“I can account for the man,” said Carstairs, “but what I am curious
about is the feelings of the girl. He blew out his brains in her
presence, and he did it immediately after she had told him to be gone.
Dramatic of him. He did it for love of her—a warm passion. I suppose
that that would be the deepest idea in her mind.”
“He was a man of his word, at any rate,” said Miss Landells, “for of all
the heroes who are eternally swearing they could die for a smile and all
the rest of it, hardly one would wet his boots unless he thought he
could gain something by it.... I dare say she had begun by despising
him, and when he blew out his brains felt some respect for him. Probably
if he were alive again, though, she would act in the same way.”
“I think I could put a harder case,” said the Colonel, “one where a man
sacrificed more——”
“Sacrificed more?”
“Yes; a man might easily blow out his brains in a burst of rage or
disappointment, but that proves little. Blantyre, the man of whom I was
thinking, did more, and the girl—Miss Trafford—had therefore to deal
with a more complex problem.”
With a warning that we might think the story gruesome, the Colonel told
it.
* * * * *
To understand the circumstances it is necessary to know something of
Blantyre’s character. When I knew him first he had the rank of Captain.
I being second lieutenant and our relations not being very familiar, I
only knew him from what might be called an outsider’s point of view. I
hardly think, however, that anyone knew him much better. That will give
you a hint—he was a reserved man. Yet he had a fund of high-spirits;
also a witty manner, which was at times playful and yet sometimes
bitter.
He was an unusually handsome man. Above average height, slender but
well-made and active, he had regular features, dark complexion and
black, blue-black hair. It was said that he had a dash of the
“tar-brush”—Indian, you know—and this fact, trivial as it may appear,
had, I believe, a powerful influence on his life. I know as a fact, that
he became more reserved after a rather unpleasant occurrence, when an
ill-bred young spark, losing his temper in an argument, called him a
Dago.
Blantyre was always a serious sort of chap. He wrote for the _United
Service Review_ and the _Engineering Magazine_, and other technical
journals, partly of course for the interest he took in that sort of
thing, but also because he was not well-off. That too was his reason for
taking as little part as possible in dances, picnics and the other
little flutters by which we amused ourselves. He seemed, in fact, rather
a fish out of water, and I used to wonder why he remained in the
Service; but he was not only of an energetic and resolute habit of mind,
but also intensely ambitious.
He had the misfortune to fall in love with the prettiest, the most
spoilt and, I believe, the most selfish, minx in England. The word
“brilliancy” was always on her lips, and she thought of nothing but
pleasure and excitement. She was then about twenty.
Imagine her reception of him when, carried off his feet, he proposed to
her. She laughed in his face and, I am told, asked him if he were “an
Indian Nabob”!
She probably only meant that the man who married her must be able to
give her the sort of life to which she was accustomed; and had not
realized—she took it all so lightly and really cared for Blantyre so
little—what the phrase might mean to him. His poverty and his supposed
origin—no words could have cut more deeply.
That very night, he set the wheels in motion and shortly after was
transferred to the Indian battalion. For the next seven years he put in
as much fighting on the frontiers as was humanly possible. He seemed the
veriest glutton for danger, never spared himself, and yet people said he
fought without enthusiasm or any warmth of blood. Oh, I grant you a
queer chap!
At first his men rather disliked him, but in time they became impressed
by his courage and dash, and they soon grew to rely on his steady, his
inexorable justice. He was never a popular man, too stiff and too
reserved, but his men would have followed him to certain death. They
called him “The Sabre Prince.”
After seven years Blantyre was back amongst us, but by that time he had
risen to be Colonel, and his reputation was unique. He was then about
thirty-five, still, you see, a young man, and quite naturally London
went mad over him. He became the lion that particular season.
But India had left her marks on him. He had returned minus his right
arm, and the once blue-black hair was grey. However, he was still as
handsome as ever and had the air of a man who has seen and dealt with
matters of importance. In other words he was distingué. Also he was
still in love with Miss Trafford.
Nor had time and experience and that unique reputation of his failed of
their effect on her. As often happens to a woman of her type she had
failed to bring off a match commensurate with her ambitions, and at
twenty-seven was still unmarried.
The news of their engagement set everybody gossipping. His infatuation
was recalled, and it was said she had refused a great alliance in order
to wait for him. The story even got into the newspapers.
I was not a little pleased, I can tell you, to hear that they were to be
married. She was still wonderfully pretty and, rumour said, less vain
and spoilt. It might be that she would settle down and make him a good
wife. Anyway he wanted her, he had wanted her for a long time, and he
was going to get what he wanted. Blantyre himself wrote to tell me, and
I think the next few weeks were the happiest of his life.
Judge then, of my surprise—sorrow, too—to learn one day, and again from
Blantyre himself that the marriage was off, that he had resigned his
commission and got an engineering job abroad.
Of course I hurried to see him. He was much as usual, cool, collected,
finely-tempered. In fact when I entered he looked up with a smile—and I
had always thought his smile lighting up that austere face peculiarly
winning.
It appeared that it was he who had broken off their engagement, and the
matter can be put in a nutshell—he had found her out. Mercenary motives,
no real affection—also, while he himself had grown and developed, she
had remained the social butterfly.
He told me—what I had not known—the story of his rejection seven years
previously. He had believed he was not worthy of her, and he had gone to
India to fight his way up to her standard. When he came back he had
believed her story, believed she had waited....
Then he had heard things. People talk, you know. I don’t know that he
believed what he was told, but what wrung him to the very vitals was
that he should have loved so deeply something that was—well, a poor
thing, unworthy.
Miss Trafford was in no temper to be jilted. She even went the length of
putting the case into her lawyer’s hands for breach of promise.
* * * * *
“Before I leave England,” he said, “I mean as far as I can to satisfy
justice. The law, I suppose, could not get more from me than I possess,
and everything I have, I mean to give her. It was she who sent me to
India, and I will strip myself for her of everything I gained there.
Will you take my medals?” and he offered me a little mahogany,
gold-ornamented box. “Keep them as a memento. I do not want them. I—I
feel I may have won them fighting against my own people.”
In his words was a something of grief and even shame. I felt I was
looking at a man who regretted what could not be helped, who would
regret it for the remainder of his days.
“There is only now my property in Devonshire. That I have made over to
Miss Trafford. The deeds are in this box. The property is a small one
but it has now no encumbrances. I have been able to clear off
everything; except—” he said musingly—“except something she may or may
not regard as a detriment—it is a sort of Sentimental Mortgage.”
“A skeleton in the cupboard?” said I, thinking of some ghost story, or
creepy legend, or the like.
“Precisely. You have hit it. A skeleton in the cupboard.”
“But, but,” said I, trying to bring him back to the business side of the
matter, “this is not justice, justice to yourself.”
“When all is said and done,” he returned quietly, “you will recognise
that justice—inexorable justice. Money, position, even reputation are
nothing to me now.... No, I am not going to kill myself. I have accepted
a post in an enterprise which, if successful, will make a more enduring
mark, bring me greater wealth, perhaps even fame, than those frontier
exploits of mine.”