It was the dusk of a February afternoon. Drake had found the lamps lit in
Mr. Le Mesurier's library, and the gas was burning in the hall and on the
stairs. But within the drawing-room all the light there was came from the
fire leaping upon the hearth and from the two recessed windows which
faced it. In the farthest of these windows Drake saw Miss Le Mesurier
standing, the outline of her face relieved, as it were, against a gray
panel of twilight. As the door closed, she turned and took a step into
the room. Drake could no longer see more than the shape of her head and
the soft waves of hair crowning it; he could not distinguish a single
feature, but none the less, as she stood facing him, he felt of a sudden
his heart sink within him and his whole strength race out of his body.
Clarice stood still; and he became possessed with a queer longing that
she would move again, forwards, within the focus of the firelight.
However, she spoke from where she stood.
'You have seen my father.'
Instinctively Drake walked to the fireplace, but she did not follow.
'I have just left him,' he replied. 'He told me what the question was
which you wished me to answer.'
'And forbade you to answer it, I suppose?'
'No. He left the choice to me.'
'Well?' she asked.
'I mean to answer it to the full,' he said. 'I was not aware till a
moment ago that you had been engaged to Gorley.' Then he hesitated.
Clarice was still standing in the shadow, and his desire that she should
move out of it and within the circle of light grew upon him until it
seemed almost as though the sight of her face and the knowledge of how
she was receiving the history of the incident were necessary conditions
of its narration.
'I suppose that is the reason,' he went on, 'which made you ask me here
at first. Why did you never put the question before?'
'Why?' repeated Clarice slowly, as if she was putting the question to
herself. Then she moved slowly towards the fireplace and seated herself
by the side of it, bent forwards towards its glow, her elbows upon her
knees, her hands propping her chin. Drake gave a sigh of relief, and
Clarice glanced at him in surprise, and turned again to the fire. 'Tell
me your story,' she said, and left his question unanswered.
Drake began; but now that his wish was accomplished, of a sudden all the
reality seemed to fade out of the tragic events he was to recount. His
consciousness became in some queer way centred upon the girl who was
listening, to the exclusion of the subject she was listening to. He was
intensely conscious of her face, of its changing expressions, of the ebb
and flow of the blood from time to time flushing her cheeks and temples,
and of the vivid play of lights and shadows upon them as the flames
danced and sank on the hearth. He noticed, too, with an observation new
to him, and quite involuntary, the details of the room in which he stood,
the white panelling of the walls, the engravings in their frames, the
china ranged upon a ledge near to the ceiling. Of these things his mind
took impressions with the minuteness almost of a camera. They were real
to him at this moment, because they formed the framework and setting of
the girl's face and figure.
But Gorley's crime and his expiation of it became by contrast as remote
to his apprehension in point of all connection with Clarice as they were
in point of locality. He could not realise them to himself as events
which had actually happened and in which he had played a part, and he
spoke in the toneless voice of one who relates a fable of which, through
frequent repetition, he is tired. Instinctively, in order to make the
truth of his story palpable, he began to corroborate it with particulars
which he would otherwise have spared his auditor, but with the same
impersonal accent. He told Clarice of the condition of the village after
Gorley's raid, as he first came within view of it: here the body of a
negro stood pinned upright against the wall of his hut by an assegai
fixing his neck; there another was lying charred upon still-smouldering
embers; and as he saw her turn pale and shudder he almost wondered why.
But in spite of his efforts to appreciate its actuality the incident grew
more unsubstantial the further he progressed in its narration, and he
ended it abruptly.
'Gorley was properly tried,' he said--'his relations testified to
the justice of his trial--and he was executed in accordance with
the verdict.'
Clarice sat motionless after he had ended. Drake watched the flames
sparkle in her gray eyes. At his elbow the clock ticked upon the
mantelshelf spacing the seconds, and the fire was hot upon his limbs.
That dream-world in Africa dissolved to a vapour.
Clarice recalled him to it at last.
'I never imagined,' she said in a low voice, 'that the truth was anything
like this. I shouldn't have asked you if I had. A long time ago I knew
that something was being concealed, but I thought it was an accident
or--well, I couldn't conceive what it was and I grew curious, I suppose.
When you came back to England I thought you might be able to tell me.
Lately, however, I began to fancy that you were concerned in it some way.
You might have sent Mr. ----' she checked herself with the name unspoken
and went on, 'you might have sent him on some fatal mission or something
of that sort. But this! Oh, why did you tell me?'
She took her hands from beneath her chin and clenched them with a
convulsive movement upon her knees. Her memory had gone back to the days
when she and Gorley had been engaged, to their meetings, their intimate
conversations. This man, in whose hand her hands had lain, whose lips had
pressed hers, been pressed by hers, this man had been convicted of a
double crime--dastardly murder and dastardly theft--and punished for it!
Her pride cried out against her knowledge, and cried out against the man
who had vouchsafed the knowledge.
'Why did you tell me?' she repeated, and the words were an accusation.
'You wished to know,' he replied doggedly, 'and it seemed to me that you
had the right to know.'
'Right!' she exclaimed, 'right! What right had I to know? What right had
you to tell me?'
She rose to her feet suddenly as she spoke and confronted Drake. He
looked into her eyes steadily, but with a certain perplexity.
'I felt bound to tell you,' he said simply, and his simplicity appealed
to her by its frank recognition of an obligation to her.
'Why,' she asked herself, 'why did he feel bound? Merely because I wished
to know the truth of the matter, or because he himself was implicated in
it as the instrument of Gorley's punishment?' Either reason was
sufficient to appease her. She inclined to the latter; there were
conclusions to be inferred from it which staunched her wounded pride.
Clarice turned away. Drake watched her set a foot upon the rail of the
fender, lay her hand upon the mantelshelf and support her forehead upon
it. After a little she raised her head and spoke with an air of
apologising for him.
'Of course,' she said. 'You could not know that there was anything
between myself and--and him.'
'No; I could not know that. How should I, for I did not know you? And I
am glad that I didn't know.'
Drake spoke with some earnestness, and Clarice looked at him in surprise.
'It would have made my duty so much harder to do,' he explained.
With a little cry of irritation Clarice slipped her foot from the fender
and moved from him back to the couch. She had given him the opportunity
to escape from his position and he refused to make use of it; he seemed
indeed unable to perceive it. However, she clung to it obstinately and
repeated it.
'You could not know there was anything between us'; she emphasised the
words deliberately. Drake mistook the intention of the emphasis.
'But was there,' he exclaimed, 'at the time? I didn't think of that, Miss
Le Mesurier--'
'Oh no, no!' she interrupted. 'Not at the time.' The man was
impracticable, and yet his very impracticability aroused in a measure her
admiration. 'So you would have shot him just the same, had you known?'
'Shot him?' asked Drake almost absently.
'Yes.'
'Didn't I tell you? I beg your pardon. I didn't shoot him at all. I
hanged him.'
Clarice was stunned by the words, and the more because of the dull,
seemingly callous accent with which they were spoken.
'You hanged him!' she whispered, dropping the words one by one, as though
she was striving to weigh them.
'Yes. I have been blamed for it,' he replied with no change of voice.
'People said I was damaging the prestige of the white man. The
argument bothered me, I confess, but I think they were wrong. I should
have damaged that prestige infinitely more if I had punished him
secretly or--'
'Oh, don't!' she cried, with a sharp interruption, and she stared at him
with eyes dilating in horror, almost in fear. 'You can discuss it like
that,--the man I had been engaged to,--you hanged him!'
She ended with a moan of actual pain and covered her face with her hands.
On the instant Drake woke to a full comprehension of all that he had
said, and understood something of the humiliation which it meant to her.
Clarice was sitting huddled in her chair, her fingers pressed lightly on
her eyes, while now and again a shiver shot through her frame.
'Still I was bound to tell her,' Drake thought. He waited for a little,
wondering whether she would look up, but she made no movement. An emerald
ring upon her finger caught the light and winked at him maliciously,
leering at him, he fancied. There was nothing more for him to say, and he
quietly went out of the room.
The click of the door-handle roused Clarice. She saw that the room was
empty, and, drawing a breath of relief, started out of her chair.
Standing thus she heard Drake's footsteps descending the stairs, and
after a pause the slamming of the hall-door. Then she went to the
fireplace and knelt down close to it, warming her hands at the blaze.
'The degradation of it!' she whispered.