The singular white and bronze face bent over her.

"You are better, Miss Cuningham?" said a voice. She knew that voice,

too; she smiled lazily.

"Now I know you," she said. "You are Muhammed."

He smiled back at her, a fugitive smile, mixed sweetness and sadness.

"By-and-by you will know me better--by-and-by," he said. "Now try and

wake up, if you can, and help me."

He had left her and was again at the bed. Aspasia did as she was

bidden. She shook herself from her torpor and stood up, somewhat dizzy,

somewhat sick, but yet herself.

The man, Muhammed or another, she did not allow herself to think out the

matter further, was hanging over Rosamond's inanimate form. Now he laid

down the hand he held and bent his dark head to her breast. Baby flung

one look of horror at the rigid upturned chin.

"She's dead!" she screamed.

He raised himself abruptly, his countenance grey even under the bronze.

"She is not dead," he answered her quickly, with a gesture that forbade

her words, "but I have been too sudden with her, and Jani has been

playing devil's tricks with her drugs. Is there any brandy----?" He

wheeled round as he spoke, for the door had opened and old Mary's figure

appeared.

The Ancient House was now full of rumours. Old Mary's blue eyes were

fixed in a stare of uttermost ecstasy. Her trembling hands were lifted

as if in invocation; all at once she stretched them out, with an

inarticulate cry of exaltation. Then her voice faltered into homely

accents:

"My lamb!" she stammered.

"Oh, Mary," said the man, and his tones rang with boyish note. "Mary

dear, brandy! Mary, if you love me, quick."

He sat down on the side of the bed chafing Rosamond's fingers. Silently

Aspasia held up a bottle of essence, taken from the dressing-table. He

nodded, and she began to lave her aunt's temples, not daring to let her

thoughts or eyes rest on the waxen face, on the ominous air of

irrevocable repose about the long relaxed figure. She wished the silent

lips did not wear that mysterious smile. Determinedly arresting her

mind on those strong words: "She is not dead," she felt that so long as

she could hold this confidence it would help to keep the dread angel at

bay.

"I was too sudden with her," said the man again, "but when I heard her

call me, I think I went mad--I had waited so long!"

Then it seemed to Aspasia that, from the first moment since he had

spoken to her in the passage to-night, she had known him.

"You are Harry English," she said. And saying this, she began to cry.

She looked down at the piteous fixed smile. He had waited so long! Was

it not now too late?

"Oh," she said aloud, sobbing, "is it now not too late?"

Then he flung himself on his knees beside the bed, and she drew back,

for none should come between them. He gathered the inanimate form into

his arms; his lips were close to the deaf ear, and he was speaking into

it.

"Rosamond, my wife, Rosamond, I have come back to you--come back to me.

Rosamond, beloved!"

The room was suddenly full of people.

Was it possible, Aspasia asked herself, that between that cry of

Rosamond and this gathering of the inmates of the house so short a time

had lapsed. She felt as if she had lived a span of years.

"My goodness," cried Lady Aspasia. "Who was screaming? Any one hurt?

I never heard such a scream in my life!"

Then speech and movement alike left the eager lady. Gazing at the bed,

she stood open-mouthed with stupefaction--an odious inclination to laugh

barely stifled, for decency's sake, in her throat.

Sir Arthur also had halted on the threshold. His eyes were fixed, as if

he could hardly credit their evidence, upon the figure of the man in the

shooting-jacket who knelt at the side of the low bed, almost covering

the unconscious body with his embrace. And, indeed, Sir Arthur's eyes at

the moment were playing him false.

"Bethune!" ... he exclaimed. "Major Bethune!"

Not a thought, not a glance had he for the death-like stillness of his

wife's face against the crisp black head--to him that head appeared

sleek, close-cropped, indefinitely brown. He cried out again loudly:

"You infernal scoundrel..." and caught the intruder roughly by the

shoulder.

The kneeling man merely turned his head.

"What ... what ... the devil!----" The words died on Sir Arthur's lips.

His eyes protruded. "Who the devil are you, sir?"

"Who is it?" came Lady Aspasia's whisper, more penetrating than natural

tones.

"Oh hush, hush," said Baby, rebuking she knew not what spirit of

sacrilegious curiosity. "Hush! It is Harry English, uncle!"

Slowly the man got up from his knees and looked round; then his eye came

back to Sir Arthur.

"Harry English!" repeated Lady Aspasia's lips, voicelessly.

Her mind leaped; an irrepressible lightning satisfaction wrote itself on

her harsh, handsome face; then her glance swept over the bed, and the

corners of her mouth went down in a grimace. There lay Death--Death

already, or very near, or she had never seen it. A double release! This

double release was unnecessary--nay, a complication. Fate played such

tricks at times! But Sir Arthur had staggered and reeled, and Lady

Aspasia, ever practical, had to postpone thought for action. She caught

him firmly by the elbow:

"Hold up, Arty; be a man."

The Lieutenant-Governor's first impulse had naturally been to deny the

monstrous thought, to wither Aspasia for her impious suggestion. Then a

look at the black and white portrait over the dressing-table, fitfully

but vividly illumined by the flames of the draught-blown candles--a look

from that strong presentment to the pallid-faced, black-haired man by

the bed, brought an overwhelming conviction. He faltered under it. For

a while he could collect no words, no thought; but presently, as the

tide of blood began slowly to recede, eddying, from his brain, broken

phrases escaped him, almost in a whisper:

"Your--your conduct is infamous, sir," he babbled,

"ungentlemanly--ungentlemanly in the extreme!" ...

Harry English, with one hand on Rosamond's quiet breast as if mutely

claiming his own, spoke then, his eyes on the creature who had robbed

him.

"Your place, sir, is no longer here," he said. His voice was very low,

but it contained an authority which Sir Arthur instinctively felt with a

fresh spasm of indignation and self-pity, trembling upon tears. "Your

place is no longer here," repeated English. "Leave the room."

The Lieutenant-Governor fairly suffocated:

"How long has she known it?" cried he, panting, as he pointed to the

bed. "No wonder I thought her mad. You have killed her!" he exclaimed

acridly, upon another revulsion of thought.

"Had you not better have a doctor?" came Lady Aspasia's dispassionate

accents. "If it's not too late," she added cynically.

Baby called out as if she had been struck, and burst into fresh tears.

The inert figure on the bed was all the girl had of home, all she had of

certain love. This marble woman, no longer kin to her, had lavished on

her more than a mother's care; from those lips, now so silent, except in

the last sad days of trouble, Aspasia had never heard an ungentle word.

"She must not die," sobbed she.

"She will not die," said Harry English.

He shifted his hand till it rested over Rosamond's heart. Then he

looked down at the face, with its faint smile of secret joy, pitifully

exposed to all these eyes; and his own countenance took an expression of

tenderness so infinite that weeping Baby, catching sight of it, held her

breath. He moved and stood with his back to the bed, to shelter in some

measure the unconscious woman from the violation of curious looks.

"I must beg you all to go," he said.

Sir Arthur, who had been gradually growing, within and without, to the

purple stage of fury, now exploded. Portrait or no portrait, the story

was preposterous. This fellow was an impostor!

"Turn me out! ... 'Tis you, sir, I'll turn out. I'll have you committed,

sir, I'll----"

"Please," said a voice from the door, "if any one is ill, let it not be

forgotten that I am a doctor. I offer my services," said Monsieur

Châtelard.

*CHAPTER III*

Monsieur Châtelard, compact in self-possession, precisely attired, as if

he had not been called from slumber at the worst hour of the night by a

sense of mortal emergency! And yet a very different Châtelard, either

from the eager traveller or the genial raconteur and table companion

they had known: this was Châtelard the physician--the world-renowned

specialist.

There was a weighty professional seriousness about him as he advanced

into the room, fixing his spectacles with thumb and forefinger; an air

of confident responsibility. He wasted not a second upon curiosity at

the singular group by the bed, but sent his keen direct gaze straight to

the patient.

"She's killed herself," was his first thought. "Poison," he murmured

aloud, and his gesture was enough to clear the bedside for his own

approach.

"No," said a voice close to him. "Not poison-shock."

M. Châtelard looked up quickly, and immediately became aware of a

stranger's presence.

"Monsieur?" he exclaimed. He, too, had instantly concluded that the

second man in the room must be Bethune. He was shaken into surprise.

"In the name of Heaven, who are you?"

"I am her husband, whom she thought dead. I took her by surprise; she

fainted."

M. Châtelard formed his lips for a noiseless whistle. Affairs, at one

bound, had complicated themselves with a vengeance. Incredibly

interesting! ... But the emergency claimed him. He bent over the bed,

and there was silence all through the room.

Even Sir Arthur, recalled from his undignified attitude, was stilled;

not so much indeed from the sense that a human life was trembling in the

balance, but from the demands which the presence of a new witness made

upon decorum.

The doctor raised himself and held out his hand.

"A candle," he said briefly.

It was given to him, and again the silence reigned.

M. Châtelard, with deft and gentle touch, lifted the heavy eyelid,

passed the flame before it, and peered for some seconds into the fixed

pupil, abnormally dilated. Then he handed back the light. Harry

English took it, and held it aloft while the doctor once more consulted

pulse and heart.

Muttering that he would never travel without his stethescope again, M.

Châtelard laid his cropped head on the fair bosom. Again the seconds

ticked by with nightmare slowness. The brown hand that held the candle

was shaken with slight tremor. At last M. Châtelard straightened

himself with the final air of one who pronounces a verdict.

"This is no mere syncope," he said. "This is brain trouble. Shock, as

you said, sir," with a grave inclination of his head towards Captain

English.

Old Mary, back from her errand, here proffered some brandy in a glass.

"What is that?" cried the physician, sharply. "Brandy," he said,

sniffing. "Heaven preserve us, 'tis well I am here! Above all things

she must not be roused. Mon cher Monsieur," he went on, turning again

to Harry English, "here all our efforts must be to help nature, not to

oppose her. Let all those lights be extinguished," he added

authoritatively. "We must have darkness and quiet. How come all these

people in the room?" He spoke with the doctor's immediate irritation at

surroundings injurious to his patient.

There are situations passing the endurance of human nature, especially

when it is the human nature of a person of high political importance.

Here was M. Châtelard actually addressing yonder infernal interloper as

the leading person!

"I call you to witness, M. Châtelard," Sir Arthur cried excitedly, "that

this is some conspiracy that I by no means acknowledge----"

Old Mary interposed, subdued yet urgent.

"Oh, sir, it is indeed my master!"

"Hush, Arty, come away now!" whispered Lady Aspasia; and once more

clasped his elbow with strong sensible hand. "There will be plenty of

time for all this by-and-by."

"Unless you want to kill her altogether, Sir Gerardine," said Dr.

Châtelard, gravely, "you will make no scenes here."

Harry English stood sentinel by his wife's bed, disdaining speech.

"Unless you want to kill her," had said the doctor. As the words had

been spoken Sir Arthur looked quickly at her whom he had called wife.

"Better she should die," thought he. The whole measure of his love for

the woman in whose beauty he had gloried was in that mean thought.

Better she should die, since her existence was no longer an honour but a

shame to him, Sir Arthur. He had loved her as part of himself; no

longer his, what was she to him? Nothing more than the amputated limb to

its owner, a thing to hide out of sight with all speed, a thing to bury

away.

"I beg of you again," resumed Dr. Châtelard, in tones of restrained

impatience; "I can have no one remain."

A couple of servant girls, who stood huddled whispering in their corner,

slid away one after the other.

Lady Aspasia, by some moral force and a good deal of muscular pressure,

succeeded in dragging the protesting Sir Arthur in their wake. The

doctor looked at old Mary--she dropped her curtsey.

"I might be of use, sir."

He considered her a second in silence.

"You may stay," he said.

"And I?" said Aspasia, her pallid tear-stained face was thrust

pleadingly forward.

"You will do better to go, my child," said the Frenchman, paternally.

"Doctor ... she will not die?"

"Assuredly not this night at least," he replied, evasive yet consoling.

From the door she flung back a piteous look at English, and once again

his eyes answered her: "She will not die."

Harry English took the last unextinguished candle and laid it on the

floor. Outside, the yellow grey dawn was breaking.

"I want hot bottles," ordered Dr. Châtelard of Mary; and when she had

left the room, he turned to the strange man who had called himself Lady

Gerardine's husband.

"You, too, sir," he said. "You must leave us."

Harry English started. For the first time, that evening, discomposure

laid hold of him.

"I? ... but I cannot go. She will want me."

"My dear sir," said the other, his tone softening into compassion (here

was one who loved as few love, or he knew not how to read countenances),

"this affair is very strange, but I, as doctor, am here to judge of

nothing but the good of my patient. She has had a shock, and the shock

has been caused by you. I repeat, all I can do here is to aid

nature--nature demands repose. She is as one who has had concussion of

the brain. That brain must rest. Call her back to thought, you may

call her to death."

"I would sit in a corner of the room--she would not know."

"Ah," said the doctor, "one never can tell. That is a fallacy I have

long since seen through. So long as the soul is there, my dear sir,

many things take place inside the body that we know naught of."

Then Harry English submitted. He went forth with bent head.... He who

had waited so long! lint, even as Aspasia had done, he halted to

question:

"If she comes to consciousness?"

"She will not come to consciousness, perhaps, for days."

"If she wants me----?"

"My dear sir--immediately, of course."

"When she comes to consciousness, will she----"

"Ah," interrupted the doctor, "who knows? We may have brain trouble--an

illness we will surely have."

Then Harry English, who had so confidently said she would not die,

looked at the other mutely inquiring yet further.

"Ah, my dear sir," said the Frenchman in his quick apprehension, and

shrugged his shoulder. Then he added, compassionately, turning his head

towards the bed:

"She is young."

Harry English closed the door and sat down in the dark passage,

cross-legged after the habit that had grown second nature, and there

remained. Waiting.

Suddenly he rose to his feet again; he had heard the handle of the door

click. M. Châtelard stood on the threshold.

"The Indian woman," he whispered, "she makes a noise. She must go."

Jani, crouching in a hidden corner within, had set up a moaning. The

sound of her wail caught Harry English's ear: a creeping chill passed

over him; that Eastern lament that had nothing human in its note, but

was as the despair of the animal that mourns without understanding, how

familiar it was to his ear! So did the women there, over seas, wail

only over death. He, who had held himself in such strength hitherto, was

shaken to his soul. He could not form the words that rose to his lips.

"You know how to deal with these persons," pursued the Frenchman,

absorbed in his thoughts, and in the dusk unable to read the other's

countenance, "I beg you to remove her at once. But, _chut_, _chut_,

attention, please, not to disturb my patient!"

English drew his breath sharply. Had he been of those who weep, he

might have burst into tears then. It is the instant of relief that

catches the strong-fighting soul unawares. He clenched his hands till

the nails ran into the palm, and followed the doctor on noiseless feet

into the room.

One glance at the bed! It was all in shadow; but even in the deliberate

dimness there was evidence that a practised hand had already been at

work. He could see that his wife had been settled among her pillows

with care. The white of a bandage lay across her brow. A screen was

set between the bed and the banked-up fire. Old Mary was seated in a

high chair, within the glow, composed and watchful, the very picture of

what a nurse should be. The light of the shaded candle illumined but

one thing--the white hand that hung slightly over the edge of the bed;

it scintillated back from the gems of the ring that guarded the narrow

wedding circlet. His rings!

M. Châtelard pulled him by the sleeve. Harry English turned sharply.

He had told Sir Arthur "that his place was not here," and must now

realise in his turn that neither was his place here. There was

bitterness and anger in his eyes as he bent over the ayah.

She looked up at him, terror on her face. He pointed to the passage,

and she crawled out, on hands and knees, whimpering to herself like a

dog. Without another glance towards Rosamond, Harry retired also, and

closed the door behind him. Old Mary followed him with her eyes, and

folded her hands; her lips moved as if in prayer.

* * * * *

In the passage Jani dragged herself towards her old master, and

clutching his ankles, laid her head upon his feet.

"Sahib!" ...

Harry looked down at her a moment, without speaking. So intense was the

bitterness that welled up within him, even towards this poor wretch,

that he was ashamed of it. Thus, when he spoke, it was with an added

gentleness.

"Ah, Jani," he said, "you knew me, here, from the beginning." ...

This miserable pawn on the chess-board of life, had she not worked

against him, how different all might now have been!

Jani once more lifted her face. In the livid dawn it looked grey with

fear. Then she was gone from him with a scarcely perceptible rustle, a

whisper of soft garments, like some stealthy-winged thing of the night.

Harry English sank back into his squatting attitude; to wait again.

Never had fate so completely veiled her countenance from him.

Years he had endured. He had clung tenaciously to life, had borne, at

the moment of hope renewed, the cruellest and most insulting buffet that

could strike a man, and still had fought, still had held to a determined

purpose. Had it all been to this hour only?--false servant, failing

friend, lost wife! No, not lost. So long as the faintest breath

flickered between those silent smiling lips.

* * * * *

Harry English turned to God, with a great cry of his soul. It was no

cry of supplication, but a call upon the Infinity. Because of Power,

because of Justice, because of Goodness, she must not die.

*CHAPTER IV*

M. Châtelard sat down by the bed and laid his finger on the slender

wrist. A hardening pulse. Fever. He had anticipated fever, he almost

welcomed it as the natural course.

Would she live? These nervous creatures are as tough as cats. But,

poor soul, were it not perhaps best for her were she to pass? What a

situation! Great gods, what a situation! There was not one of these

searchers after psychological enigmas, not one of these implacable

exponents of the weaknesses of the human heart, not a Maupassant, not a

Mirbeau, not a d'Annunzio who could have devised the story of this

impasse. To die would be too absolutely commonplace a solution. If he,

Châtelard, could help it, she should not die, were it only for the

proper working-out of the problem.

Propping his chin on his hand and his elbow on the bed, the savant

leaned forward, gazing at his patient, till his keen eyes, piercing the

gloom, were able to trace the lines of the unconscious face.

"It is not that she is so beautiful--there are many in this country who

possess the same incredible purity of outline, the same delicate wealth

of feminine charm--but _c'est une ensorceleuse_! Did I not say it to

the young man? One of those women who create passions that become

historic. One of those whose fate is to make havoc as they go. The

three men here--they are mad of her, each in his different way. The

poor Gerardine, he could have cried like a child, as we turned him from

the room ... and the sly, quiet, relentless Bethune, that man of granite

... the lover, he's devoured; the very stone wastes in the furnace. How

thin he has grown since that Indian night! And the third--the most

surprising of all--the real husband! Oh, the strange story! the

husband--the _first_ husband _par dessus le marché_, as though matters

were not sufficiently entangled already! Ah, ça! mais d'où sort-il,

celui-là? C'est qu'il faisait pitié--c'est encore lui le plus atteint

des trois! One could feel the frenzied soul under that air of calm

command." ...

Then enthusiastically following the trail of his own Gallic deductions,

M. Châtelard began to reconstruct, _con amore_, the threads of the

drama.

"Un beau gaillard, malgré sa pâleur de revenant.... Avec lui, sans

doute, elle a appris ce que c'est que l'amour. Ils se sont aimés jeunes

et beaux.... Ils se valaient bien l'un l'autre, certes! Idylle

parfaite, heures parfumées! Then comes the cyclone. He is swept from

her by relentless duty. He dies, a hero in war as he was a hero in

love. She is alone, desolate. She mourns. At the psychological

moment, enters upon the scene the handsome, rich, powerful Sir

Gerardine. He offers her ease, position, comfort, a home, his

protection. She turns to him as a child to a father. She places her

hand in his. And thereafter follows the inevitable. The years have

gone by; she becomes more and more a woman; the demands of her nature

expand; and the old husband who is--and I don't blame him--not content

to be father.... _Sapristi_, how he bores her, the old husband! Then

arrives the man, the young man, the man of her own age. (He has loved

her already as his friend's wife, in the secret of his own soul, all in

honour and loyalty.) He seeks her now, knowing that his hour has come."

...

"L'oublierai-je, jamais telle qu'elle était ce soir-là, au moment de la

première tentation? Ruisselante du feu vert de ses émeraudes; superbe

dans sa beauté, sa chasteté insolente; mais couvant déjà sous la neige

de sa blanche beauté, le feu destructeur de la passion renaissante.

Elle a lutté. Oh, oui, celle-là a lutté! Son âme et son corps se sont

entredéchirés.... Mais, poursuivie jusque dans cette solitude même par

l'implacable qui l'a traquée comme le tigre sa proie, la fin est

inévitable!"

"Et au moment suprême où, femme au zénith des a gloire, elle cède à la

seconde passion--voilà l'objet de la première qui rèsuscite, et vient la

rèclamer! Ah, dieux, quel cri! Les oreilles m'en tintent encore. Jamais

je ne l'oublierai, ce cri d'un coeur qui s'effondre...."

"And the resuscitated man? The devil! where does he come from?

Springing up in the old house in the middle of the night. Another

tragedy there! He misdoubts, as yet, nothing. Strong in his right, in

the memory of their love, he comes to claim her of the old husband--Of

the third, of the lover, he has no suspicion. My God, with what eyes of

trouble and wonder did he not look at me when I bade him leave her!

Unhappy fellow, why 'tis his very existence that's killing her! How

long will it be before he finds out the truth, finds out that, at the

very moment of regaining his treasure, he has been robbed, robbed by him

who was his friend? And the friend, then, that man of granite, how will

he bear himself? Will even his relentless determination stand before

that terrible double knowledge of his own unconscious treachery to his

comrade and of the mortal danger to his beloved? A stronger man, even

than he, might well go mad! ... As for the pitiable second husband, the

old man, who counts for so little in the midst of these three young

lives, and is yet so stricken in all he holds most dear--his dignity,

his honour, his pathetic senile confidence and affection--what of him?

Oh, antique, silent house, what palpitating drama do you not hold, this

desolate dawn! Those three men, each with his passion and his

claim--his just claim--and the woman there, lying so still! ..."

So M. Châtelard mused, with ever and anon a keen eye to the patient, a

stealthy touch on the pulse.

A pale shaft of light pierced in between the curtains, and, like a

slowly shifting finger, moved straightly till it pointed to the bed. M.

Châtelard started, rubbed his eyes, adjusted his spectacles, and stared

again. The heavy, half-loosened tress that lay across the sheet shone

silver in the light--the tress that had been so richly golden, crown of

that haughty head, only the evening before.

"I have heard of such a thing," said the doctor to himself, "but it is

the first time that I have seen it with my own eyes." He bent over the

pillow and curiously lifted the strand of hair. There was no illusion

about it. Rosamond's glorious hair was white.

*CHAPTER V*

"I think you had better get your uncle a little whisky, or something,"

said Lady Aspasia to Baby, as, upon their ejection into the passage, she

guided the poor gentleman's vague footsteps towards her own room. "Come

in here, Arty; there's a good fire."

Sir Arthur turned his eyes upon her with a vacant look, catching at

surprise.

"Yes, my room. But, Lord, I don't think any of us need mind the

_convenances_ to-night!"

She gave a dry laugh. At least, whatever rules were transgressed

now--they only regarded him and her: the thought came with sudden and

exceeding pleasantness upon her; and that heart of hers, atrophied by

long disuse, was stirred. She looked at the helpless, dazed creature,

sinking into her armchair, with a softness that, even in his most

gallant youth, his image had not evoked. "Good fellow" as she was, Lady

Aspasia was yet a woman in the hidden fibre.

Young Aspasia, shuffling about in her slippers, yet still fleet of foot,

broke in upon their silence with the decanter. Shivering, partly with

fatigue, partly with the chill of the dawn, she stood, vaguely watching

the elder lady administer a stiff bumper to Sir Arthur.

Complete as was the turmoil in her own mind, deep as was her distress

and anxiety anent Rosamond, Baby's sense of humour was irresistibly

acute: the vision of Lady Aspasia, incompletely attired under her motor

coat, her loose coiled hair (divested of the dignity of her

"transformation") presenting a strangely flat appearance, bending with

such solicitude over so reduced a Runkle, brought a hysterical giggle in

her throat.

"Pray," said Lady Aspasia, wheeling round upon her, "don't begin to cry

here, my dear! One is as much as I can manage."

"I'm not crying," retorted young Aspasia, as indignantly as her

chattering teeth would allow. "I'm laughing."

"Then that's worse," responded the other, succinctly. "Take some

whisky, too. Go to bed."

Sir Arthur, gulping down the potent mixture provided for him, extended a

forbidding left hand:

"One moment," he ordered; then choked and coughed. But the stimulant

was working its effect, his backbone was notably stiffer. The native

dignity, not to say pomposity, was returning to his support. He regarded

his niece with eyes, severe, if somewhat watery. "How long, Aspasia,

have you known this--this--disgraceful state of affairs?"

He rolled his suffused gaze from the girl to his distinguished relative,

seeking a kindred indignation.

"You mean, how long I have known that Aunt Rosamond wasn't married at

all? Oh, Lord, what am I saying?--that she's got two

husbands--gracious, I can't help being muddled. Who could? Anyhow,

that she's not married to you? I----"

"The premises are by no means established," interrupted Sir Arthur, with

not unsuccessful reaching after his old manner. "But how long, I ask,

have you known of the presence in this house--or in this

neighbourhood--of the person, impostor or no, who dares to present

himself as Harry English?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," said Baby, hugging herself in her

dressing-gown, the warmth of the fire, the heat of her reawakening

antagonism, getting the better of her chill tremors; "as a matter of

fact, you have known him a good deal longer and more intimately than I

have."

"Lord, child, how you bandy words!" said Lady Aspasia, disapprovingly;

"let her go to bed, Arty. Surely, you'll have plenty of time by-and-by

for all this."

But the Lieutenant-Governor waived the interruption aside with

impatience. Miss Cuningham did not await further questioning. It would

be scarce human to feel no complacency in the power to impart weighty

information. And Baby was among the most human of her race.

"You went and fished him out yourself," she cried. "Your own particular,

private secretary."

And still Sir Arthur was all at sea.

"Private secretary," he repeated blankly, hastily running over in his

mind all the members of his staff within recent years. Nonsense!

Preposterous! There was not one who bore the faintest resemblance to

this black-avised, domineering intruder.

Lady Aspasia whistled under her breath to mark her displeasure at the

inopportune discussion, and mixed herself a companion bumper to Sir

Arthur's.

"The native spring, not quite so native as we all fancied, Runkle.

Muhammed Saif-u-din. My goodness," cried the girl, clasping her hands,

and struck with a new aspect of the situation, "no wonder I thought him

queer! ... No wonder, Runkle, he looked at you as if he could murder

you! Lord, it's just too romantic! To think of his being with you all

these days and weeks, and of his being here, alone with us--waiting,

waiting all the time."

"Muhammed..." ejaculated Sir Arthur, and sat in his chair as if turned

to stone.

Then suddenly:

"Muhammed!" he cried again, in a high shrill voice, and bounded to his

feet. "The damned black scoundrel," foamed the Lieutenant-Governor,

"the wretched nigger. The miserable beggar, whom I took from the gutter

and admitted into my household, and treated as a gentleman--a gentleman,

begad! By the Lord, he shall smart for this! It's a hideous

conspiracy! No, no, Lady Aspasia, you don't know the race as I do.

It's trickery, it's a piece of monstrous Indian jugglery. I tell you,

it's a conspiracy between them all."

"Of course," cut in sarcastic Baby, trembliog again, this time with

anger, "it's all a conspiracy, merely to annoy the Runkle. Captain

English has simply plotted not to have been killed, and poor Aunt

Rosamond lies at death's door out of sheer aggravation--that's part of

the conspiracy also."

"And pray," said Sir Arthur, unheeding anything but the opposition of

her tone, and turning furiously again upon the girl, "will you have the

kindness to answer me at last? You, you, my niece, how long have you

been in the business? A nice set of vipers I've been nourishing! Oh,

my God!"

He put his hand to his forehead and reeled; then stretched out his arm,

gropingly. Promptly, Lady Aspasia popped the glass she had destined for

herself into the vague fingers; and, as if mechanically, it was

instantly conveyed to his lips.

"I've been in the business no longer than you, yourself, Runkle."

Young Aspasia, between anger, scorn, and her sense of humour, was now

perilously near the hysterics dreaded by her namesake.

"Now look here," said the latter, catching the small figure by the elbow

and turning it towards the door, "you get out of this in double-quick

time; I'll manage your uncle."

"Master Muhammed will find he has made a little mistake--a little

mistake," said the great man, spurred once more to his normal vigour of

intellect.

He was standing, legs wide apart, on the hearthrug, and glared at his

niece as she wheeled round on the threshold for her usual Parthian shot.

"It's rather a pity that he does not happen to be Muhammed any more;

isn't it, Runkle?" she cried spitefully; "that he never was Muhammed,

but always Harry English, Harry English, Harry English, who never was

dead at all!"

She closed the door with a slam upon a picture of her uncle's suddenly

stricken face, of Lady Aspasia's swift advance towards him with

outstretched hands.

"She'll manage him!" said Baby to herself, with a sobbing giggle, as she

ran down the dark passage.

*CHAPTER VI*

The Old Ancient House lay in silence--a sinister silence, Bethune

thought--after the rumours and alarms of the night. The dawn was

breaking yellow over a grey, still world. What did it herald? he

wondered, as he looked out of his dormer window under the roof.

One thing it was bringing, he told his sullen heart--the new day of the

new life of Raymond Bethune. Raymond Bethune, the disgraced, who had

failed his comrade.

When that wild cry had rung out into the night, "Harry, Harry, Harry!"

it had sounded, in his ears, like the death-cry of his honour; a parting

from all that he had held dear; a parting from his highest and closest,

than which no parting between soul and body could be more bitter.

He had sat on his bed, and listened--listened, expecting he knew not

what. What, indeed, had he now to expect? He had heard the running of

feet, the opening and shutting of doors, all the busy noises of a house

alarmed. Was she dead? Dead of her joy, in that supreme moment of

reunion? Would there not be a heaven, even in his anguish, for him who

could thus take her dying kiss!

By-and-by he had roused himself; and, after a look of horror upon that

bed of dreams, mechanically dressed for his departure. To go away--that

was all that was left to him--the last decency. He put a grim control

upon his nerves as he wielded the razor and the brushes that Harry

English's fingers had so recently touched.

Harry English ... out of the grave!

Bethune could not yet face the marvel of the situation. He had yet no

power over his dazed brain to bring it to realise that for so long he

had been living near his old comrade in the flesh, and had not known--he

who had not passed a day, since their parting, without living with him

in the spirit! Still less could he speculate upon the reasons of

English's incognito, upon his singular scheme, his recklessness of his

own reputation; nor by what miracle he had been saved from death; nor by

what freakish cruelty of fate he had been buried from their ken till the

irreparable had been worked on other lives.

No; Bethune had no single thought to spare from the overwhelming fact of

what he had himself done.

How silent was this house, now, in the dawn! And how much worse was

silence than the most ominous sounds. Was it not his own silence that

had betrayed both himself and his friend?

He packed deliberately, feeling the while a fleeting childish warmth of

comfort in the thought that Harry wore his old shooting-jacket--that

Harry had still something of his about him. He folded the discarded

babu garments with almost tender touch. Then he paused and hesitated.

There were the papers--the damnable, foolish papers that had started all

the mischief; and these he must sort. Some must be destroyed; some, not

his to deal with, must be laid by before he could leave the place.

He stole to the door, carrying his portmanteau. There was no fear of his

meeting any of those whom he dreaded; for, in the rambling old house,

his floor had a little breakneck stairs to itself which landed him in a

passage outside the hall.

There was a stir of life and a leap of firelight behind the half-open

door of the kitchen; but, in a panic, he passed quickly out of reach of

the voices lest he should hear. Was she dying ... or dead? Or, since

joy does not kill, was she happy in a sublime egotism of two? He had no

courage for the tidings--whatever they might be.

The little room where he had worked with such fervour was filled with a

grey glimmer that filtered in through the mist-hung orchard trees. The

fire had been set but not yet lit. He put a match to it; he would have

much to burn. Then he sat down by the table and drew forth his

manuscripts. The last line he had written--that line set only yesterday

from a full heart--met his eye:

English was then in the perfection of his young manhood--a

splendid specimen of an Englishman, athletic, handsome,

intellectual, a born leader of men, and withal, the truest

comrade ever a man had.

Out of the half-finished page, the past rose at Raymond Bethune and

smote him in the face. So had he written, so had he thought of Harry

English yesterday, when he believed him dead.

A man of more sanguine temperament, of more imaginative mind, might well

have comforted himself with explanatory reflections, with reasons so

plausible for his own behaviour, that he must end by believing in them

himself, regarding his own act in a gradually changing light, till it

assumed a venial, not to say meritorious, aspect. But Raymond Bethune,

with his narrow conception of life, with his few, deep-cut affections,

had this in him--virtue or deficiency--that he could not lie. And now

he knew the naked truth. He knew that, when his only friend had come

from out the dead and laid claim upon him, in the overwhelming surprise

of the moment he had betrayed friendship--that some unknown base self

had sprung into life. He had not been glad--he had not been glad ...

and Harry had seen it. Harry had read into his heart--and there had

read, not gladness but dismay.

The sweat started again upon Bethune's forehead as he re-lived that

moment and again saw his failing soul mirrored in the wide pupils of

English's eyes.

* * * * *

Outside, upon the grey-brown twisted boughs of the apple-tree nearest

the window, a robin began to sing. The insidious sweetness of the

little voice pierced the lonely man to the marrow, with an intolerable

pang of self-pity. He looked out on the bleak winter scene of the

garden, where the mist hung in shreds across the sodden grass, over the

bare boughs. It was an old, old orchard and the trees were leprous with

grey lichen. It seemed as though they could not bear flower or fruit

again. Vaguely, for his brain was not apt to image, he thought: "In

some such desolation lies the future for me." And if the robin

sang--oh, if the robin sang--its message never could be for him!

His eye wandered back into the room. Here had he worked so many days,

in austere, high ardour of loyalty. Aye, and yonder, in the armchair,

had she sat; and he had judged her from this same altitude of mind. Now

he knew himself better, saw the earthy soul of him as it really was.

All his anger, all his scorn, all his antagonism, from the very first

instant when her pale luminous beauty had dawned upon him, had been but

fine-sounding words in his own mind to hide the thing, the fact--his

passion for Harry English's wife!

He took some of the manuscript into his hands, rough sheets as well as

neatly typed copy; and, standing before the now leaping fire, began

slowly to tear it, page by page, and fling it into the blaze. He smiled

as he watched the red twists fly up the chimney. There was subtle irony

in the situation. Major Bethune calling upon his friend's widow to wake

from her sleep of oblivion, forcing her back to the sorrow she would

fain forget, sparing her no pang, watching her as the warder watches the

convict to see that not a jot of her task escape her; seeing, as he

watched, the old love reclaim her with strong hands, so that, wooed once

more and once more won, she was ready, as surely no woman was before, to

greet the dead returned! ... "Harry, Harry, Harry!" He would never get

that cry out of his head.

He let himself fall into the chair upon the hearth, his hands resting

listlessly from their task. How was he to endure life, how carry out

the most trivial business with this sick distaste of all things upon

him?

* * * * *

Aspasia opened the door and looked in. She gave a cry of pleasure as

she saw him.

"How cosy!" she said, and came over to the fire.

Then she stood, gazing down at him, with a small smile trembling on her

lips. She had evidently been crying, and the curves of these same lips

looked softer and more childish than ever. Her cheeks were flushed, her

eyes darkly shadowed.

Bethune sat motionless. After a pause she spoke, still staring

reflectively at the flames.

"I wondered where you had been all this dreadful night. You know what

has happened? Of course you know."

"I know."

Nothing in his voice or manner struck her--she was so full of the

tremendous occasion.

"Ah!" she cried, suddenly flashing upon him, "I think I'm sorry you

already know. I should have liked to have been the first to tell you.

For you--for you, at least, it's all glorious. Oh, how glad you must

be! What it must mean to you!"

He sat like stone: she was worse than the robin. He had thought he had

suffered to the fullest capacity; but the girl, with her clear voice and

her honest eyes, was tearing his heart to pieces. Then she became

conscious that in his silence, though she had known him ever as a silent

man, there was something almost sinister.

"What is it?" she asked him. "Oh, I suppose you knew all along?

No--you didn't, you couldn't!"

He shook his head.

"Ah!" Her bright face clouded. "It is because of her, of poor Aunt

Rosamond--of him, rather? You think he has come back to her too late,

only to lose her?"

He resumed the tearing up of his manuscript with fingers clenched upon

the page.

"What are you doing?" she cried, quickly diverted. "Oh, Major Bethune,

why? Don't tear up all that beautiful life--all you've been working at

so long. Oh, what a pity--what a pity!"

He crumpled a mass of paper violently together and flung it into the

flames, thrusting it down among the embers with his hand. He felt the

startled amazement growing upon her, and forced his pale lips to speak.

"He would hate it."

Saying this, he tried to smile. Aspasia contemplated him for a while,

her eyes wondering. Then she stretched out her hand and touched his

timidly.

"Don't be unhappy--let me tell you; I think I understand. Oh! I'm sure

I understand, for we have been friends a little, too, have we not? You

think it's worse for him to come back. You think he had better be dead,

if she is to die. But she won't." Aspasia nodded confidently. "I tell

you she won't die. I've just seen Dr. Châtelard; he's quite satisfied.

I have seen him--Captain English--too. I said to him: 'She won't die.'

And he said to me: 'I know it.' He is there outside her room--so strong

and patient. Now," said the girl, and was not, in her innocent wish to

comfort, aware how tenderly she spoke, "now you will let yourself be

glad for yourself, since you've got him back, will you not?"

Bethune suddenly turned and caught the gentle hand that touched him in

both his. He broke into sobs--a man's difficult, ugly, tearing sobs,

that surprise no one more than him whom they overtake. For an instant

Aspasia was terrified. But for that desperate clutch she would have

fled. The next moment, however, all the woman in her awoke.

"Oh, don't cry!" she said, as if she were speaking to a child, and laid

her free hand upon his close-cropped hair.

And then--neither of them knew how it happened--her arm was round his

shoulder, and his head was lying upon her tender breast. The dry agony

that shook him passed; and tears that fell like balm rolled down his

cheeks.

Baby, carried quite out of herself in this astounding whirl of events,

began to weep, too, quite softly, to herself. And, as he lifted his

face to hers and drew her down to him, their lips met upon the bitter of

their tears, and yet in sweetness undreamed of. At the touch of that

child-mouth and at her voiceless surrender, Bethune knelt before her in

his heart and consecrated himself to her for ever. Closed henceforth

for him the magic casement on "perilous seas" of passion, "on faëry

lands forlorn." Gone those visions, exquisite and deadly! A faithful

loving hand, a child's hand, had been held out to him in his moment of

utmost misery; it had lifted him from the deeps; it he would clasp and

go to meet life's duty, content--aye, humbly grateful--that his winter

should have harboured a robin after all; ready to open his heart to its

song of spring.

* * * * *

Afterwards, he knew, he would blame himself for that moment of weakness

which had won him, unworthy, so true and unsuspecting a heart. But the

deed was irrevocable, and he would not have been human not to rejoice.

* * * * *

The secret of the sorrow that had given to Aspasia the man she loved,

she would never know. And even her frank lips could never seek the

story. As sacred as the memory of their first kiss, she would hide in

her heart the memory of those strange and terrible sobs.

Wiser than Psyche she would light no lamp, but keep this first mystery

of love in unprofaned shadow.

*CHAPTER VII*

Bethune and Aspasia quickly parted.

Love had come as a messenger of comfort; but to linger under its wings

in anything that approached to joy, in that stricken house would have

seemed desecration. Bethune, moreover, was glad to be alone. His own

trouble was too strong upon him. He felt as if he must have the cold

clean air upon his face, gather the winter solitude about the nameless

confusion of his thoughts. He wanted to meet himself face to face and

have it out with Raymond Bethune; Raymond Bethune, who had gained an

unlooked-for love, but had lost--everything else. He went forth into

the orchard--seeking himself in those barren spaces, that, but a while

ago, had seemed to hold the image of his future.

But he was no longer the shamed, hopeless man of that hour of dawn, with

his eye fixed on some near death, as the savage instinct of some sick

wild creature is fixed upon the hole that shall hide the last struggle.

Henceforth he would be no longer alone; and if the thought of the gentle

comradeship brought solace, it brought also its own serious

responsibility, almost its terror--the weight of another life, the loss

of his soul's freedom....

Presently, as he tramped up and down the drenched grass, a chill and

numbing touch seemed to be laid upon him and to invade him with the

blankness of the universal winter sleep. The recurrent waves of a

lover's exaltation that had seized him at each reminiscence of the young

bosom beneath his cheek, of the tear-wet face pressed so close to his,

died down within him; and died, too, those spasms of horror over that

moment when, by a single evil thought, he had betrayed the true facts of

a lifetime.

His mind seemed to become nearly as dull as the sky above him--iron

grey, flecked with meaningless wrack; his heart to grow cold, like the

inert sod beneath his feet. And he let himself go to the respite of

this mood. The robin was silent. He was glad of that. There was no

sound but the drip of the boughs as he passed. Disjointed visions,

foolish tags of memory, flashed through his brain--the echo of Baby's

thrumming, the picture of the Eastern palace room, with its English

illusions, as he stood waiting; Lady Gerardine, in the rosy radiance of

the Indian evening, fitting her slender hand into the imprint of the

queens' death-touches on the stone; her smile upon him over the languid

Niphotis roses in the narrow varnished cabin, the open port-holes and

the green sea-foam springing up across them in the lamplight, the

mingled smell of the brine and the flowers; Aspasia dancing on the

frozen grass, brown and red like a robin; Muhammed standing before him

in his soldier-pride, the ironic smile on his face--son of the East,

with the winter-lichened boughs of the English orchard above him!

At the end of his beat Raymond wheeled round and looked down the

moss-grown avenue where that day the red-turbaned Eastern had met his

gaze; and now, with the fantastic effect of a dream, he beheld the

selfsame square-shouldered figure swing into sight between the grey

boles with their ghostly look of age. Advancing with quick strides, it

was bearing straight upon him.

Bethune stood as if held by a resistless force. He knew life would have

no more crucial moment for him; yet his heart beat not a stroke the

faster. He turned his face towards the inevitable. After all, a man

can but endure. The illusion of Muhammed had quickly passed, as the

steady step drew closer, into that reality that was stranger than any

fantasm.

Harry English, with head bare to the tart airs, with strong line of

clean-shaven chin catching the bleak light, and deep eyes lit with a

very human lire--the old comrade in the flesh! He halted within a pace,

and the two looked at each other for a second's silence. Then, while

Bethune's countenance remained set in that iron dulness, the other's

face was suddenly stirred.

"What the devil is the meaning of this?" cried Harry English, in a loud

voice of anger. "I see your portmanteau packed. Do you think for a

second that you can leave me now?"

The deepest reproach, the utmost note of sorrow or scorn, could not have

touched Bethune so keenly as this familiar explosion. A thousand

memories awoke and screamed. How often had not his captain rated him

with just such a rough tongue and just such a kindly gleam of the eye!

All the ice of his cold humour of reaction was shivered into bits under

the rush of upheaving blood.

"Harry!" he stammered. "Harry ... I ... my God!" ...

He saw, as before, in that hideous moment in the little bedroom, but now

blessedly, a reflection of his own thought on the face opposite to him.

Harry English put out his hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

"My God!" said Bethune again. He turned his head sharply away and his

jaw worked. The cry broke from him. "I ought to have died for you!

Would to Heaven I had died for you at Inziri! ..."

The grasp of his shoulder was tightened. English shook his comrade

almost fiercely.

"Old man, you were never one of the talkers. Hold your tongue now."

Bethune drew a deep breath. The intolerable weight rolled from his

heart. English's hand dropped. It was over and done with; the two

friends had met again, soul to soul.

In silence they turned and walked towards the house, side by side, steps

together, as so often--God, so often!--in the good old days of hardship.

"Let us go in," said English, at the door. "They tell me that there can

be no change, up there, and she's in good hands, thank Heaven, but I

cannot find a moment's peace out of the house. Come, we'll have a cup

of tea together."

The sun had risen just clear of the moor line into a space of clarity,

and shone, a white dazzling disc, sending faint spears into their eyes.

It shone, too, pale yet brisk, through the open window of the little

dining-room, where, as yet, the board was but half spread, where an

ill-kindled fire had flickered into death. (What self-respecting

servant could do her work as usual when the family is in affliction?)

"Just see to the fire, Ray," said English, and went out of the room.

Bethune, with the bachelor's expediency, had recourse to a candle culled

from a sconce, and produced a cheerful, if somewhat acrid flame, to

greet his friend when he returned, black kettle in one hand, brown

teapot in the other. Soon the hot fragrance circled into the room.

"If we'd had a brew of this up at Inziri, those last days, it would have

made a difference, eh?" said the master of the house.

They drew their chairs to the hearth and sat, each with his cup in his

hand, even as in times bygone, with their tin mugs before the camp fire

at dawn. In spite of the sense of that hushed room above and the

suspense of its brooding over them, Bethune had not felt so warm in his

heart these many years.

"Man!" he exclaimed suddenly, reverting unconsciously to the Scotch

idiom of his youth, "why in the name of Heaven did you do it?"

Harry English, staring at the red coals, answered nothing for a while.

Not that he had failed to understand the train of thought that ended in

the vague-seeming, yet comprehensive question--but that the answer was

difficult if not painful.

"You see," he said slowly, at last, without shifting his abstracted

gaze, "there was so much to find out and so much to consider...."

"To find out?"

"I had to be sure."

Bethune laid his cup on the hob and leaned over towards his friend, his

fingers lightly touching the arm of the other's chair. After a while:

"I think I understand," he said, knitting his rugged brows.

English gave him a fleeting smile of peculiar sadness.

"When one has been dead eight years, it is wiser, before coming to life

again, to make sure that one's resurrection will be a benefit."

Bethune fell back into his place, with a grey shade about the lips.

English dropped his eyes and there came silence between them. After a

pause, he began to mend the fire from the scuttle; and, placing the

lumps of coals one by one, he spoke again:

"It was all a story of waiting, you see, from beginning to end."

"Rajab--Rajab is gone, by the way, poor old chap. He swore he'd seen you

fall, more dead than the prophet himself," said Bethune, with the harsh

laugh that covers strong emotion. "And from the fort, through the

glass, we watched those devils chucking the bodies into the

torrent--dead and wounded, too. We thought the great river was your

grave with many another's! Never a bone could we find of all the good

chaps."

Harry English straightened himself and laughed, too, not very

mirthfully. Then he pulled open the loose collar of his shirt and laid

bare a jagged scar that ran from the column of the throat across the

collar bone.

"I'm confoundedly hard to kill, you know. Just missed the jugular. I

must have been spouting blood like a fountain. And then I got a blow on

the head from a hilt that knocked me into nothingness. Rajab was about

right--I was as dead as the prophet for the time being. If I had not

had nine lives----"

Again the silence. Then Bethune inquired, casually, fumbling in his

pocket for a pipe:

"And how is it you weren't chucked overboard with the rest?"

"Old Yufzul had a fancy for keeping me alive. Ah, if he could have

caught the chap that cut me down, he would not have left much skin on

him. He'd given stringent orders to spare mine. The old beggar took a

notion that I was a sort of mascot, or something, that I carried

luck--that it was the influence of my precious person kept things going

so triumphantly at the fort.... You may remember he was always sending

envoys to me with flattering offers? By the Lord, Ray, I believe it was

half to get me that he stuck to the business so long. So much for my

carrying luck!"

The speaker smiled, with a bitter twist of the lip, and poked the fire

unnecessarily.

"Remember," he added, "that business about the flag on the roof, when

the bullets were going so lively? It seems our friend was watching and

was much struck to see that I was not."

"I remember," answered Bethune's deep bass.

Did he not remember? Had he been of the nationality of M. Châtelard,

with what a hand-clasp, with what a flow of rhetoric would he not now

emphasise his vivid recollection of that hour!

English, lying back in his armchair, with his head resting on the top,

closed his eyes wearily. His face looked very pallid and sharp-featured

thus upturned and relaxed from its usual stern control; and Bethune shot

many an anxious look at it as he sat silent, the pipe he forgot to draw

hanging loosely between his teeth.

Presently the other resumed, in low, reminiscent tones:

"I became the Khan's fetish. So long as he had me he was sure of his

luck. He thought himself safe. In the end, I think, he thought he could

not die."

"Well?" said Bethune, as the pause grew over long.

"Well, that's all. I was a fetish, very well looked after. Too well.

God!" said the man, sitting up, a sudden passion on eye and lip, "I was

kept prisoner, if you like. For five years, Raymond Bethune, I was

chained to that old Khan's carcase, night and day."

"For five years," echoed Bethune, stupidly; "and what were you doing?"

English did not answer till the silence seemed to have obliterated the

question. Then he said slowly:

"I was waiting."

"Then?"

"Then the old devil died--and I escaped. Oh, you don't want me to spin

you that yarn now! You can imagine it for yourself, if you ever imagine

anything, you old dunderhead. There was blood spilt, if you care to

know. I had waited a long time, you see."

"But," objected the Major of Guides, after some minutes devoted to

calculation, "that was three years ago."

"Aye," laughed English, good-naturedly contemptuous, "but a man doesn't

walk off the Karakoram on to the English lines in a day, especially if

he's an Afghan captive. I had to take a little round through Turkestan,

and back through Baluchistan--on foot, Raymond, every yard of the

way--as a dervish."

"Good Lord!" said Bethune.

"I flatter myself I know more of the Karakorams and the Turkoman

frontier than any white man yet. And I can speak the lingo of every

tribe that calls Ali chief. Aye, and I know their tricks and customs,

their very habit of thought. There was not a camp or hut where they did

not take me for one of themselves. It was just a year after Yufzul's

death that I landed at Kurrachee."

"Oh, Harry," cried his friend, impulsively, "why did you not come to

me?"

"Have I not told you already?" answered English, after one of his deep

pauses. "I had things to find out first. Where is your canniness? If

live men have to go slow, what about dead men? ... No--no." The bitter

smile came back to his lips. "I lay low, and lived in the bazaar, as

good a servant of the prophet as ever salaamed to the East; and

then"--his voice changed--"oh, then--I got all the news I wanted!"

Bethune dared not raise his eyes.

"More than I wanted," added Harry English, with his bleak laugh. "You

don't need to be told why I remained a Pathan, do you?"

When Bethune once more found courage to speak to his friend, it was

because the stillness, pregnant with so much meaning, seemed

intolerable.

"Well?" he queried hoarsely.

"Well, then," said Harry English, "I waited--again." ...

And his comrade felt more than this he was never to know of the hardest

moment of all the man's hard life.

"I dare say," resumed English, his old air of serenity coming back to

him, "you wonder why I did not extend that botched business as far as

the jugular this time, and have done with it. But, you see, there was

just a chance, I told myself; and so," he repeated, falling back into

his significant formula, "I waited. I got work with an old babu; and

by-and-by my opportunity came, and I took it."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Bethune, shifting restlessly in his chair. "It

was the maddest business!"

"Perhaps," said English, a shade of pain sweeping across his face. "But

I had to know. Any other course was too dangerous. Oh, I am not

speaking of myself--think how dangerous!"

"But, man--man," cried the other, "it need not have taken you all that

time! When you'd seen with your own eyes, when you had found that the

old fellow was killing her, when you were here in this house, and had

seen her in her sorrow--then----"

English flung one lightning glance upon the speaker.

"And even then," he said slowly, "I had still to know--more."

A moment Bethune stared at him open-mouthed; then his own unclear

conscience pointed the otherwise inconceivable idea to his slow-working

wits. He felt the dark blood mount to his forehead.

"Now I've told you all," said Harry English, and got up from his chair.

"Thank you," said Bethune.

* * * * *

Aspasia's bright presence was suddenly with them. English wheeled round;

but her smiling face was reassurance sufficient.

"I've come as I promised," she said, "to give you the last report. Dr.

Châtelard says all is going as he wishes. He will be down immediately

for some breakfast, and then he will tell you himself. Isn't he a

darling little man?" she went on. "I am sorry I said he had a pink

head! What should we do now without it? By the way, some one must send

a wire to Melbury Towers for his luggage."

"Let me go," said Bethune, starting forward.

"Let him go," echoed Baby, saucily, turning to Captain English.

With such new happiness before her, the natural buoyancy of her nature

was triumphant over all present doubt and anxiety. Bethune put out his

hand, and she slipped her own confidingly into it.

"Harry," said he, and the girl wondered and was highly flattered at the

sudden emotion that shook his voice, "you see how things stand between

us?"

Again English flashed that glance of vivid scrutiny. This time his

friend met it steadily, though again with a heightening colour. Then,

after a perceptible pause:

"I am glad," said Captain English, simply.

And Bethune dropped the girl's hand to meet the strong clasp held out to

him.

He knew that from henceforth all misunderstanding was swept away from

between them. If he had felt before for his friend that love closer

than a brother's, it was cemented now by the strongest bond that can

exist between generous natures--that of forgiver and forgiven. He was

forgiven with the only real forgiveness--that which understands.

"Have they not brought breakfast?" cried Baby, the housekeeper, very

bustling all at once, to cover her pretty confusion. She sprang to the

bell, then checked herself, with finger on lip, and tripped from the

room, pointing her feet and laughing over her shoulder, as if to her

happy years even that sad precaution of quietness must have its mirthful

side.

Both men looked after her indulgently. Then Bethune's face clouded.

"She is but a child, after all," he said doubtfully.

"Nay," said Harry, "it seems to me she has a woman's heart."

"She is as true as steel," asserted her lover.

When the girl returned, English went restlessly forth. He would wait

for M. Châtelard, he said, in the hall. The newly betrothed were alone;

and, for a second or two, eyed each other shyly. Then Bethune's face

softened in the old, good way; and yet with something, too, that had

never been there before, something which made Aspasia drop her lids.

"Well, Robin?" said he, and beckoned. She came to him sidling.

It would always be thus between them. He would beckon and she would

come. Had the impossible happened, had that mistress of his hidden

ideal condescended to him, he would have gone far to crave the least

favour, and always with a trembling soul. But the life that touches the

transcendent joy, the rare ecstasy is fated to know but little

happiness. Providence, perhaps, was not dealing unkindly with this man.

"Why do you call me Robin?" she asked.

He was not of those who explain. With a kiss on her hand he told her

simply that she was like a robin.

"Then I hope you'll remember, sir," she said, briskly disengaging

herself, "that the robin is a bird that makes music in season and out of

season."

*CHAPTER VIII*

Bethune went off in the cart, at the best speed of Aspasia's pony,

carrying a second telegram, more weighty than that concerning M.

Châtelard's luggage. This was a summons for a London specialist.

Although unaware that the Frenchman had himself a world-wide reputation

for such cases, English, with his habit of quick judgment, had decided

to trust the proffered skill. But, in the course of their conversation,

he had tentatively touched upon the advantage of a consultation; and the

suggestion was accepted; with so much alacrity, indeed, that a more

livid pallor spread over the husband's countenance.

M. Châtelard saw the impression he had unwittingly produced. With fat

forefinger thrown out in emphasis, he promptly endeavoured to remove it.

"In cases of obscure diagnosis, two heads are always better than one,"

said he, kindly. "Yet your great Farrar will, I have no doubt--so much

confidence have I in myself, my dear sir--merely confirm my treatment--a

treatment, in parenthesis, purely negative. Paradoxical, yet true, sir,

the slower our fair patient recovers the better."

To himself, as he sat down to his coffee, the genial physician remarked

complacently, that it would be _du dernier intérét_ to see _ce fameux

Farrar_ at work.

M. Châtelard was entirely satisfied with the situation, as far as it

concerned himself. He kept Harry English at his elbow, and, while

enjoying the excellent fare (_les émotions, ça creuse!_), discoursed

learnedly upon the brain, that terrible and fragile organism which he

had made his own especial study. His insatiable curiosity the while was

anticipating with gusto the moment when it could gratify itself upon the

enigmatic personality of his new-found host.

Fate played into his hand. For, ere he could insinuate the first

leading question, there entered upon them Sir Arthur. M. Châtelard was

forthwith made witness to a scene between the "two husbands" which was

to give him, in the most dramatic manner, all the information he

desired.

There they stood opposite each other--the old and the young. The most

complete contrast, perhaps, that it was possible to imagine. Harry

English, erect, square-shouldered, extraordinarily quiet, with head held

high and pendant arms, in an attitude not unlike that of the soldier in

the orderly-room, the oriental composure of his countenance occasionally

contradicted by a flash of the eye and a twist of the lip. Sir Arthur,

swinging between bluster and authority, both equally futile, painfully

conscious of a hopelessly ungraceful position. It is only the young

that the stress of passion becomes. When a man is past the prime of

life, every emotion that shakes him from the dignified self-control of

his years betrays him on to senility.

"Here, then, do we behold his Excellency as he is," thought the judicial

looker-on. "Without toilet, without what milady Aspasia so brutally

calls 'grooming'; without the support of a commanding position--here

stands the natural man. And he is an old man, impotently angry--a sorry

spectacle, while the rival--ah, _belle jeunesse_!"

To the elderly Frenchman Harry English, still in the thirties, was to be

reckoned among the youthful. Sir Arthur began the interview by a renewal

of his last night's threat of the police. Harry English smiled, and the

smile instantly worked havoc upon the Governor's assumption of confident

authority. Rage broke forth.

"Look at him, Châtelard! There's a pretty fellow to call himself an

Englishman. Look at the colour of his skin; look at his hair! By God,

man," he yelled, "look at his teeth! The trick's been done before, sir.

The wily servant, with his thieving knowledge of family secrets, playing

the part of his dead master. This is a new Tichborne case, and the babu

Muhammed will find what comes of such tricks."

"Muhammed!" interrupted M. Châtelard, rising from his seat, "Muhammed!

dites-vous? Ma parole!"

His fingers flew up to steady his spectacles; his shrewd eyes fixed

themselves upon English with a gaze in which admiration contended with

amazement.

"Muhammed! ... Ah, what the devil--a wonderful disguise! Even now I

hardly recognise, save, indeed, that he has worn a beard recently, as is

revealed by that pallid chin and throat--I protest I do not even

recognise Muhammed now in Captain English. No wonder," thought the

Frenchman, in a rapid parenthesis, "that we French were as children in

India compared to these English. English he remains," he chuckled,

playing on the name, "and yet, to suit his purpose, he can assimilate

himself to the black devil."

"Ha, we've had a Tichborne case!" repeated Sir Arthur.

The silent man opposite looked at him, still silent, still smiling; but

into his eyes there crept a shade of pity. There was, indeed, something

pitiable in this pomposity so fallen, in this tyranny so powerless--in

Sir Arthur, brandishing his rag of defiance, standing the while in all

the nakedness of his cause.

"You are witness, Châtelard," he was insisting.

M. Châtelard, pinching the wire of his glasses, lifted his gaze to

inspect the portrait which hung in the panel over the mantelpiece; then

brought it solemnly back to Harry English's countenance. He turned and

spoke, not without enjoying the consciousness of the weight of his own

adverse verdict.--Expect no bowels of mercy from one whose life-work is

the study of other people's brains.

"Alas! my excellent Sir Gerardine; I fear there above hangs a witness

with a testimony more emphatic than ever mine could be."

Sir Arthur rolled his bloodshot eye towards the picture--another of

those infernal daubs! From the first instant he had set eyes on them,

all over the place, he had thought it in bad taste--in confoundedly bad

taste. Last night, in the bedroom, the sight of one of them had put him

off his balance altogether. But he had been, then, in a nervous state.

He knew better now.

"Pooh!" He tried to laugh, but his mouth twitched down at the corners,

with a childish tremble. "If every black-haired man is going to claim to

be my wife's first husband----"

But everything was against Sir Arthur this morning. Who knows how far he

might have gone in convincing the inconvenient English that he could not

possibly be himself, if that objectionable person, Bethune--it was most

reprehensible of Rosamond to have received the fellow in her husband's

absence--had not marched in upon them.

The Major of Guides stood a second, with beetling brows, measuring the

situation. Then, without a word, he strode across the room and took up

his post beside his comrade, so close that their shoulders touched. It

was mute testimony, but more convincing than spoken phrase.

M. Châtelard experienced one of those spasms of satisfaction which the

discovery of some fresh trait characteristic of the race under his

microscope never failed to cause him.

Those two silent ones, with what force they imposed themselves! "Voilâ

bien, l'Angleterre--sa morgue, son arrogance! She steps in--her mere

presence is enough. She disdains argument, she stands passive, massive,

she smiles--she remains. As for my poor Sir Gerardine, he represents

here the enemy. Ah, _sapristi_, it is not astonishing if it makes him

enraged."

Sir Arthur, in truth, turned to an apoplectic purple, stammered wildly,

shook his balled hand--the telling retort failed him. Upon this, at

last, Captain English spoke:

"Sir Arthur," said he, "believe me, you will, in due time, be furnished

with every proof of my identity that you can desire to see. Meanwhile

you will be wise if you accept the evidence of"--he paused, and there

was a subtle alteration in the clear steady voice--"the evidence of all

that has occurred this night--of my friend here, Major Bethune, and of

the old servant of my house."

Sir Arthur turned sharply and met the vindictive stare of Bethune's pale

eyes.

"I have recognised my friend, Captain English," said Bethune, with harsh

decision.

Sir Arthur's glance went quickly from one to the other. It was typical

of the man that, for the moment, the secondary irritation of having a

pair of twopenny-halfpenny Indian officers brow-beating him--browbeating

him, egad! the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province--for the moment,

almost outweighed the fact that his own huge personal tragedy was being

irremediably established.

"You are a witness, are you?" he snarled.

Bethune nodded.

"Then," cried Sir Arthur, springing to his feet and thumping the table

so that all the china rattled, "you are a witness, sir, to as peculiar a

business as I think has ever been heard of in his Majesty's service.

Captain English, I think--since it is agreed that this man is Captain

English--will find some little difficulty in explaining his proceedings

all these years."

"You have heard of people being held prisoners," said English, quietly.

"Yes," screamed Sir Arthur, "but what about this disguise--this Muhammed

business?"

"I don't expect you to understand my reasons," pursued the other, in the

same manner; while, beside him, Bethune kept his taciturn watch. "But

you have, I recognise, the right to be told of them. I had to find out

if my wife was happy."

"You had to find out if----" Sir Arthur pouncing upon the new

suggestion, to lay bare its folly, was suddenly arrested midway by a

glimmer of the other's meaning and its extraordinary bearing upon

himself.

"If you wish, I shall put the matter clearer," said the first husband,

incisively. "I had to find out if your wife was happy."

"If my wife was happy!"

A vision rose before Sir Arthur--his wife, the wife of Sir Arthur

Gerardine, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor, her Excellency, Lady

Gerardine, queen of her world, flashing in the glory of his diamonds and

emeralds, treading palace rooms, herself the centre of a court--his wife

petted, adulated, envied, the object of his chivalrous attention, of his

lavish indulgence, his constant solicitude--not happy! He broke into

boisterous laughter.

"Not happy! For that was your conclusion, I suppose?"

Still laughing, he flung a glance at M. Châtelard--eloquent. "Did you

ever hear such an absurdity in your life?" it said, in all languages.

M. Châtelard unaccountably dropped his eyes before that triumphant

appeal; and a dry cough of unwonted embarrassment escaped him. Sir

Arthur's mirth changed from its first genuine note of sarcastic fury to

something that rang hollow and forced. Abruptly withdrawing his eyes

from the unresponsive Frenchman, he caught sight of his own countenance

reflected, in all the cruel morning light, by a mirror that hung between

the two windows. He stood staring. For a second he could not recognise

himself--an unkempt old man, with yellow trembling cheeks and vacant

mouth.

In such moments the body works unconsciously. Had Sir Arthur had proper

control over himself, the swift look at his rival, the immediate

comparison, was the last thing his vanity would have condescended to.

But his treacherous eyes had done their work before self-esteem could

intervene. And, for once, Sir Arthur Gerardine saw.

The braced figure of Henry English, with its noble lines of still young

manhood; the romantic head, refined, not aged, by suffering and

endurance, the vital flame in the eye. What a contrast! Sir Arthur

swayed, fell into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. Acrid

tears of self-pity were burning his lids. This is what they have brought

me to!

Of the other three in the room, there was not one who could find a word.

To see the strong suffer may be a painful yet inspiring sight, but there

are tragedies of the weak, before the sordid pity of which the mind

instinctively recoils.

"And you thought it honourable and gentlemanly to come into my house and

eat my bread and--and spy?" said the Lieutenant-Governor, raising his

head at last, turning dull orbs upon his whilom secretary.

The blood raced into Harry English's face.

"Here," thought Châtelard, scarcely breathing in his quiet corner of

observation, "here it is the old one scores at last."

"I could not choose my methods, Sir Arthur."

The ancient Chippendale clock, with a sigh between its ticks, measured

half a minute of heavy waiting. Then English spoke again, decisively,

vigorously, stepping to the table with the air of one determined to put

an end to an unbearable situation.

"Useless, all this. You shall have full evidence, as I said, in due

time. Meanwhile, here is a house of sorrow, and your presence in it

adds grievously to its burdens."

A gleam lit the watery depths of Sir Arthur's eyes.

"Here is a house of sorrow." He was suddenly reminded of what, in the

absorption of his own misery, he had well-nigh forgotten--that the woman

lay in danger of death.

Were she to die now--who had committed this inconceivable

indiscretion--the situation might yet be saved. If she were to die, the

affair could be hushed up. He jumped to his feet.

"Well, and what do you think of her state, doctor?" cried he.

The greedy glance was a revelation. The whole mind of the man was laid

bare in its odious pettiness. With a dignified gesture the physician

refused answer.

But the soul of Harry English leaped forth in wrath, as the blade leaps

from the scabbard.

"Out of my house!" said he, his arm flung wide, pointing to the door.

Voice, gesture, look, spoke of a passion so intense that for a second

Sir Arthur quailed before it as one may before an unexpected flash of

lightning.

He retreated hurriedly a few steps, then wheeled round, his natural

combativeness reasserting itself.

"Your story is strange, singularly strange, Captain English," he

sneered. "I shall consider it my duty to report it in proper quarters

without delay. You will have to produce some better explanations there,

sir, I fancy, than those which seem to satisfy a couple of silly women

and an ignorant foreigner--I mean," his old habit of courtesy tugging

against the impulsiveness of his irritation--"I mean a foreigner

ignorant of our customs." (M. Châtelard had an indulgent smile for the

correction.) "I shall report you, sir, and your accomplice there."

A withering look included the stolid Bethune in this last indictment.

"Raymond, see that he goes," said English, "that he goes at once--and

quietly."

"Ah, yes, I beg," interposed the doctor, with gravity. "Quiet is

imperative, Sir Gerardine."

English walked over to the window and began to drum on the pane. Dr.

Châtelard removed his spectacles, and put them into his pocket.

"One is reminded of the history of the judgment of Solomon," he remarked

genially, as he followed Bethune to the door. "Permettez, cher

capitaine? I return to your wife."

*CHAPTER IX*

"They're going!" said Bethune, triumphantly. "Their fellow has patched

up the motor; it will take them as far as the station at least."

Harry English, pacing the little study much after the manner of Muhammed

the night before, halted abruptly.

"They ought to have gone an hour ago," he answered. And, when he looked

like that, for a certainty Captain English wore no pleasant countenance.

"What has he been doing?"

The relaxation of the muscles, which was Bethune's usual substitute for

a smile, came over his face.

"First, he's been trying to persuade Aspasia to go away with him. And

secondly, he's been reproaching her for her unfilial behaviour in

refusing to leave us; and thirdly, he has been bestowing his avuncular

curse upon her and repudiating her for ever and ever. All this

naturally took some time."

A flash of pleasure swept across the other's gloom.

"So the girl sticks to us. That is right," he said. Then the frown came

back. "You've warned them to be quiet, I hope, with their infernal

car?"

"I've told the chauffeur if he makes a sound more than he can help,

he'll have me to deal with. I made the fellow swear to wait for them

halfway down the avenue. Lady Aspasia's a good sort too, take her all

in all--has her head screwed on the right way. She'll keep the old man

in order."

English took a couple of turns again, and halted, his head bent. There

were voices passing in the hall without: Sir Arthur's querulous tones,

Lady Aspasia's unmistakable accents, strident even under her breath.

Bethune went to the window.

"There they go," said he, presently. "She's giving him her arm. By

George," he went on, "she, for one, won't be anxious to dispute your

identity, Harry!"

The other had sat down by the fire and was gazing into the flames after

his old attitude. Bethune, at the window, remained gazing upon the

departure of the undesired guests. In a second or two he broke forth

again:

"The motor's jibbing! Good Lord, they'll have it into the gate--now

into the apple-tree!" He gave a single note of mirth. "Lady Aspasia is

holding down Sir Arthur by main force. Of course he wants to teach the

chauffeur how to do it. But she knows better. By George," ejaculated

Bethune, in a prophetic burst, "she's the very woman for him! Ah, here

comes Miss Aspasia, hatless, to offer her opinion. I'd give something

to hear her; she does not want them back upon us--I warrant." There was

a pause. "They're off! Thank God, they're off!" Still the man lingered

by the window.

Aspasia was waving her handkerchief ironically after the departing

company, as the car proceeded down the avenue, fitfully, at a speed

which (as she subsequently remarked) "would have made any

self-respecting cart-horse smile."

When she turned to re-enter the house, Bethune had the vision of her

rosy face, all brightening with smiles. The interchange of mute

greetings, the swift impression of her fair light youth as she flashed

by, left him lost in a muse.

Harry English stirred in his chair and, on the moment, his friend was at

his side.

"They're gone," repeated he, rubbing his hands.

The other made no direct reply; but, stooping forward, picked up one of

the fragments of paper that had escaped Bethune's hand in the morning's

work of destruction.

He looked at it for a few seconds, abstractedly, and then laughed.

"So you were writing a life of me, old man?" said he.

Bethune stood, looking as if he had been convicted of the most abject

folly. And English lightly flicked the scrap into the blaze:

"The life that counts is the life that no other soul can know," said he.

But he had no sooner said the words than he corrected himself, and his

voice took that altered note which marked any reference to his wife.

"At least," he said, "no other soul but one."

Those friends, who were so much to each other, in speech communicated

less than the most ordinary acquaintances. Bethune stood, in his wooden

way, looking down at the armchair. Just now he had something to say,

and it was difficult to him. At last, pointing to the hearth, as if he

still beheld the fruit of his labour of friendship being consumed in it,

he spoke, awkwardly:

"It did its work, though."

English flashed an upward look, half humorous, half searching.

"What did its work?"

"The--my--oh, the damned Life!"

The other man pondered over the words a little while. Then, with a

smile that had something almost tender in it, he looked up at his friend

again:

"I am afraid you will have to explain a little more, Ray."

Bethune shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The colour

mounted to his face. He stared down at English, wistfully.

"It's a bit hard to explain," he said, "yet I'd like you to know--that

diary, those letters of yours, I had to have them, extracts of them, for

the work, you see.... Well----"

Here came a pause of such length that English was fain to repeat:

"Well?"

Then Bethune blurted it out:

"She had never read them----"

"Ah!"

"She never wanted to read them. Oh!"--quickly, "it's not that she

didn't care."

"You need not explain that."

English's head was bent. His voice was very quiet, but Bethune's whole

being thrilled to the tumult he inarticularly felt in the other's soul.

He half put out his hand to touch him, then drew it back.

"Go on with your story--with your own part of the story," said Harry.

"She did not want to read them," said Bethune. "I made her."

The husband offered no comment; and, drawing a long breath like a child,

his friend went on:

"And when she read at last--oh! even I could see it--it was as if her

heart broke."

Still the bent head, the hands clasped over the knees, the silence.

Bethune could bear it no longer, and took courage to lay that touch of

timid eager sympathy upon English's shoulder.

"Harry, I'm such a fool, I can't explain things."

"Oh, I understand," answered English then, in a deep vibrating voice.

He rose suddenly and squared himself, drawing in the air in a long sigh.

"Do you think I could misunderstand--her?"

Their looks met. There was a wonderful mixture of sweetness and sorrow

on the face of him whom life and death had equally betrayed.

Suddenly they clasped hands, for the first time since their parting in

the Baroghil passes. Then they stood awhile without speaking. Harry

English once more fixing visions in the fire, and Bethune looking at his

comrade.

For most of his years he had known no deeper affection than his

friendship for this man. He had mourned him with a grief which, now to

think on, seemed like a single furrow across the plain field of his

life; and there he stood!

"Captain, my Captain..." said Raymond. His rough voice trembled, and

he laughed loud to conceal it.

The other flashed round upon him with his rarely beautiful smile.

"Ah," said he, "it's like old times at last to hear you at your rags and

tags of quotation again!"

There fell again between them the pause that to both was so eloquent.

Then, from the far distance, into their silence penetrated a faint

uncouth sound: from the moorland road, the motor, carrying for ever out

of their lives him who had had so much power upon them, and was now so

futile a figure, seemed to raise a last impotent hoot.

Sir Arthur Gerardine was gone. Raymond rubbed his hands and smiled as

since boyhood he had scarcely smiled.

"It is good," cried Harry, then, boyishly in his turn, "to see your

nut-cracker grin once more, Ray. As Muhammed, I've looked for it many a

time in vain--I thought I had lost my old sub."

* * * * *

"But there's one thing we must remember," said Bethune, suddenly earnest

again, in the midst of the welcome relaxation. "We must remember the

old fellow's threat. You will have a bit of a job to keep out of

trouble with the powers that be, won't you, after Sir Arthur's

meddling?"

The anxiety on his countenance was not reflected upon English's face.

"I shall have my own story to tell," he said, "and I think that I have

knowledge of sufficient value to make me a _persona grata_ in high

quarters just now. They will be rather more anxious, I take it, to

retain my services rather than dispense with them--in spite of Sir

Arthur."

He broke off, his brow clouded again. He sighed heavily.

"But what does that matter?" he cried; "just now there is only one thing

that matters in the whole world."

*BOOK IV*

*CHAPTER I*

It was the most interesting case I have ever had (wrote M.

Châtelard, in the third volume of his "Psychologie Féminine"),

and the most abnormal. The illness, caused by shock,

concussion--call it what you will--was benign, yet it was long.

There was a little fever, a little delirium: un petit délire

très doux, tout poétique, que, plongé dans mon vieux fauteuil de

chêne, au milieu du silence de cet antique manoir, j'écoutais

presqu'avec plaisir. Un gazouillement d'oiseau; une âme de

femme, errant comme Psyché elle-même, sur les fleurs dans les

jardins embaumés; délicates puerilitiés parfumées de la vie.

Jamais une note de passion. Jamais un cri de ce coeur si

profondement blessé....

And when later, by almost imperceptible steps, we drew the

gentle creature back to health, the singular phenomenon

persisted.

We physicians are, of course, accustomed in similar

circumstances, to find a strong distaste in the patient

suffering from shock to any effort of memory. Memory, indeed,

by one of those marvellous dispensations of nature, is reluctant

to bring back the events which have caused the mischief. But,

with the beautiful Lady G---- (it is always thus I must recall

her) there was something more than the mere recoil of

weakness....

On eût pu croire que cette âm ebrisée de passion, abreuvée de

douleur, s'était dit qu'elle n'en voulait plus; qu'elle n'en

pouvait plus. Co n'était pas, ici, les souvenirs, qui faisaient

défaut. Je l'ai trop observée pour m'y méprendre. En avait-elle

des souvenirs et d'assez poignants, mon Dieu! ... But with a

strength of will which surprised me in her state, she put these

memories from her and deliberately lived in the present. Elle

goutait son présent, elle savourait la paix voluptueuse de sa

convalescence....

Je n'ai qu'à fermer les yeux, pour la revoir, sur son

lit--longue, blanche et belle. Je revois ce jeune

teint--divinement jeune sous cette grande chevelure d'argent;

cet air de lys au soleil, à la fois languissant et

mystérieusement heureux. Ces yeux noyés dans une pensée

profonde. Ces lévres entr'ouvertes par un léger sourire. A qui

rêvaitelle--à quoi? Cette belle bouche muette n'en soufflait

jamais mot....

Of the three who had loved her, for whom was that smile?

Certes, not for the poor Sir! And of the other two? (I must

here frankly set down the humiliating admission, to me, that

woman was, and remains Sphynx--yes, Sphynx, even to me, her

physician, who beheld her, watched, tended her, through all

those moments of suffering, weakness, _défaillance_ where the

soul reveals itself.) Which of the two, then, reigned in her

secret dream? The sardonic Major, who had tracked her till she

could escape him no longer, whose love was merciless. There are

women, and many, who would never know passion but for defeat.

The husband? The reincarnated ghost? Well reincarnated, that

one!--The most virile type that I ever met. Nature of fire,

born lover, under all his reticence of English gentleman and

soldier. I have seen that face of his, half bronze, half

marble, grow crimson and white within the minute, as I spoke to

him of the woman, the while there would not be a tremble in the

hand that held this pipe. I will confess he had all my

sympathy; he was worthy of her. But she--why, to this day I ask

myself: does the man who possesses her know the secret of her

heart?

The day after the damaged motor had carried away the poor

Governor--machine détraquée, clopin-clopant, symbole de cette

vie qui jusqu'ici semblait rouler en triomphe et qui, desormais,

se trainera si gauchement--the day following Sir G----'s

departure, I say, the Major B---- also left. It was the very

least he could have done. And after the astounding fact of his

betrothal to the pretty little Miss C----, I myself felt his

presence antipathetic.... Ah, but a strategist, that officer of

Guides, strategist of the first order! A masterly move, that

betrothal, to disarm any possible suspicion of his friend and

keep the while a footing in his beloved's house! But the little

one, she deserved better ... _delicieuse enfant_! With what

innocent eyes she looked at me when I told her that, above all

things, she must not whisper to my patient a word of her

engagement. "Understand well, Miss," said I to her; and was

ashamed of myself thus to join with him who was deceiving her.

"It is because the least agitation, even a happy one, must be

avoided." "Ah, that is why," said she, "you will not let her

poor husband go to her?" "That is why," I replied, dissembling,

"above all things, above all things, she must not be hurried."

* * * * *

She must not be hurried!

"If she wants me?" had said Harry English to Dr. Châtelard, in that dawn

hour of dire omen.

"My dear sir," had answered the other, "immediately, of course!"

Rosamond lay, restored to those that loved her, a pale rose among her

white tresses, and Harry English still waited her summons.

Still waiting!

* * * * *

"Above all," repeated the genial physician, who had stood by them so

stoutly in their hour of trouble, as he took his reluctant departure

from a house where his presence was, obviously, no longer needed, and

where yet--unfortunate psychologist--he had failed to probe the story to

the core, "above all, she must not be hurried!"

These were his farewell instructions.

It seemed to him that the patient husband had a strange smile on hearing

this admonition.

"How much does he know?" asked Châtelard of himself, clinging with

characteristic pertinacity to his peculiar interpretation of events.

"How much does he suspect?"

Never before, perhaps, had the active-minded and gregarious Frenchman

found himself thus regretting the prospect of a return to the congenial

movement of his native city. But it was with a definite sense of

reluctance that, on this March morning, he drove away through the

budding orchard trees, leaving the Old Ancient House and all the

desolate moorland behind him. This lonely antique habitation still held

close the enigma of lives in which he had become deeply

interested--interested, not only with that vivid intelligence which was

ever eager to know, but with the warmth of a very excellent heart.

He would dearly have loved to know, true; but, above all, he would

dearly have loved to help.

"Eh, Dieu sait," he sighed, as the fly jingled and bumbled over the

grass-grown avenue, "Dieu sait ce qui va se passer là-bas, maintenant

que je n'y suis plus!"

He gave a lingering look at the twisted chimney-stacks against the pale

sky, before setting his face for Paris, Ville Lumière, once more.

* * * * *

"She must not be hurried!--Until she asks for me; then," had resolved

Harry English, "I will wait."

And at first, indeed, it seemed as if the waiting could not be hard.

For with the young year had come new hopes to the Old Ancient House.

And with Rosamond turning to life in her room upstairs under the gables,

he who loved her could well afford to sit with patience below.

Yet time went by, and the summons came not.

Upon that first blessed morning, indeed, when after all these long days

she had awakened at last, and looked upon the world with seeing eyes

once more, Rosamond had whispered to Aspasia:

"Harry--is he here?"

The girl's heart had leaped with joy.

"Yes," came her eager answer. "Will you see him?"

Like a little Mercury, one foot poised, hand outstretched to grasp the

happy moment, Aspasia stood ready to take flight upon her errand of

comfort. But the pale woman in the bed shrank. The old shy withdrawal

from the thought of emotion--as once from sorrow, now from joy--seemed

to be upon her.

"Not yet," she faintly sighed.

And, day by day, the singular little scene was re-enacted. In defiance

of doctor's orders, Baby--with the sense of that other's hungry

disappointment heavy upon her heart--would put her query ever more

pleadingly:

"Will you not see him? Can you not see him? May it not be for to-day?"

But ever would come the same reply, while the lids sank over the timid

eyes, and colour mounted slowly in the transparent face:

"Not yet."

Then the woman would fall back into her secret dream, lying hours in

that quietude at which her physician marvelled, while he welcomed its

healing power. It was a pause in life. So the young mother may lie and

hold her infant in her languid arms and be happy because of its very

weakness and incompleteness; and deem it more safely her own that it has

yet no speech for her, no will to meet hers, even no power of love with

which to answer hers.

It is harder to be patient in happiness than in sorrow. These days of

waiting began to tell upon Harry English more than all the years had

done.

Yet it was idle to say: "She must not be hurried," since time marches

with us all, whether we will or no; and with time, the events which

change our destiny. The most guarded being cannot escape the influence

of those lives with which Fate has thrown his fortune, and Rosamond was

destined at last to be shaken out of her dreams by the combined energies

of other fortunes.

M. Châtelard had been gone some time. The green buds were swelling over

the March land. The convalescent had been promoted to her armchair for

an hour or two daily, when a telegram summoned Harry English to London.

Bethune had undertaken all the preliminary official steps for his

friend. Now the moment could not be delayed when the missing officer

must give his personal explanations. The excuse of his wife's danger

could no longer be maintained for his absence: he had to leave the Old

House without having seen her again.

For two mornings after his departure Baby entered her aunt's room to

find her lying among a bower of flowers. The husband was pleading for

himself, wooing his love, for the third time. At first he sent no word

with his gift, but let these most gracious messengers speak in

fragrance. Aspasia was wise enough to hold her tongue upon the subject.

Even to her downright perceptions the silence which enwrapped the

invalid seemed stirred, palpitating with the awakening of emotions, just

as, all over the land, after her winter sleep, the earth was stirred,

palpitating, to the promise of spring.

The third morning the girl was unwontedly late in making her appearance.

But Rosamond did not seem to miss her. She rested, smiling among her

pillows, her diaphanous hand enfolding the letter that Mary had (with a

subdued look of triumph) brought her on top of an open box overflowing

with lily-of-the-valley.

Rosamond's first love-letter had come to her blent with the same

perfume. The acrid sweetness rose like a greeting, an intangible

intermingling of past and present. It spoke more eloquently than even

his words. She drew the flowers slowly from their case. Below all,

nestling beneath the waxen bells, she found one deep-hearted dark

crimson rose.

She held it to her lips, the while she read his letter.

* * * * *

And so Baby's presence was not missed. At mid-day she rushed into the

room and flung herself upon the bed with so much of her old impetuosity

that Rosamond sat up, startled at first, then smiling, shaken from her

languor.

"What is it, Baby? What a little face of blushes!"

In the midst of her own turmoil of emotion, Baby's faithful heart leaped

with joy. Rosamond had not spoken with that natural air these months.

"What is it?" repeated the woman, smiling.

Aspasia edged along the bed till her hot cheeks were hidden on

Rosamond's neck. Then she thrust out her left hand blindly for

inspection.

"Look!"

"What----?"

Yes, in very truth, Rosamond was laughing.

"What is it, Baby? ... Ah----"

Baby moved her long musician fingers slowly one after the other and

finally stuck out the third.

"Ah," cried Rosamond again, sharply.

"She has seen," thought Aspasia, and was fain to raise her head to

behold the effect of the great surprise.

"Is it possible," said the other, slowly, "or are you playing me some

trick?"

"A trick," echoed Aspasia, indignantly. "No such thing!" She surveyed

the important hand, with head on one side and an air of great

complacency. Yet never had it appeared a more childish object. Upon

the pink out-thrust finger the wedding-ring seemed absurdly misplaced.

"Baby, Baby, how is it you have never told me? Major Bethune, of

course?"

"Yes," said the bride, suddenly shy. "They would not let me tell you.

Idiots!"

The next instant the two women were clasped in each other's arms--both

crying a little, as they kissed.

"There now," cried the new wife, at last, awakening to the conviction

that she was hardly carrying out the doctor's instructions; and, indeed,

it was evident that, left to her own devices, Aspasia had peculiar views

upon the art of breaking news. "There now, this won't do. You lie

still, and I'll tell you everything."

Placidly enough to reassure a more anxious nurse, Rosamond obeyed, her

hand creeping down to her letter once more. This was but a surface

agitation, after all--there was only one in the world who had power to

stir the deeps.

Aspasia knelt down by the bed, and began to pour forth her story....

They had been engaged, oh, ever so long; but she never would have

dreamed of anything so preposterous as marriage, especially now--not for

ages, at least, but Raymond had ramped so....

It was only from the youthful Mrs. Bethune's picturesque tongue that

such a description of Bethune's reticent wooing could have fallen.

And then something had happened, out there, and his blessed leave was

curtailed, and, he had said, he positively would not go without her.

"And so," said Baby, laughing and crying together, as pretty and absurd

a spring bride as it was possible to see; "so he came down from London

yesterday--with a special licence in his pocket--he went to the Inn, but

he came to see me last night. I don't know how it happened, but we were

married this morning, at the little church--you know, your little

church, Aunt Rosamond.... Did you ever hear of such a thing? Without a

trousseau, without a present, without a lawyer, without a cake! And I

am going to Vienna for my honeymoon."

She laughed a little wildly, and dabbed her wet cheeks with a corner of

the sheet. Then she stopped suddenly, abashed. Rosamond's eyes were

lost in space; she was not even listening.

"I knew you did not want me," said Aspasia--a very different quality of

tears welling up.

Rosamond started:

"I, not want you! Why, Baby, what makes you say that?"

"Oh," cried the girl, with a swift change of mood, "how can you want me,

have you not got him? Dear Aunt Rosamond, darling Aunt Rosamond, don't

keep him waiting any more!"

She was going to cast herself upon the bed in another fervent embrace,

when something in Rosamond's look arrested her. Here were the deeps

astir! It was as if a flame enkindled in a fragile lamp, as if she could

see it tremble and burn.

She drew back before a mystery to which she vaguely felt she would never

have the key.

"You know, he will return to-day," stammered she at last. "It's all

right about his business. He is coming back."

"I know," answered Harry English's wife, in a low vibrating voice. Then

she hesitated, and turned to look at the girl, a wistful inquiry in her

shadowed eyes.

"Have they told him?" she asked, under her breath, raising one of the

heavy white locks that lay across her breast.

"Oh," exclaimed Aspasia, springing to her meaning, "but you are

beautiful with it, you are more beautiful than ever! No--I don't know

if they've told him. Oh, darling," she cried, melting all into

tenderness, pity, and amusement, as over a child, "it wasn't for that,

it could not be for that, you wouldn't see him?"

"For that!" said Rosamond. A flame seemed to pass over her again. She

quivered from head to foot, and a deep flush rose to the very roots of

her blanched hair. "Oh, Baby, no. How could you guess, how could you

understand--poor little bride of an hour?"

And, as once before, upon that crucial morning in the distant Indian

palace, she had taken all her golden hair to cover her face and hide its

misery from violating eyes, Rosamond now swept the silver veil across

the betrayal of her blood, that even Baby might not look upon the tumult

of her heart.

The scent of the dark rose, stronger even than the lilies, filled the

room.

* * * * *

Bethune carried off his bride unobtrusively--unromantically. Rosamond

was still upstairs. And that no farewells should take place between her

and Major Bethune fell out so naturally that even Baby scarcely

commented upon it. Rosamond had always held herself so much aloof.

That this procedure should have been planned by Bethune himself because

he could not trust himself in this good-bye, would have been the last

thought to enter the little wife's head; her Raymond had always rather

disliked poor Aunt Rosamond than otherwise. Such was her conviction.

He could never forgive her for having been his friend's forgetful widow.

She herself had shed torrents of easy tears of parting within the walls

of the panelled bedroom; and had subsequently driven away beside the man

of her choice (in the selfsame fly, smelling of straw, that had provoked

her enthusiasm at arrival, her modest luggage atop), petulantly reviling

her bridegroom for his inconsiderate hurry, the while nestling

comfortably into the hollow of his shoulder.

How far was she from guessing at the complex emotions that made the

heart, against which she leaned, beat so heavily; from guessing that

this very haste, this wilfully informal departure, this quick marriage

itself, were all part of the determined act of renunciation he had

sealed in his soul, with the touch of her lips on his! Renunciation, it

is true, of no more tangible passion than a thought. Yet, had she

known, she need not have feared, for he who can renounce the insidious

sweetness of a dream, need fear no overthrow from realities.

As for her, her marriage was the irresponsible mating of a little bird.

And she was setting forth with as airy a freedom, with as busy and

cheerful an importance, as any small winged lady of the woods on the

flight to choose a favourable aspect for her nest.

As the vehicle wheeled out of the noiseless grassy avenue upon the

moorland road, Bethune caught her to him, and kissed her with more of

ardour than he had ever shown.

"And so, Robin," said he, "you are going to set all traditions at

defiance, and pipe your pretty songs in the morning land."

Mrs. Bethune smiled importantly; she still chose to keep up the fiction

that in matrimony she by no means intended to give up her musical

career, that career, with a capital C, that she had so often flourished

defiantly in Sir Arthur's face! But, in her heart, she knew very well

that when she had let love enter in, it had driven forth ambition.

*CHAPTER II*

A keen wind swept from the moor, shaking the sap of the drowsy orchard

trees, setting the daffodil buds in the sheltered corners dancing,

flecking the blue sky with sudden patches of cloud: a day typical of the

bright, cruel, energies of youth, scurrying old tired mother earth into

activity, ruthlessly eager to set her about her business and call up the

joys of spring.

Saltwoods seemed very quiet and empty, standing alone with its memories,

in the midst of this cheery bustle of the world without.

Rosamond wandered from room to room, restless alike from weakness and

the strain of her dear, wonderful expectation. How long must she wait

still? The opiate-effect of her languor had passed and it seemed to her

that the suspense of these hours she could not endure. And then, all at

once, behold, they had gone by!--The moment was at hand, and she was not

ready.

She stood before the mirror, looking wistfully upon her white tresses.

She wanted to appear beautiful in his eyes. But, alas! she had lost the

golden crown of her woman's glory.... This grey dress that she had

chosen, because some such colour had she worn upon the gorse-gold shore

those many years ago, it was too pale, too cold, she thought, now that

the sunshine of her hair had vanished.

Then she fancied she heard wheels, and caught the rose from her breast

to thrust it haphazard into the waves that so strangely shaded in snow

the delicate bloom of her face. And then, with the piteous coquetry of

the woman who loves, she flung over that white head a scarf of lace,

that he might not see too soon, that she might first have made him think

her beautiful still, by a smile, a kiss.

But when she came to the door of the hall, there was no one. The wind

and her impatience had but made mock of her. The avenue of swaying

boughs was empty of all but the eager presence of the spring. She saw

how the long grass bent, and whitened, and shivered; how a little

unsuspected almond bush had burst into pink blossom among the hoary

apple-trees; how, in the gusts, the rosy petals were already scattered

abroad.

The panic that the heart knows in the absence of the beloved seized upon

her. It was surely long past the time! Oh, God, was the cup to be

dashed from their lips?

Frenzied with terror, she ran a pace or two down the avenue, to halt,

panting in weakness--pressing her hand to her leaping breast. For a

second everything swam before her. Then there came the moan of the gate

swinging, and all her senses, strained beyond human limits, echoed to a

distant footstep that yet made no sound upon the grass-grown way.

He came with great strides through the old ghost-like trees, whose

withered boughs still held the swelling promise of the year's growth.

He caught her in his arms, without a word. But she, like a child,

clinging to him, cried, complaining:

"Oh, Harry, how late you are! Oh, how I have waited!"

"And I! ..." he made answer, almost inaudibly. "Eight years!"

His lips were on her eyelids as he spoke.

At this she dropped her head upon his breast, hiding her face; but he

could see the crimson creep to the edge of the lace kerchief. There was

a slackening of her arms about him, almost as if she would have knelt at

his feet--there, in the lonely bare orchard.

He kept her close with his embrace; he had to stoop to hear her

stammered words:

"Forgive--I have been shamed."

"Ah, hush!" cried he, quickly, his low voice vibrating with that

tenderness for which there is no utterance. "Need there be this between

us? Would I be here if I did not understand--if I did not know? ... The

music is mine, at last--the music, Rosamond, that you kept silent, even

from me. It is mine, at last--this is our wedding-day--the rest is

nothing."

He raised her quivering face and looked into her eyes, deep, deep. The

kerchief fell back from her white hair; the perfume from the fading rose

was wafted to his nostrils.

"Oh, my white rose!" he cried, and passionately kissed the blanched

head. "Oh, my red, red rose ... your lips, at last, at last, Rose of

the World!"

Thus was fulfilled in the barren home orchard, Harry English's Eastern

dream. And there was not a lichened bough that March day but bore him a

wealth of leaf and blossom.