is it really?" he ejaculated in hopeless confusion. "Well, Hal must put
his foot down at once, at once," he repeated with feeble over-emphasis.
"My dear, the foot and the hand go together. They are both archaic.
Since it is no longer good form to beat one's wife, the putting of the
foot down or up is of no importance. Women only respected their
husbands when they had to."
One of Gordon's qualifications as a fighter and a husband was that he
could take punishment. It is a useful accomplishment, and as rare as it
is beautiful. It would have been impossible for Lady Winnifred to live
with a man who was over-sensitive. As she explained the situation
herself: "Some amiability is essential to contiguity. The bearings must
have oil. Well, you mustn't expect it of me or of the cook. One
doesn't look for it in one's friends. Well, there you are!"
"I have no doubt something of this has come to Hal's ears," said her
husband, "and he has returned to put his house in order, and quite time
indeed."
"Well," she answered, "from the woman's point of view the civilized man
is a glaring failure. Perhaps the half-savage may succeed."
"Fancy, Rundall, fancy my wife suspecting the superiority of the
Anglo-Saxon race!"
This remark was addressed to a polished, imposing person who was
descending the stairs, and in the act of returning a thermometer to the
pocket of his evening coat. Sir George Rundall had the right but not
the time to add a long string of letters to his name. He was a self-made
man and was a credit to himself. He had the figure of one who has been
an athlete, the head of a scholar who was also a man of the world, a
clean-shaven, florid face and perfectly white hair, what there was of
it. The doctor was a man of learning, was an authority on all sorts of
unpleasant things, and had a prodigious memory. Here was a man who could
put Winifred in her proper place, if any one could.
Sir Gordon had ripped out "the Anglo-Saxon race" with something of its
sonorous after-dinner effect.
"Haven't you discovered, Stuckley, that our wives are always right?"
"Oh, I say!" groaned Sir Gordon, dismayed at this cowardly going over to
the enemy.
"There is no such thing as an Anglo-Saxon race."
"What?"
"And there's no such thing as a pure type of man. He simply doesn't
exist. Finot says: 'All human beings are cross-breeds,'" and the doctor
sat down at a small desk set into a bookcase, and began to write a
prescription.
"Race" was one of Gordon's strong points. He had all the conviction of
the profound amateur. He was an example of a little learning and its
consequences.
"You mean to say," he asked with pompous incredulity, "that there is
nothing in dolichocephalic superiority?" Having delivered this without
a sign of distress he looked about, greatly pleased with himself.
"Dolly who?" asked Winifred. "Sir George, is that a real word, or just
aggravated assault and battery?"
"Don't be alarmed, Lady Stuckley, it only means fair-haired people with
narrow skulls."
"And so blonds are the elect, are they?" she said. "Now I know the
scientific explanation for the popularity of peroxide of hydrogen."
"Joking aside," said the military man. It was a stock phrase in his
domestic experiences. "Joking aside, I am sure our man of science will
admit the importance of the--ah, the cephalic index?"
"Sir George, I look to you for protection."
"Head measurements, Lady Stuckley, that's all," explained Sir George
with a smile. "Well, as to that," he went on, rising and coming to the
library table, "a fellow by the name of Parchappe, who went in for that
sort of thing, found 'the head of an intelligent woman to be perceptibly
inferior to the dimensions of the head of an idiot.' Now, Stuckley,
justify that to your wife if you can."
Lady Winifred laughed heartily.
"For Lord Kerhill," added the doctor to Winifred as he put a
prescription on the corner of the table before her.
"It pleases Sir George to treat facts as jests," said the discomfited
Gordon.
"Facts?" queried Winifred. "Facts? Why that is ground for divorce."
"Facts?" echoed the man of science gravely. "I wonder what are facts?
The conviction of to-day is the derision of to-morrow. We have long
used the skull and the brain to assign hopeless inferiority to various
peoples, now comes along Finot and says: 'The skull and the brain
furnish no argument in favor of organic inequality.' Lamarck--I think
it's Lamarck--puts it better. He affirms that 'Nature has created
neither classes nor orders, nor families, nor kinds, nor permanent
species, but only individuals!'"
"That's the answer to the problem, Gordon," cried Lady Winifred
triumphantly--"the Individual!"
Down the stairs came the Individual and lounged into the room. Hal knew
at once from the suggestion of an embarrassed pause that he had been the
subject of the conversation.
It is rather trying to one with a problem to have inept hands dipping
in, messing it about.
The doctor was the first to regain his poise. He was used to difficult
cases, and when he had to announce to the patient that he had only six
weeks or six months to live, his manner was perfect. "Ah, Harold," he
said with a kindly smile, putting his hand on the boy's arm with a
reassuring touch, "splendid for your dear father, this home coming. You
mustn't go away again." Then he dropped his voice for Hal's ear alone.
"I'll be back. I want to speak with you before you retire," and the
busy man passed out. Hal had on the conventional dinner coat. He
looked at his relatives with an amused smile and came down to the table
and started to help himself to a cigarette, then thought better of it,
took some rice-paper from his pocket and made his own, manipulating it
with one hand after the miraculous manner of the Mexican. When it was
finished, amid the awed and fascinated wonder of the spectators, he lit
a match on the leg of his trousers and lit the cigarette with the same
hand to the dismay of Gordon and the joy of Winifred.
To Gordon's mind no well-bred person could really care for miracles.
"Well, Cousin Hal, you have been three years an exile! What a joy, eh?
What a joy to be back in dear old London!"
The boy smiled as he took up his coffee.
"Do you remember Grafton? Used to be a pal of mine. Met him on the
train coming up from Liverpool." The boy bent forward with an air of
startled boredom. One could see Grafton. "Well, old chap, missed you
awfully! Where have you been keeping yourself for the last
_fortnight_?" He dropped the assumption.
"Cordial place--London! Out our way men and their characters go in
their shirt sleeves." And he stretched his arms and the dinner coat
popped ominously. For the moment he seemed to fill the library and it
dwarfed most people.
"But you don't escape the rotter even out there, do you?" asked
Winifred.
"No, but the rotter shouts himself out to all the world, and if you
don't like the noise he makes you shoot it full of holes. Here they
carry concealed weapons. I'm more at home with the shirt-sleeve crowd,"
and he sat down in the Charles II chair and threw his leg over one arm
of it as he sipped his coffee.
Sir Gordon rose from the upholstered rail in front of the fireplace
where he had been sitting, put down his empty coffee-cup, then stood up
with the air of taking charge personally of Hal's tangled affairs.
"Well, Hal, my boy, you have come back prepared I presume to settle
down, settle down to some career befitting an English gentleman." Sir
Gordon paused to draw Hal's fire. As the young man did not dispute this
assumption, he continued with patronizing pomposity.
"We must place you. We must place you, my boy. It won't be an easy
matter, will it? Of course you can't go into trade. The Army is the
only gentleman's game, but--we must not speak of that. We must not speak
of that," and he hastened to get away from a subject so painful. "Now,
how about the church?"
"The church?" asked Hal with a laugh.
"Oh, your father could get you a living." Then he added hastily: "It's
respectable at least."
"For me? The church?"
"Oh, you don't have to go in for religion; oh, no; oh, my, no! None of
that bally rot."
Seeing that her amiable husband was in very deep water, Winifred reached
out her hand and encouraged him to go deeper.
"Hal, how stupid of you," she said. "You have assistants, curates, and
that sort of thing who do the religion for you. You ride to hounds,
play cricket for your county, and enjoy similar spiritual diversions."
"Well, you must do _something_," said Sir Gordon petulantly, annoyed
with the young man's levity. "Of course whatever you decide to try, it
is going to be a long hard struggle to live down the Army record; still
with time and pluck it may be done. You are an earl's son and you have
influential relatives. Well, then, how about politics?"
"Sit in the House and listen to the gabble on the Old Age Pensions and
The Licensing Bill? I'd rather be a suffragette and go to jail."
Sir Gordon had exhausted the careers. It wasn't a career exactly, but
people went in for it and it was a devilish nice thing to go in for.
"Well," he suggested, "there's the life of a country gentleman."
"The country would be all right," said Hal, "if the people would only
stay away. They spoil everything. Even the gardens are as formal as the
odious people, and the flowers, even the flowers, are made to look stiff
and stuck-up and well-behaved, as if they felt they, too, were on
exhibition and might be talked about. The country is only another
setting for teas, tennis, and top hats, bridge, scandal, and flirting
with each other's wives."
"Well, there's shooting," said Sir Gordon in desperation. "You used to
like shooting."
"Yes, before people shot in mobs, and made it a function. Now they go
into the solitudes, the cosey solitudes, with footmen, a French cook,
vintage wines, and a Hungarian band."
Sir Gordon did not realize that his wife and Hal were having fun with
his prejudices. He was on the edge of losing his patience.
"Well, if you stay _here_--" He was annoyed to observe that he had
raised his voice almost to a vulgar scream. He repeated the phrase in a
more temperate key. "If you stay here----"
"But I'm not going to stay here, Gordon. It's the West for me. It's in
my blood. When I've visited with father and arranged one or two
important matters, I'm goin' back to God's country."
"Bravo, Hal," exclaimed Lady Winifred. "If you stay here you'll end by
becoming a conventional little snob, and I should hate you. No; go back
to your shirt-sleeve crowd."
"Well, my dear boy," exclaimed Gordon completely nonplussed; "I can't
make you out," and he made up his mind to beat a hasty retreat to the
United Service Club, where anarchy was not petted and spoiled and fed on
chocolate bonbons. Then he thought of something and came back.
"Winifred, speak to Hal about that."
"About what?" inquired Hal.
Again he lost some of his habitual poise in the fervor of his
convictions.
"You must put your foot down, Hal; you really must--'er--for our sakes
as well as for your own. You ought--er--Winifred will tell you," and the
old soldier scrambled out of the trench and effected a most disorderly
retreat.
His cousin Winifred was about six years older than Hal, and in all the
memories of his childhood and boyhood she was the one bright spot. His
step-mother had died when he was but a lad. His father was much
occupied with public affairs. No one else seemed to care to understand
the queer little chap except this tall, queer girl. She stood by and
encouraged him to whip the first little brat that called him an
insulting name, a name suggested by his color. Then she washed and wiped
his resulting wounds, and encouraged him to believe that he was in the
path of duty and on the road to glory. Thus encouraged, the shy, timid
lad had quickly developed into a fierce little warrior, and it was
Winifred who somehow realized and foresaw that if he were ever to enjoy
the blessings of peace he would have to fight for them, and she got the
head gardener's son who had a distinguished reputation as an amateur
pugilist, to teach him how to box, an accomplishment in which he soon
distanced his teacher, and one which was destined to be of the greatest
service to him in his subsequent career. His readiness to meet all
comers and his demonstrated ability to do so was his passport through
life.
He had fought every step of the way from childhood to manhood. A battle
or series of battles marked every change in environment, in school, in
college, in his preparations for a military career. Soon it came as a
routine. He knew he would have to "lick somebody" in order to be let
alone. It didn't worry him, and he didn't seek these encounters, but he
didn't mind them. In fact, it was one of the things he did
exceptionally well. When he joined a swell regiment he had a terrific
struggle to stay. He was "ragged" unmercifully, but he took his
medicine, and before he was forced out, the regiment was ordered into
the field, went through a campaign in which he had opportunities, which
he eagerly accepted and with brilliant results, results which he took
modestly. Eventually he compelled respect from his brother officers,
but it was earned. Oh, it was earned! In all this bitter struggle with
environment Cousin Winifred, this woman "with the serpent's tongue," was
the only soul who knew and understood. He came over to her and put his
hands affectionately on her shoulders.
"What is it you're to tell me?" he asked her.
"Dear, simple soul, he expects you to change Edith."
"Change Edith, eh?" Hal walked away with a queer look on his face. She
continued: "One can dam a river and change its course. You can't do
that with a woman. Edith will go on being Edith, I fancy, to the end of
the chapter."
"She seems to be still rather careless of appearances," he said.
"She never was discreet, but there are many safely on the inside who are
quite as careless. At all events, she's kept out of the papers. That's
something. See here."
She showed him a London society journal whose leaves she had been
turning and glancing at in a desultory fashion, one of those hybrid
products of modern life which make a specialty of social garbage and
elevate blackmail to the point of high art; a journal which every one
calls "a rag" and which all smart people read religiously. Hal took it
and glanced through the article hastily.
It was an account of a "well-known society woman," "name withheld out of
consideration for her distinguished relatives and friends," who was
found by a police officer wandering aimlessly in Hyde Park and utterly
unable to give a lucid account of herself. Sir George _Blank_, a
well-known specialist in nervous diseases, happens to be driving by,
recognizes the unhappy lady, who is apparently under the influence of a
powerful drug, and takes her to her home, etc., etc., etc.
"How awful!" he said. "Do you suppose it's true?"
"My dear boy, these things are becoming so common we're no longer
shocked by them. Society has its favorites, and it has a broad mantle
of charity for its favorites, but obviously one mustn't parade one's
sins in Hyde Park. Edith hasn't been a huge social success, but she has
kept out of the papers; she is still possible and she never gives up.
She is still at it--climbing, climbing."
"And Lord Yester is the latest ladder, eh?"
"Why, you haven't been in England more than a few minutes. How did you
find that out?"
"Why, my friend Grafton laid one of these illustrated papers down on the
seat beside me as we came up in the train. I saw a picture of Edith and
Lord Yester, and I had the pleasure of reading 'an open letter' to my
wife. It was very instructive. I thought you said she had kept out of
the papers."
"Oh, that's a small matter. That isn't publicity. That 'open letter'
attention is merely an acknowledgment of her social prominence. That is
a trifle. Lady Lucretia Burk-Owsley is dancing in one of our music
halls. Now, you might object to that, though her husband, I understand,
rather enjoys its democracy. It sort of takes the whole of London into
the bosom of the family. She can't dance, of course, but she's a
revelation. You must see it. Oh, we're not standing still."
"And Lord Yester?" suggested Hal. "What is his _raison d'etre_?"
"Lord Yester's vocation is Edith, his avocation is being next in
succession to the old Duke of Uxminster, and the Duke is feeble enough
to satisfy even the most impatient heir."
"A duchess, eh?"
"Nothing short of that."
"But Yester," objected Hal in dreamy retrospection; "Yester's a boy.
His father, though he was old enough to be my father, was a pal of mine.
We served together in South Africa. Why you remember, Winifred? He was
forced into retirement because he justified my disobedience and refused
to be silenced--God bless him! One of the few friends I've had in the
world! His son, eh? Why, the youngster must be just out of his
perambulator."
"Some women as they grow older suddenly display a fondness for children.
When a woman has escaped being a mother, she sometimes meets her fate in
the grandmother class."
"He's rather a nice child, if I remember correctly," said Hal.
"Well, not a 'double-first,' not an intellectual giant, but a nicely
brought-up child; a credit to his nurse, and, incidentally, just at the
age to be madly in love with a married woman, married, of course, to a
clod who cannot possibly understand her."
Hal laughed.
"Yes, the _clod_ understands that. They have already made their plans,
I suppose?"
"Oh, yes; and you're just in time to give the bride away. Now there's a
novelty, and they're rare these days--a wedding in which the ex-husband
is the new husband's best man. No? Well, Edith pays you the compliment
of believing that you will behave very well under the circumstances. I
was expected to prepare you for the inevitable and, if possible, soften
the blow."
"And Lord Yester--is he willing?"
"Willing? Strenuously, madly willing. Personally, I think you are in
tremendous luck. I congratulate you upon your prospective deliverance
with all my heart."
Lady Winifred continued to play with the situation, turning it inside
and outside, holding it up to fantastic derision, until she saw that he
was not listening. The strain was off. He had resigned himself to
pleasant dreams. He had been pulling against wind and tide, every
muscle, every nerve stretched to cracking, his head bursting, his heart
breaking, and making no progress, barely holding his own. Now the tide
had turned. The storm had passed. He could take in his oars, sit in the
stern, and just keep her in the current, the current that was bearing
him on to his desires. He could rest in delicious lethargy and see the
flowers and gardens on the bank, and see at the end of the beautiful
journey Wah-na-gi standing on the rock, holding out her arms to him.
"How do you do, Harold? Welcome home."
Edith stood holding out her hand to him.
*CHAPTER XIX*
Instead of the little bronze figure in the buckskin dress with its
straight, simple lines, as straight and simple as the soul within it, he
saw a white woman, preternaturally white, the complex product of nature
and art, where the dressmaker, the hair-dresser, and the jeweller had
done their latest and best, with the soft, warm, dark colors of the
library as a noble background, a chromatic frame. Her Paquin gown of
canary yellow, cut very low, was bordered and outlined with dark-brown
marabou feathers. On her dazzling neck rested a string of emeralds, the
gift of Lord Yester. Her red hair was dressed, buttressed and
supplemented by braids, coils and puffs, and surmounted by a diamond
tiara. Her white hands were covered with rings, many of them with a
history. This ornate combination was concealing and exposing an
individuality more complex still, its barbaric impulses crossed and
seamed and twisted by generations of acquired stress and strain. She
was a radiant creature, conscious of her charms, but about her agate
eyes were gathering little signals of distress, grave, insistent
warnings, destined not to be heeded, saying that she had lived too fast,
that she was at the zenith, the climax, that the descent would be quick
and rapid. The wonderful mechanism wasn't working smoothly. "How do
you do, Harold? Welcome home." And an extended hand. And this was her
husband, returned from a long journey.
"Thank you, Edith," and he took her hand. She did not offer to kiss him
and she gave him only one hand. He might have been a stranger to whom
she had just been introduced. Indeed, she would have had more interest
in a stranger. They had gone past even the forms of domestic procedure.
"Winifred," said her cousin, "Lord Yester is in the drawing-room. You
get on so well together. Would you mind?"
"Not at all."
"I just want a moment's chat with Harold."
Winifred glanced at them with a cynical smile as she went out of the
room. The situation appealed to her supreme love of contrast.
"You'll pardon my running off to-night, Harold; won't you? You see I
didn't know in time, and I couldn't very well break a previous
engagement. I asked Winifred to take my place and make you feel at
home." And she undulated over to the railing before the fireplace and
sat down in the genial glow in an indolent cat-like way. The fog had
penetrated into the house and there was a chill in the dampness. She
knew, too, that the fire shot strange lights into her hair and over her
jewels and neck, and the desire to excite admiration was instinctive and
ever present.
"Winifred is good company and she did her best," said Hal simply.
"And I knew that after a little chat with Winifred--well--that you would
know all there was to know, and that there wouldn't be anything left for
me to tell."
It was evident that neither woman had any illusions about the other.
The attitude of rest and repose was only momentary. She got up
restlessly and came forward, her eyes bent with fierce concentration
upon his.
"Of course you haven't come back with the idea of changing anything?"
"Your attitude would seem to make that hopeless, Edith."
She was relieved. It was not to be open war, then. She turned half
away, let her eyelids droop, and surveyed and measured him from
underneath them. It gave her an oriental look.
"My dear Harold, it is too late for pretence between us. You will
welcome a release quite as eagerly as I shall; and so we ought to be
able to arrange matters. We have investigated your movements since you
have been away and the name of the Indian woman will serve our
purposes."
This produced a most disagreeable impression upon Hal.
"No," he said with a slow drawl that had menace in it. "No, I think
not."
Edith turned and looked at him in amazement. It was a formality, one of
those unpleasant formalities the silly law made necessary. The woman in
view would never know of it, wouldn't care if she did. It seemed much
the easier way. To her look of genteel astonishment he said in
explanation:
"You see she is nothing but a savage. She wouldn't understand our
refinements."
She laughed at his irony. Then he was in love, romantically in love.
She laughed joyously. It seemed to make his acquiescence very certain.
"I won't oppose your application," she heard him say.
Of course he would not. Why should he? He loved this Indian woman.
Her fears of a moment ago seemed childish, silly. She felt the
situation pliant in her soft, cruel hand. Her heart leaped up within
her. Her barque, too, was floating with the stream. It was a pleasure
barge smothered in flowers but crowned with a coronet, and as it spread
its silken sails to the perfumed breeze, everywhere in the crowded
roadway shipping gave way and place, salutes were fired, and everywhere
the air was thick with adulation and acclaim. And no small part of the
anticipated triumph were the scowls of the envious and the evening of
old scores.
"I make two stipulations," she heard him say.
She held her breath. Had he led her on only to tell her at last that he
would fight her application--refuse her freedom? She knew she was at
his mercy. He could exact bitter terms. He could in fact prevent the
consummation of her crowning ambitions; could wreck the whole elaborate
structure of her life. Her assured happiness seemed suddenly
threatened. In a hysterical moment she saw it in ruins. Instantly her
plans and prospects assumed an importance and insistence they had never
had before. At the thought that he might stand in her way she was filled
with an insane fury. Still she waited. What would he demand?
"You must not bring the Indian woman's name into the affair."
Heavens! Was that all? Willing victims and accomplices were to be
found. What else?
"And you must take no steps while my father lives."
She passed in a second from death unto life. The Earl was clinging to
existence by a thread. Hal hadn't even bargained for the return of the
jewels he had given her. She felt that she must make some show of
resistance or the terms would be changed. It was too ridiculously
simple.
"Of course Lord Yester's wishes must not be ignored."
"I cannot allow you or Lord Yester to decide that for me."
He turned away as he spoke and so was not aware that Lord Yester had
entered the room in time to hear this reference to himself. It is
universally conceded that it requires courage to interfere between
husband and wife; but then Lord Yester was a brave little man. He could
wait no longer. His fate, too, was being decided in the library. He
felt he must have a voice in deciding it. More than that, she needed
him, this soft, plaintive soul that had come through time and space,
through sin and suffering, to meet him, her complement, her supplement.
Small, slender, with a delicate, sensitive face, distinguished by
regular but small features, he had a fine, fresh, unspoiled capacity for
suffering, which she teased and worried and played with for her infinite
amusement. Quite apart from his coming coronet, she was in love with
him; that is, she was a pyromaniac, and she got sensations from seeing
his emotions burn, the fresh, beautiful emotions of a poet and a child.
"Harold, I don't think you have met Lord Norman Yester?"
She was the only one of the three who was without embarrassment.
"Yes, I think I met Lord Yester when he was at Eton."
Hal had no intention of making the other uncomfortable.
The clod! thought Yester; the clumsy clod! Eton, indeed! Everything
about the boy was small except his spirit. He was like a child who
says: "I'm six, going on seven."
"Yes?" he said with a supercilious elevation of the brows. "That was
such a long time ago, I had quite forgotten it."
Having put the unpleasant husband in his place, he turned to her with
the utmost deference, to the wronged and neglected wife.
"Edith," he said gently--"Lady Effington," he corrected himself and
bowed formally to her husband. It was a delightfully ingenuous thing to
do. Hal smiled, but not in derision. In fact, he liked the boy. What
a funny little mediaeval gentleman!
"Lady Effington," continued Sir Launcelot (pocket edition), "if you can
feel that I am worthy of your confidence, perhaps you will leave your
interests in my hands--er--in our hands!"
Again he forgot the unpleasant husband and again he bowed an apology for
his breach of etiquette.
"Thank you, Lord Yester," she said with a gravity and dignity equal to
his own. To Hal it was like a play--this elaborate formality, this
adroit indirectness, this dexterity in handling high explosives in a
perfectly safe and genteel way, this modern capacity to bring everything
down to a common denominator. He could play the game too, but what a
long way it seemed from Red Butte Ranch, Big Bill, John McCloud, McShay,
and Wah-na-gi, 'the soul without a body'!
"Lord Effington and I are both men of the world," Hal heard the
youngster say. "It ought not to be difficult for us to--to--arrive at
an understanding."
Lord Yester had his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, his chest
was thrown out, and he was balancing himself on the ball of his foot.
It was an acquired mannerism that seemed to add to his height. Like all
small men, he was fond of referring to the fact that Napoleon was not a
giant.
Edith inclined her beautiful head forward at an angle of supreme
deference.
"I leave my happiness in your hands, with the utmost confidence in you
both," she said gracefully as she swept out of the room. Lord Yester
met her as she moved and gave her the homage of his protection to the
door! The movement left the husband in the position of a rank outsider.
What fun Edith must have had, Hal thought, in playing up to these
ideals! Edith, who had no ideals of her own.
When Yester returned the two men looked at each other; there was an
awkward pause, each man cleared his throat, and each waited for the
other to begin.
"Will you smoke?" asked Hal with a motion to the cigars. The youngster
made a nervous start toward the table, then it occurred to him that he
could not meet on such a friendly basis the man who had treated with
inhuman cruelty the woman who had thrown herself upon his protection; so
he stopped short and very awkwardly said:
"No! thank you; no, no!"
Again an awkward pause.
"Will you sit down?"
That seemed consistent with dignity and he started to do so, but again
recoiled.
"I--eh--I feel more comfortable standing, if you don't mind."
Hal bowed. Yester's awkwardness was catching. He lounged across the
room, sat down on the rail before the fire, and lit a cigarette. He
could wait. Yester fiddled with his collar, stroked his cheek, and
fidgeted.
"This is--this is rather a delicate situation, isn't it?" he said at
last with a little deprecatory, nervous smile.
"Nothing seems unusual or impossible these days," said Hal easily.
"Well, you see," said the other, "I was intended for the diplomatic
service, but I'm afraid I'm rather direct."
What a kid it was, thought Hal.
"An engaging frankness is sometimes the highest form of diplomacy," he
said encouragingly.
"Well, you see," said the other gathering courage, "she has come to rely
on me so completely, on my judgment as it were----"
"She? Oh, yes, my wife."
"Yes, yes," eagerly assented the lover, so absorbed in his own romance
as to be beautifully oblivious to any other point of view. Hal smoked
and kept an inscrutable face, while his heart sang within him, going
with the wind and tide, going out of these eddies, these twists and
turns, out into the broad ocean and on to a new world.
Yester walked over to the writing-table and began to play nervously with
its furnishings.
"I wanted to say certain things to you, and I--I--I find I hardly know
how." Then he pulled himself together as his mind went back over their
acquaintance. "You see, as she had no other friends, as she was in
trouble and in bad health, my sympathies were naturally enlisted, and
almost before either of us realized it--well, you see, while I think you
have behaved very badly, I--eh--now that we have met, I--will you let me
say, I feel very sorry for you?"
The ingenuousness of this was completely disarming. Hal loved the
child. But he continued to treat the situation with becoming gravity,
bowed formally, and said:
"That's very generous of you."
"At the same time," exclaimed the little man returning to his purpose,
"it is her happiness that must concern us both, isn't it? And I can
only say that if you can accept the inevitable--well and good! If not,"
and again he balanced himself on his toes and expanded his chest; "if
not, I stand ready to face the alternative."
Alternative sounded ominous. What did it mean?
"Alternative?" said Hal puzzled.
"I'll meet you under any terms and conditions you may name."
"'Meet me?' Oh, yes," and he smiled in spite of himself. "Why,
duelling is illegal, isn't it? It's worse than illegal; it's
unfashionable." He rose and went over to the boy and looked down at him
with a protecting air. "I shouldn't want to take the life of such a
gallant little gentleman, and I should care even less to have you take
mine. I'm afraid I'm hopelessly commonplace."
Hal's attitude in spite of himself was too obvious.
"I'm afraid that is too evident, Lord Effington," said Yester sharply,
resenting the overlordship of the other. "And may I suggest," he added
with growing irritation, "that I am not so much younger and smaller than
yourself that you need persist in patronizing me?"
"I beg your pardon. I had no intention of doing that." Then he looked
at him very seriously and added: "I hope for the sake of my middle-class
conscience you know what you are doing."
"I feel quite capable of deciding that," replied the boy easily. "I
know something of the world--something, I fancy, of women!"
"And you are almost of age," added Hal.
"I am about to attain my majority," said Yester stiffly. "And when I
do----"
"You hope to celebrate it by your marriage to my wife?"
The other bowed with an engaging smile.
"Quite so. Well, I shall not stand in the way of your happiness, Lord
Yester."
"That is very noble of you."
"I'm afraid it's rather selfish of me. Your happiness happens to
correspond with mine. And I hope in the future you will never have
cause to think bitterly of me."
In Hal's eyes lurked an embryo twinkle. What a ripping farce
civilization was!
"On the contrary," said Yester, happy beyond words, "I think you have
behaved exceedingly well. You conceal your sufferings like a soldier and
you join me in protecting the good name of the woman we have both loved.
I can only say that you have acted like a gentleman, Lord Effington."
Both men bowed formally.
"Lord Yester," said Hal; "your father once did me a great service. I
hope we shall always be friends?"
And they shook hands.
"Oh, Sir George, you know Lord Yester, I think?"
Hal spoke to the physician who had entered from the hall.
Both men bowed slightly. Hal turned to the heir of the Duke of
Uxminster.
"Lady Effington will explain to you the only conditions I make. They
are very slight and I am sure will meet with your approval."
"Thank you," and the little fellow bowed elaborately to each man and
left the room with his arms folded behind him, an attitude very much
affected by Napoleon, if we may trust the pictures.
It was with difficulty that Hal refrained from laughter. What a farce,
but what a joyous farce! Already he was mentally speculating on the time
when he could turn his back on these attitudinizing people with their
picture-poster lives, on all this hollow, artificial make-believe, and
return to the shirtsleeve crowd. What joy he would bring to one soul!
He saw her face as he said to her:
"I'm coming back, Wah-na-gi; I'm coming back." He had forgotten Sir
George.
"I beg your pardon, Sir George. Delightful little chap, Yester! Eh? I
wonder if I was ever as young as that."
It was evident that Yester's attentions to the wife of another man had
not been a recommendation to the sedate scientist. He said dryly: "I
don't know whether he's a fool or a knave."
"Well, he isn't either," said Hal. "He's been reading 'Ivanhoe'! You
wanted to speak to me of father, Sir George."
"No, my boy; it's in regard to your wife."
Sir George had not only been the Earl's medical adviser as far back as
Hal could remember but he had also been his intimate friend as well.
Hal was thinking of other things, planning his escape, picturing the
welcome the West was keeping for her child, or he would have noticed an
extra consideration in the doctor's tone, an added solicitude in his
manner.
"Edith?" he queried indifferently and with polite surprise.
"Yes; sit down." The doctor motioned to the little sofa which had its
back against the writing-table. Hal sat down carelessly and picked up
from the seat the society journal Lady Winifred had put into his hands a
few moments before and began to turn its leaves and glance at its
pictures, but in a cursory way and with an inclination of the head
toward the physician to indicate that he was listening. Of course Sir
George did not know--how could he?--that he and Edith had passed into
different worlds.
Sir George himself was a study as he stood for a second regarding the
other. How was it this custodian of other people's secrets and sorrows,
forever intimate with sickness and pain, could look so sufficient, so
impeccable, so serene? Well groomed, smooth, and polished to his finger
tips, there seemed no surface where trouble or anxiety might stick.
Was it an armor or was it his integument?
"It's quite time you came home," the doctor said, glancing
absent-mindedly at his polished finger nails. "You must give some
thought to Edith. The life she is leading is exhausting, abnormal. She
requires a change. You ought to take her away from London and this fast
set."
"She has always lived this life, Sir George. It isn't any different, is
it?"
"You have a ranch in America. It's just the thing. Why don't you take
her there?"
"She wouldn't go. She is joined to her idols and I'm not one of them,
Sir George."
The doctor was standing at the corner of the table. He satisfied himself
that they were alone before speaking, then he bent toward the young man
and said quietly:
"Of course no one knows it as yet but me; but you ought to know it; in
fact, you will know it eventually, when perhaps it is too late, so----"
Hal looked up from his periodical.
"You alarm me, Sir George. What is it?"
The physician's eye fell upon the paper in Hal's hands.
"Allow me," he said and held out his hand for it.
Hal watched him deliberately turn the pages. He seemed to take a
painfully long time to do it. Meantime the fog seemed to have penetrated
the walls and to have taken possession of the place; the lights grew dim
and the fire loomed ghostly in the dim distance. The air was thick and
Hal seemed to breathe with difficulty. Ah, at last the doctor found
what he was looking for. He handed it back and pointed to the article.
There must be some mistake. He had already glanced through that
article. It concerned an unfortunate woman who was found in Hyde Park
under the influence of----
He glanced up. Sir George was still standing there. He must have been
waiting a long time. Hal spoke at last, very slowly.
"And that was--Edith?"
The physician nodded his head gravely.
Hal glanced back at the paper but he did not see it. He sat still as if
everything was just as it had been before, but he knew that the earth
was rocking in a convulsion, that the house of his building was tumbling
about him, that he was choking with the circumambient dust, and that he
could not move or escape, only sit still until it was all over.
*CHAPTER XX*
The doctor waited patiently while the other readjusted his disordered
faculties and groped his way toward the light.
"Good Lord, how terrible!" said Hal, distrait. "Why, Edith is the last
woman in the world--strong willed, self-willed, ambitious! Why, I can't
grasp it. It doesn't seem possible. I--I can't realize it."
"Oh, it's common enough these days," said the doctor, sitting down
beside the boy and putting his hand on his knee in suggested sympathy.
"The pace that kills! No rest, no respite! Teas, dinners, receptions,
theatres, balls, races, motors, yachts; bridge, morning, noon and night;
excitement, fatigue, reaction, depression; then stimulants, small at
first, then more stimulants for greater depression, then
over-stimulants; then sleeplessness and all the horrors of neurasthenia;
then narcotics for rest and quiet, to keep from going mad; then, all of
a sudden as it seems, but really by the most logical process, a _habit_
is formed--a fixed, implacable, relentless habit."
"Poor old girl," said Hal, trying to follow the professional exegesis.
"How awful. How awful! But of course people are cured of such things,
Sir George. You haven't let this go on?"
"Unfortunately it had been going on for some time before I discovered
it, and of course I have done all I can, all I know. I'm afraid it's
now beyond me. She has one chance in a thousand, and that chance is in
your hands: the fresh air, out-door life, simple living, rest, peace,
quiet! Then, if she will help you, if she will help herself, why, who
knows?"
Again he put his hand on the boy's knee as much as to say: Don't take it
too much to heart. We all have some affliction. If it isn't one thing,
it's another, and fortunately we have work to do, and that saves
us--work. All he said was:
"Well, I must be going."
"I want to see you a moment before you go, Sir George."
It was Edith speaking. She had entered the room as usual--noiselessly.
The doctor gave her a quick look. She was radiant. She had heard
nothing, suspected nothing. He gave a sigh of relief.
"At your service, Lady Effington; I'll be in the billiard-room."
She made sure he had left the room, then she came toward Hal, her head
up, her face beaming, her eyes dancing, glorious, transcendent!
Magnificent to look upon was this wayward woman in the first glow of
triumph, but Hal did not see her. He was gazing dumbly into space.
"It's very splendid of you, Harold," she said as she came over and sat
down beside him, just where the doctor had sat a moment ago.
"I have come to thank you. You and I were never meant for each other,
but it has been no fault of yours, and though I shall be compelled
legally to complain of your cruelty, I shall, as a matter of fact,
always remember gratefully your generous and considerate treatment.
Fortunately it is not too late to remedy our mistakes. Lord Yester
tells me you have definitely agreed not to interfere with our plans."
At the conclusion of her rhapsody she leaned forward and put her hand on
his. It was almost a caress, the nearest approach to it she had
bestowed on him in years. He withdrew his hand and took hers, giving it
a little sympathetic pat, then he rose and walked away, the lines of his
face drawn. She looked at him in wonder. Was it possible he cared for
her a little bit after all?
"One moment, Edith," he said. "You see I didn't know. I couldn't know.
And now--well, for the moment I'm bowled over. We'll have to think this
thing over, won't we? Hang it all, it isn't fair, is it? It doesn't
seem quite fair."
"Fair?" she echoed with a dubious smile. She saw that he was laboring
under great excitement. "Fair?"
"To him--to the boy--to Yester."
"What are you talking about?" she said with patient incredulity. He
paid no attention to her. He only half heard her questions and answers.
He was reasoning it out, laboring with himself.
"He's a mere boy, and not a bad sort either; in fact, he's really quite
all right. I don't see how we can go on with it; you and I."
She was like one who is suddenly and violently awakened from a halcyon
dream to gaze into the glare of a dark lantern in the hands of a thief
who may at any moment become an assassin. At the first glimmer of what
he meant terror gripped her. She rose and came toward him.
"You gave _me_ your word. You gave _Lord Yester_ your word."
"I didn't know the--the situation, did I? You see I thought I could
just put my hands in my pockets and stand off and let it go on, but if I
see a blind man walking over a precipice and I don't stop him, why, I
might just as well push him over. It's murder either way. I can't do
it. I don't see how I can do it. I've changed my mind."
He tried to walk away as if it were settled. She followed him softly,
like a cat, then confronted him.
"I won't let you change your mind." She spoke slowly and quietly, but
it was a brave or a stupid man who could ignore the threat.
"It's no use, Edith. Sir George has told me, told me for your own
sake." Again he turned away, as if he were looking for a way of escape
from himself, from her, from the situation. She felt a wild impulse to
scream, to leap upon him and tear him to pieces, and then it came to her
that that would lend color to his veiled accusations. She must go
softly, cunningly, and--wait.
He walked away, over to the fireplace. Was there no way out of it? Oh,
if Sir George had not spoken! If he had not known! Was there no other
way? Was no compromise possible? Why should the burden of all these
lives fall upon him? Why should he be handed the cross to bear? The
flames, like little red demons, little fire sprites, danced here and
there, threw up their hands, squirmed, writhed, trying to get away,
trying to leap into the air, trying to seize an unattainable something,
falling back like whipped dogs to lick and bite the smoking log! Gazing
into the fantastic fire depths--he saw Wah-na-gi, and beside her John
McCloud, just as they stood that fateful day he left the Red Butte
Ranch. "If you do come back, you must bring this Indian woman clean
hands and a pure heart, promise me that." And he _had promised_. And
Wah-na-gi, the soul without a body, heard him promise. He had come
thousands of miles that he might keep the spirit of that promise. And
now all he had to do would be to let things alone, let them go on as
they were going. Why should he interfere? Why should he meddle? Would
any one thank him? Every one, even Yester himself, would hate him.
What possible good would it do? It was too late to interfere. His own
happiness was at stake too. What of that? Why should he ruin his own
happiness with theirs? He would go home a free man and who would know
the difference? There would be no one to blame him except his own
conscience. Oh, subterfuge, subterfuge! The lying little devil flames
laughed. John McCloud would know. In fact, by some clairvoyant
mystery, he already knew! Even now he was saying: "And this boy is the
son of your benefactor, the son of your friend."
At last he said, as if to the fire:
"I couldn't do this and then go back and face Wah-na-gi and John
McCloud. I promised if I came back to come with clean hands."
"You are talking like a wild man," Edith said. "But you see I am not
excited. You're not going to betray me into a scene and then accuse me
of being as crazy as you are. I sit down and I am calm."
She sat down deliberately in the high-backed chair and clutched its
arms, and clung to it desperately like a drowning sailor. "I have
perfect self-possession, complete control of myself, and I listen,
listen to a madman. Go on."
She was sincere. He was irresponsible. Nothing else would explain it.
Indeed, to most of us, those who act from altruistic motives are quite
as incomprehensible as those whose acts suggest diabolical and abnormal
instigation. The boy was mad. He had always been "queer." He was the
son of his father.
By a supreme effort of the will she brought all her faculties to bear.
She would first understand this and then she would know how to meet it.
She was a resourceful woman and used to bending others to her will. He
was the son of his father. Swiftly her mind climbed the stairs and bent
over the invalid. Relentlessly she seized his life and dragged it out of
the sick bed, and submitted it to a searching examination. All his life
the Earl had been a sentimentalist. All his life he had made mistakes.
The woman who loved him had once called them "glorious mistakes."
Everybody else called them just mistakes. Out of quixotic love for the
Countess Diana he had left England under a cloud, bearing the inevitable
implication of another's guilt. Another man would have stayed in London
and have been her lover. That was his first mistake. An exile, branded
as a thief, he had tried to hide himself away from civilization, became
a cattle-man, in a country where white women were a curiosity, was
thrown by circumstances into relations with a pretty little Indian
woman, had a child by her, and married the woman that he might not be
the father of an illegitimate child. That was his second mistake. Any
other man would have married her by tribal rites and, when he got ready,
made her a present or made it worth while for some one else to marry
her. When the death of Diana's husband, the real embezzler, called him
back to a title and to the life and the land and the woman he loved, he
chose to stay with the little savage who was the mother of his child.
Another mistake! And so he continued. Sentimental again with regard to
his duty to the child, he had driven the Indian mother to suicide. Free
at last to marry the woman for whom he had made such fantastic
sacrifices, they were both middle-aged people, the bloom to life, the
blush of love was gone. Then, in the first glow of their new-found
happiness, Diana died, and he was alone. What had the idealist to show
for all his glorious "mistakes"? for his unselfish adhesion to a
self-conscious conception of duty? It was ridiculous. We live in a
practical world. That world has two standards--a theoretical one, that
no one uses, and the practical one, the actual one. To try to live
outside the actual is to try to reverse the law of gravitation. We have
invented the theoretical standard to fool others into a course we would
not take ourselves. It's a trap for the simple-minded. It was madness.
Yes, this boy was the mad son of a mad sentimentalist. And these
sentimentalists drag other people to ruin with them. But why should
she, a practical woman, a woman of the world, the real world, be made
the victim of these madmen? Her will, seldom thwarted and never tamed,
rose up for battle and said, no, NO!
"I won't be a party to this, Edith," he said, looking into the fire, and
the moment he had said it he began to realize what such a decision would
involve.
One step forward or backward wasn't enough. One couldn't stand still.
One couldn't stop. My God, where would it end? He couldn't take
everything away from her and then leave her to herself. Lord Yester
would gladly assume the burden and accept the consequences. If he
thwarted her, if he stood between her and her desires--what? He became
the nurse of an irresponsible sick woman. The love that might have made
that possible was gone, never really existed. She had stolen this boy's
love and was stealing his life. To make her drop it, he would have to
resort to force--then what? Where would it end? Who made him a
policeman or a jailer? He wouldn't do it. He couldn't do it. No one
would do it. He was a fool to think of it. He wasn't doing this
willingly. He was hypnotized, led, driven by some force outside
himself.
"But I won't leave you to fight it out alone," he said. His voice
sounded strange to himself. What was that he was saying? He would
rebel, deny it, take it all back in the next breath.
"I'll give up all my own plans and I'll stand by you."
He recoiled, frightened, appalled at what he had said, but one thing
involved another. There it was; it was his decision, his; he had
announced it. Could he become a party to this conspiracy against this
innocent boy, the son of his friend, and then could he go back and tell
Wah-na-gi and John McCloud exactly what he had done, and then be happy?
If not, then he must go the other way, and accept the consequences, and
meet them. If they were to be met, it must be boldly. Cowardice
encouraged the enemy.
"Yes, there is no other way," he said. "I'll give up all my own plans."
And for one cruel moment he stopped to think what that meant to him.
"I'll stand by you, give you my hand, and we'll beat it out together."
Then he pulled himself together, put a torch to his bridges, and went
on, his face lit up with the light of their burning.
"Come now," he said with a show of spirit, going to her as she held
herself with supreme self-control in the big chair. "Be a sport, old
girl! Chuck it all, this rotten, artificial life, and come with me out
into the open. We'll leave this man-made world, and go out into God's
world, and then when you have mastered this thing, when you are
free----"
He was about to add that then she could marry the Duke of Uxminster or
whomsoever she pleased, but Edith did not let him finish. What would
become of this romantic boy in the meantime? and marriageable dukes were
scarce. Besides, she had no intention of postponing indefinitely her
happiness or her plans. Like all habit-victims, she refused to
acknowledge even to herself her slavery. Even, supposing she had to
admit it, she would reform herself! Indeed, she had made up her mind to
it already and was about to begin. Her marriage to Lord Yester would
help her, furnish her an irresistible motive for reformation. To keep
him from eventually finding out, she would have to reform, and she had
grown very fond of the boy. His romantic idealization of her was very
beautiful. Hal could safely leave all this in her hands. In fact, he
would have to leave it in her hands. She began to tear at her lace
handkerchief in spasmodic jerks.
"I don't know whether to laugh or to scream," she said with a scared
smile, "but you see I am calm, and I am listening to you."
"I used to be a drunkard," he said. "Look at me now. You shall choose.
We'll go wherever you like. We'll hunt big game in Africa, or fish for
tarpon in Florida, or go after the musk-ox in the Barren Grounds. You
don't know what it means to sleep under the sky, to bathe your soul in
the solitude, to rest in the friendly silences, and live face to face
with the Infinite."
He spoke with the enthusiasm of the devotee, of what he knew and had
felt. He had in his soul to be the priest, the Poet of the Open, and
now, in the white heat of this tense moment, he found expression.
"Don't hang hack," he urged. "Don't despair, and don't discourage me."
The last was almost plaintive. He knew that he needed help.
She rose and looked at him through the slits of her eyes.
"You have never influenced one act of my life. What makes you think you
can do so now?"
"Sir George says it's your only chance."
She backed away, on guard. She began to laugh, a little hollow, false
laugh. She would admit nothing.
"My only chance? Sir George says that?"
She laughed again, the laugh of derision, of defiance. They have an
expression in the courts, "the _burden_ of proof," and sometimes it's a
heavy load to carry. Flagrant sin cries out: Prove it! The habitual
criminal, caught, the stolen goods taken from his pocket, says: "I never
saw it before. Some one put it there." Prove it, her laugh cried.
"Now, don't try that," he said gently. He did not love her, but it was
piteous to see this gorgeous creature, with the world at her feet and
destiny in her hand, with possibilities unlimited; it was piteous to see
her throw it all away in her lust for something--God knows
what--something she called "pleasure!" "life," in the mad race for
sensation, for excitement, in the fatuous ambition for place in the
shallow mob that called itself Society, sacrificing herself on the Altar
of Self, pouring out her own blood before her own image. It was
piteous! One can't stand idly by and see a maddened horse rush back
into a burning stable. It was impossible not to feel sorry for her, not
to want to help her.
"Sir George felt it was his duty to you, his duty to me," he added. She
straightened up and her eyes blazed.
"It isn't true. I don't do it. It's a lie--a wicked, devilish lie!
Who will believe him? Who will believe a man sworn not to betray his
patient's secrets? He has no professional honor. Who will believe him?
I don't do it. I don't do it!"
He hadn't mentioned it. She had forgotten that she was admitting that
she knew what he had in mind, and that the admission was fatal.
"I've suffered, suffered horribly from headaches and insomnia, and
sometimes I've taken it, sometimes for that, but I call God to
witness----"
She was screaming in a fierce whisper.
"Hush," he said, trying to quiet her. "The doctor says you must get
away from here. It's your only chance. Sir George says, if you will
help me, if you will help yourself, you can win out. Come, you must let
me help you. Let me try. Won't you let me try?"
What was the matter with the man?
"Can't you grasp it?" she said, regaining some poise by a great effort.
"Don't you see that what you call silence and solitude would put me in a
madhouse? Leave London? Why, London is my heaven!" And she sat down
on the sofa, or rather crouched down, as if the statement was an
argument and the argument unanswerable.
"London, Heaven, eh?"
Her words broke through the wall of his prejudices and the stored-up
waters of bitterness gushed forth.
"London that is growing sterile in Mayfair and breeding monsters in
Whitechapel! London, with one man in every four a pauper; with its
thousands of starving school children! With its multitudes who have
nothing trying to sell it to those who have everything! With its
terrible women and its hopeless men; hollow-eyed vice cheek by jowl with
hollow-eyed want; luxury, overdressed, sweeping past wretches who are
dying standing up, without the decency of a bed on which to throw the
rotten remnants of their tortured lives! London, Heaven, eh? My God!"
He had forgotten her, himself, in his indictment of the city, not London
alone, but the city everywhere, the city that reversed the order and the
law of nature!
How far removed they were! She had relaxed, and the curl and sag of her
body, the sensuous somnolent droop of the eye-lid, the voluptuous lips
apart, she might have posed for a statue of lazy luxury. "London is my
soul," she said softly, dreamily. "I'd rather be a stray cat crawling
among its chimneys than live in splendor anywhere else. The crowds, the
excitement, the strife, I love it! People amuse me, their passions,
their cruelty, even their meanness, yes, even their dulness, their
satiety! It all fascinates me. I'm drunk with it. I wouldn't give it
up, and I couldn't if I would." She rose and came to him, and
scrutinized him narrowly with soft cunning.
"Don't be foolish! What's your object? Why do you want to play the
hypocrite with me? You don't care for me any more than I care for you.
And when I am Duchess of Uxminster----"
"I think you'd better give that up," he said coldly.
"Why give it up?" she said with fierce challenge.
"You and I must answer for our own mistakes and sins," he said. "We
mustn't unload them onto others. Lord Yester doesn't know."
"Who will tell him? Who will tell him?" she cried with bravado.
"You will," he said.
[Illustration: "You will," he said.]
"Never! Never! I wouldn't; I couldn't!"
Her voice rose to a hysterical scream, then she stopped, struggled for
control of herself, and shook like one in a chill, reaching out her
hands toward him in mute appeal, unable to speak, to form coherent
words. Finally she said in a hoarse whisper:
"Wait a moment. Wait! Let us be calm. Let us be calm. You haven't
spared me. I'm not going to spare you."
She crouched and advanced toward him like a tiger.
"I'll never leave London! That's as fixed as death. _You_ can't remain
in London, and you know that too. You were forced out of the Army;
that's enough. You're impossible! You always were impossible. You
always will be. You're not a gentleman; you're a misfit, an outcast, a
_half-breed_!"
His bronze sinewy hands looked very dark against the white, the dazzling
white of her throat, as he lifted her in the air for one terrible
instant, an instant when she was near to death and he to murder.
"Edith," he whispered, "if you were a man I'd kill you!"
Then he took his hands away, caught her when she would have fallen, and
stammered out brokenly, almost in tears:
"No, no, I mustn't say that. You're not responsible. You're not
responsible."
And he dragged himself away as though he might be tempted to put hands
on her again, went over to the sofa, threw himself down in terror and
abasement, and held his hands as though _they_ were the offenders, not
his will. On her part the leash was slipped. There was no longer any
effort or desire to control herself. She quivered in an infuriate
passion of hate. All other considerations were swept away. She followed
him like a wild animal that has tasted blood. She wanted to hurt, to
tear and rend, and she had a vague insane idea that if she could induce
him to violence, that if she could goad him to maim her, his will, his
inflexible purpose would break down under pity and remorse. She
crouched over him while she screamed:
"You're a half-breed, and everything you do, everything you don't do,
shows it. My God, what I've had to endure as the wife of a half-caste
who had to leave the Army. You, too. It hasn't been easy for you.
You've suffered. This is our chance: our chance to escape from each
other. You want your freedom. You want it--you want it--you want it.
I've seen it in your face. That's why you've come back. You don't want
to go through life chained to a woman who hates you, because if you
drive me to desperation I'll make you wish you'd never been born.
You'll buy your freedom."
It was to be war. He rose, white with passion. She moved away as if it
were settled, as if the victory were already hers, repeating
hysterically:
"You'll buy it. You'll buy it."
It was a mistake. It made him inflexible.
"But not at that price," he said fiercely. "You will tell Lord Yester
or I must."
The noise of the colloquy had penetrated to the drawing-room.
Lord Yester, unseen to either of them, had quietly entered the library.
"Will you or shall I?" was Hal's relentless demand.
She turned and saw him--Lord Yester. The fierce mounting flames of her
fury died down into ashes. She seemed to shrink and draw within herself,
grow smaller and whiter. Hal followed her intense fixed look to its
object. Yester, too, looked older and smaller and paler. It seemed a
long time ago when they were agreed and each saw Happiness standing by
an open door. Now the door was shut and hung with crape. Lord Yester
knew that he had entered a death chamber. He gazed at her in silence.
He saw the proud queenly woman cowed, looking haggard and wan with fear
and despair. Love and tenderness shone from his eyes and begged her to
tell him all, to trust to him--that years of devotion would make amends
for all her suffering. He saw that it was not in her thought that he
could help her. She looked to the other--to the man she had turned to
stone. Her eyes swept him with a plea for mercy. She crept to him,
kneeled to him, took his hand, abased herself, drew herself up to a
level with his face, searched it for one ray of hope, one sign of
relenting pity, then, with a low heart-rending moan such as neither man
would ever forget, she crept like a piteous wounded thing out of the
room.
Lord Yester did not attempt to help her or to follow her. He knew in
some instinctive way that she was past help. He looked at Hal. He saw
him stricken, spent, seared by suffering. It wasn't the same man he had
talked to a few moments ago. Then he had been a splendid animal, lithe,
vibrant, instinct with life and the joy of living. Here was a sad,
disillusioned, heart-broken, middle-aged man without hope in the world.
It had been a drawn battle--a duel in which both combatants had been
wounded unto death.
Lord Yester came down slowly.
What was it this terrible man had said to her as he came in?--"Will you
tell him or shall I?"
What was there to tell? What could he tell? Women, and men too, with a
past generally tell it before any one else has the chance--their version
of it. Edith had her history and she had been the first to tell him _her
version_ in which she was always the injured and suffering heroine.
"If it is anything discreditable to her, to Lady Effington, I would not
believe you," he said with quivering intensity.
"That is for you to decide," said Hal. What a game little chap it was!
he thought, as he looked at his sensitive, delicate face, made for
suffering. And he'll hate me to his dying day.
"Perhaps it won't make any difference," he added, and at the thought a
gleam of hope came into his own life. Suppose it didn't make any
difference? Suppose this reckless little Knight-errant threw all
caution, all considerations to the winds; suppose that, knowing the
truth, all the truth, he still held out his arms to Edith and demanded
the right to assume her burdens? Ah, then Hal's hands were clean and
would be free to--He glanced up to see Sir George Rundall. Oh, if
Rundall hadn't known or had kept silent. It was too late for regret
now.
"Sir George," he said to the doctor, "Edith has refused to leave London,
to go with me. If Lord Yester would help us--perhaps----"
"Lord Effington," said the physician sternly, interrupting Hal, "I am
not in the habit of discussing my patients before strangers."
"Lord Yester is not a stranger," said Hal without irony. "He enjoys my
wife's confidence and friendship and if----"
"I am proud to believe that that is true," said Yester with equal
sincerity. "And if it concerns the health or happiness of Lady
Effington, you may rely on me, Sir George Rundall."
The polished man of the world restrained his irritation, his
exasperation, with obvious difficulty.
"Lord Effington has placed me in a most embarrassing position," he said
with increasing resentment. "I have expressed the opinion that Lady
Effington,--that she should--that it was in fact her only chance----"
"Her only chance?" echoed Lord Yester. "What do you mean?"
"Perhaps that is too strong," said the doctor, floundering, sensitive,
over-sensitive as to his professional _amour propre_.
"Perhaps that is too strong. Let me say her best chance. Other scenes,
other countries, an out-door life? Unfortunately in cases like this,
the will-force is enslaved. Unfortunately most victims of--let me
say--" he broke off impatiently. "I cannot see what right Lord
Yester----"
"I will relieve you of all doubt on that point, Sir George. I have
quite as much right to hear what you have to say as Lord Effington, and
I insist on your speaking plainly."
The physician looked to Hal, whose refusal to contradict this was an
affirmation of it, and then, with undisguised amazement and under
protest, he said: "Well, so be it. What I had in mind was that most
victims of the morphine habit--"
Lord Yester leaned forward slightly as if he did not think he heard
aright, then he half repeated the dread word, swayed slightly, put his
hand across his forehead, like a man bewildered, and groped with his
other hand until he found the back of a chair. Then very quietly he
found his way into it. The expression on his face was tragic. If the
boy had been his son or a brother Hal could not have felt more for him
or suffered more with him.
"It's a great shock to Lord Yester, as it was to me," he said after a
moment's pause. "My wife trusts him, and I am sure he will join us in
our efforts to save her."
Lord Yester did not reply. He raised his head as if he had some
difficulty in breathing.
Then there was a painful pause. Not one of the three men spoke.