|She had feared, ever since she had been thinking of his return,
that she would not be able to restrain her tears when they should be
together. The very thought of meeting him had made her weep; but now
when she turned her head and saw the tall man with the complexion of
mahogany and the hands of teak--with the lean face and the iron-grey
hair, she did not feel in the least inclined to weep--on the contrary,
she gave a laugh. The change in his face did not seem to her anything
to weep about; she had often during the previous three months tried
to fancy what he would be like; and it actually struck her as rather
amusing to find that he bore no resemblance whatsoever to the picture
she had formed in her mind of the man who had lived for several years
the life of a savage.
He stood looking at her for a few seconds.
Neither of them spoke.
Then he advanced with both hands outstretched.
“Agnes! Agnes!” he cried, “I have come to talk with you about
him--Dick--poor Dick! You saw him on the day that ruffian killed him.
You can tell me more than the others about him.”
He had both his hands held out to her--not outstretched in any attitude
of passionate eagerness, but with encouraging friendliness; that was
exactly what his attitude suggested to her--encouraging friendliness.
She put both her hands into his without a word--without even rising.
He held them for a moment while he looked into her face. There was an
expression of restlessness on his face. She saw that his forehead was
furrowed with many lines. His eyes were sunken, and there was a curious
fierceness in their depths.
Then he dropped her hands, and walked to the window, standing with his
back to it and his head slightly bowed.
“It was a terrible shock to me to hear what happened; and to think that
the same paper that contained an account of my safety told of his death!
To think that within a couple of months we might have been together! My
God! When I think that but for an idiotic man falling ill when we
were within a month's journey of the lake--a man whose life was worth
nothing--I might have been here--at his side--to stand between him and
danger!”
He began pacing the room, his hands clenched fiercely and the fire of
his eyes becoming more intense.
She sat there without a word, watching him. Her eyes followed him up and
down the room.
He stopped suddenly opposite to her.
“It was the cruellest thing ever done on earth!” he cried. “Call it Fate
or Destiny or the will of Heaven--whatever you please--I say it was the
cruellest thing that ever happened! Why could not he have been spared
for a couple of months--until I had seen him--until he had known that I
was safe--that I had done more in the way of discovery than I set out to
do? But to think that he was killed just the day before--perhaps only
an hour before, the news of my safety arrived in England!--it maddens
me--it maddens me! I feel that it would be better for me to have
remained lost for ever than to return to this. I feel that all that
fierce struggle for years--the struggle with those savages, with the
climate, the malaria, the agues, the diseases which exist in that awful
place but nowhere else in the world--I feel that all that struggle was
in vain--that it would be better if I had given in at once--if I had
sent a bullet through my head and ended it all I Where is your brother?
He was with him on that fatal evening. Why did he go away before he had
seen me and told me all that there was to tell about my poor Dick?”
Still she was silent. What answer could she make to such wild questions?
“Cyril should not have gone off to the other end of the world, as I hear
he has done,” he continued. “He might have known that I would want to
ask him much; and yet, when I come here, I find that he has been
gone for more than a month, and there is positively no one in this
neighbourhood who can tell me anything more of the horrible affair than
has appeared in the newspapers. Fawcett, the solicitor, had kept for me
the newspaper account of the inquest and the trial. I saw Fawcett last
night, and then the surgeon--Crosby. We went to him after dinner. He it
was who showed up the suicide theory. How could it ever be supposed that
Dick would commit suicide? And yet, if it hadn't been for Crosby--Oh,
it was clearly proved that he could not have shot himself; and yet if it
wasn't for the possibility of his having shot himself, would they have
pardoned the wretch who did the murder? I read the whole account of the
trial, and Fawcett told me a good deal more. If ever a brutal murder was
done by a man it was that--and yet they allowed the fellow to escape--to
escape-to keep his life! That is what they call justice here! Justice! I
tell you that those savages--the most degraded in existence--among whom
I lived, have a better idea of justice than that.”
Still she was silent. What could she say to him while he was in this
mood? He had resumed his pacing of the floor. She no longer watched him.
She looked out of the window. She had a strange impression that she had
been present at such a scene before, and that she had taken the same
impersonal interest in it all. Yes, it had been at a theatre: she had
watched one of the actors pacing the stage and raving about British
justice--the playwright had made the character a victim of the
unjustness of the law. But the man had kept it up too long: he had
exhausted the interest of the audience. They had looked about the
theatre and nodded to their friends; but now she only looked out of the
window. The audience had yawned: she was not so impolite. She would not
interrupt the man before her by speaking a word.
“What excuse did they give for letting the assassin escape?” Claude
Westwood was standing once more at the window--the window through which
she had watched him coming up the drive to bid her good-bye upon
that October evening long ago. “Excuse? The man was found guilty of
murder--the most contemptible of murders. He had not the courage to face
his victim; he fired at him from behind--and yet they let him escape.
But if they had only done that it would not have mattered so much. If
they had given him his freedom I would have had a chance of amending the
lapse of justice. But they give him his life and protection as well.
Why did they not set him free and give me a chance of killing him as he
killed my poor brother?”
He stamped upon the floor, and struck his left palm with his right fist
as he spoke.
She gave a little cry as she shuddered. He had at last succeeded in
startling her. She had put up her hands before her face.
He looked at her quickly and came in front of her.
“Forgive me, Agnes,” he said in an agitated voice. “Forgive me; I have
frightened you--horrified you. I have been so long among savages; but I
feel that I could kill that wretch, and be doing no more than the will
of Heaven. I feel that I could kill all that bear his accursed name,
and yet be conscious of doing no evil. My brother--ah, if you knew how
I have been supported through these long dismal years by thinking of
him--by the thought of the pleasure it would give him to see me again!
It was chiefly during that eight months which I spent alone in the
forests that I thought about him. What a life I led! I had previously
lived the life of a savage, but in the forest I had to live as a wild
beast. The terrible vigilance I needed to exercise--it was a war to the
knife against all the wild things with fangs and tusks and claws. It was
the Bottomless Pit; but the hope of returning to him made me continue
the fight when I had made up my mind to fling away my knife and to
await the end, whether it came by a snake, a wild elephant, or a lion. I
thought of him daily and nightly; and now when I come home I find And I
cannot kill the man who made my hour of triumph my hour of bitterness!
There I go, raving again. Forgive me--forgive me, and tell me about him.
You saw him on that day, Agnes.”
For the first time she spoke.
“Yes, I saw him,” she said. “He was just the same as when, you saw him
last. He was not the man to change, nor was he the man to expect that
others would change.”
He looked at her with something of a puzzled expression on his face.
“Change? Change? You mean that he--I don't quite know what you mean,
Agnes. Change?”
“He never changed in his belief in you. When people took it for granted
that you were dead--years ago--how many years ago?--he believed that you
were alive--that you would one day return. He believed that and never
changed in his faith. I believed it too.”
“And that is the man whose life was taken by a ruffian who remains alive
to-day!”
He had sprung to his feet once more, and was speaking in a voice
tremulous with passion. He had ignored her reference to herself and her
changeless faith.
“He was a man whose soul was full of mercy,” she said. “Every one here
has heard of his many acts of mercy. There was no one too black for him
to pardon. The merciful are those whom Christ pronounced blessed.”
“It is not possible that you have set yourself to exculpate the
murderer,” he cried.
“It is not for me to exculpate him,” she replied. “But I know that our
God is a God of mercy. Are you not a living witness to that? Were not
you spared when every one of your company was lost?”
“I am a poor example for a preacher,” said he. “I was spared, it is
true; but for what? For what? I am spared to come back to my home to
find that it is desolate. Is that your idea of mercy? I tell you that
in all that I have passed through, in my hour of deepest misery, in all
those terrible days spent in the loneliness of the forest, I never felt
so miserable, so lonely, as I did in that house last night. Mercy?
It would have been more merciful to me to have let the cobra and the
vulture have their way with me; I should have been spared the supreme
misery of my life.”
“How you loved him!” she said, after a little pause.
“Loved him! Loved him!” he repeated, as if the words made him impatient
with their inadequacy. “And the way we used to talk about what would
happen when I returned!”
“Ah! what would happen--yes. I do believe that we also talked about it
together.”
“And here I returned to find all changed.”
“All changed? All? You take it for granted that all has changed? that
nothing is as you left it? that no one--no feeling remains unchanged?”
She was looking up at him as he stood gazing out of the window.
“Everything has changed for me. I don't know why I came back. I tell
you, Agnes, the very sight of the things that were familiar to me long
ago only increases my sense of loss--my feeling that nothing here can
ever be the same to me.”
“What! that nothing--nothing--can ever be the same to you?”
“That is what I feel.”
“You do not think it possible that it is you and you only who have
changed?”
“What? Is it possible that you do not see that it is because my
affection has not changed through all these years I am miserable
to-day!”
“Your affection?”
“Is it possible that you know me so imperfectly as to fancy that
my affection for my brother would decrease during the years of our
separation? Ah, I thought you would take it for granted that I was
differently constituted. I fancied that you would understand what my
affection meant.”
“And have you found that I did you wrong?”
“You wrong me if you suggest--I do not say that you did actually go so
far--that my affection for my brother could ever change.”
“I do not suggest that your affection--your affection for your
brother--has changed. Oh, believe me, you have all my sympathy. I have
felt times without number, after it was known that you were alive, that
your home-coming would be cruel. I knew what a blow it would be to you
to receive the news of poor Dick. I hoped that my sympathy--Ah, you must
be assured that I feel for your suffering, with all my heart.”
“I am sure of it,” said he, taking for a moment the hand that she
offered him. “If I had not been assured of it, should I be here to-day?
I do not underrate the value of sympathy. I have felt better for the
sympathy even of strangers. At Uganda--at Zanzibar--everywhere I got
kind words; and aboard the steamer--God knows whether I should have
landed or not if it had not been for the kind way some of my fellow
passengers treated me. Ah! the world holds some good people! They took
me out of myself--they made the world seem brighter--well, not brighter,
but at least they made it seem less dark to me. When we separated in
London yesterday the darkness seemed to fall upon me again. Ah, yes! I
have felt what was meant by real sympathy; and yours is real, Agnes. I
remember how good you were long ago. If you had been my sister you could
not have taken a greater interest in me. And your father--ah, he died
years ago, they told me last evening! You see, you were the first person
for whom I inquired.”
“That was so good of you,” she said quietly. There was no satirical note
in the low tone in which she spoke.
“Ah! Was it not natural?” he asked. “But I think that I was slightly
disappointed to hear that you were still unmarried. I had fancied you
now and again with your children about you; and I was ready with a score
of stories for the youngsters. I wrote something to poor Dick about
himself. I took it for granted that he too would have married and become
surrounded with prattlers. Yes, I'm nearly sure that I mentioned your
name in my letter to poor Dick.”
“Your memory does not deceive you,” she said, and now there was a
suggestion of satire in her voice, though he did not detect it. “Yes,
your letter was brought to me by Mr. Fawcett. Why he should have brought
it to me, I am sure you could hardly tell.”
“He may have thought that it contained something that should be seen
only by the most intimate friend of the family,” he suggested. “You
see, poor Dick's will mentioned you prominently. That probably impressed
Fawcett. But you read what I wrote? You saw that I had not forgotten
you--I mentioned your name?”
“Yes, you mentioned my name in a way that showed me you had forgotten
me,” she replied.
“I don't seem to understand you to-day,” he said. “I suppose when one
has been for eight or nine years without hearing a word of English
spoken, one degenerates.”
“Alas! alas!” she said.
Then he went away.