CHAPTER III
A FAREWELL
John Stafford sat at his table by the open door which looked on to the garden. The room behind him was bare of all graceful or even tasteful ornament—a few native weapons, captured probably during small frontier wars, hung on the wall, but nothing else relieved its blank, whitewashed monotony. The one photograph of his father which had once been fastened above the mantelpiece had been taken down months before and the hole made by the nail carefully and methodically filled and painted over. The room typified the man in its painful order, its painful whitewashed cleanliness, its rigid plainness. But the garden was the symbol of the hidden possibility in him, the corner of warm, impulsive feeling which the world had never seen. The roses grew up to the very steps of the verandah; they had been trained to clamber over the trellis-work as though seeking to gain entrance to his room; they spread themselves in rich, glowing variety over the little patch of ground, and one of their number, the most lovely and fullest blown, hung her heavy head in splendid isolation from the vase upon his table.
He looked at the rose and he looked at the garden, on which lay the first clear rays of the rising sun. In him stirred a rare wistfulness, a rare melancholy. For to him all the gentler, softer forms of sorrow were rare. In the last year he had suffered, but in his own way—rigidly, coldly, unbendingly. His lips, even in the loneliness of his own room, had always been tight closed over the smothered exclamation of pain. He had gone on steadily and conscientiously with his work. He had never for one moment "given way to himself," as he expressed it. But this morning he was in the power of that strange "atmosphere"—call it what you will—which we feel when still only half awake, and which, independent of all outward circumstances, destines our day's mood of cheerfulness or depression. Strangely enough, he had made no struggle against it—he had yielded to it with a sense of inevitableness.
The inevitable compassed him about and numbed his stern, merciless system of self-repression. Fate, irresistible and unchangeable, obscured the clear path of duty which he had marked out for himself, and held him for the moment her passive victim. It was no idle fancy. He was not a man in whose thought-world fancy played any part. Nor was it the gloomy impression which a lonely twilight might have stamped upon a mind already burdened with a heavy weight of trouble. The young day spread her halo of pure sunshine over a world of color; the red rose upon his table bowed her head toward him in the perfection of a mature beauty which as yet hid no warning of decay. But in the sunshine he saw the shadow; the daylight foretold the night; his eyes saw the withered petals of the rose strewn before him. In vain he had striven to see beyond the night to the as inevitable to-morrow; in vain he had pictured the rose which his careful hand would bring to replace her dead sister. The future was a blank dead wall whose heights his foresight could not scale.
Before him on the table lay a closed and sealed envelope. It contained his will, which half an hour before he had signed in the presence of two comrades. He wondered what the world would say when it was opened—and when it would be opened.
Presently the curtains behind him were pushed quietly on one side. He did not turn around. He supposed it was his native servant with the cup of coffee which formed his early morning refreshment; but the soft step across the uncarpeted floor, the rustle of a woman's dress startled him from his illusion. He turned and sprang to his feet.
"Beatrice!" he exclaimed.
She came toward him with outstretched hand.
"May I speak with you for a few minutes, John?" she asked.
His first impulse to protest against her reckless disregard of propriety died away on his lips. Something on her white earnest face touched him—all the more perhaps because it linked itself with his own mood. He brought a chair—his own, for the room boasted of but one.
"Are you angry?" she asked again, looking up at him.
"At your coming? No. At another time I might have warned you that it was not wise, but I feel sure you would not have run so much risk without a serious and adequate reason."
She nodded.
"Yes, I have a very serious reason," she said. "Have you time to spare?"
"All the morning."
"Were you on duty last night?"
"For the best part."
"Is that why you look so tired and ill?"
He smiled faintly.
"I might reply with a tu quoque. But that doesn't matter. You have some trouble to tell me. What has happened?"
"You have heard nothing?"
"Nothing whatever." He drew a stool toward him and seated himself at her side. "You know, I am not a person to whom gossip drifts quickly."
"It's not gossip—it's truth. The Marut Diamond Company is closed—for good and all."
"You mean—it has gone smash?"
"Completely—and we with it."
He sat silent for a moment, his head resting thoughtfully on his hand.
"I suppose it had to come," he said at last. "Somehow, it always seemed to me that the concern was doomed. The foundations weren't honest. The Rajah was more or less beguiled into it—" He broke off, turning crimson with vexation. "I beg your pardon, Beatrice. I forgot that that was one of your—escapades."
She looked at him steadily, and he was struck and again strangely moved by her pale beauty. He had never seen her so gentle, so free from her cold and mocking gaiety.
"You must not apologize. And do not smooth over a mean, low trick with the name of an escapade. It was not an escapade, for an escapade is the overflow of high and reckless spirits, and what I did was done in cold blood and with a purpose. I have come to tell you about that purpose."
He could not repress a movement of surprise.
"Surely you have something more serious on your mind than that? If, as you say, your—your financial position has been rendered precarious by this failure of the Marut Company, would it not be advisable to hurry on our marriage at once? Of course, in the meanwhile, if I can do anything to help your mother—"
She touched him gently on the arm.
"I told you I had come on a serious matter," she said. "Won't you let me tell you what it is?"
"Of course, Beatrice, of course. Only I thought that was the serious matter."
"It is perhaps for my mother, but not for me. Things have changed their value in my life. Just now I feel there is only one thing that has any value at all, and that is freedom."
"From what? I do not understand. Do you mean from debt?"
She smiled sadly.
"Yes, from debt. John, I want to ask you an honest question honestly.
Why did you ask me to become your wife?"
He moved uneasily.
"Why do you ask? Surely we understand each other."
"We did, perhaps, but I have told you that things have changed. Won't you answer me?"
"I asked you—because I wished you to be my wife," he returned stubbornly.
"John, isn't that rather a lame equivocation?"
He stared at her with heavy, troubled eyes.
"Yes, it was. But the truth might hurt you, Beatrice."
"No, it wouldn't. Nothing can hurt so much in the end as lies and humbug."
"Well, then, I asked you to become my wife because I believed that my conduct had put you into a wrong and painful situation in the eyes of the world."
"Nothing else?"
"I wished to prove to Lois that I could never be her husband."
"You were afraid that she would see through your pretense to your unchanged affection for her?"
He started.
"Beatrice, how do you know?"
"Look in your own glass, John. Yours isn't the face of a man who has shaken off an old attachment."
He rose and stood with his back half turned to her, playing idly with the papers on the table.
"You are partly right," he said, after a moment's silence, "but not quite. I have more on my shoulders than that; I have a heavy responsibility—a debt to pay."
"You, too?" she asked, with a return of the half-melancholy, half-bitter smile. "Have you also a debt?"
"Not of my making," was the answer. The voice rang suddenly stern and harsh, and Beatrice saw him look up suddenly, as though instinctively seeking something on the wall. "Beatrice, you must know that my actions are dictated by motives which I can not for many reasons give to the world. For one thing, I have given my promise; for another, my own judgment tells me that it is better for every one that I should be silent. But I am free to say this much to you—I am not a dishonorable man who has played lightly with the affections of an innocent girl. I have acted toward Lois as I believe will be for her ultimate happiness—I have shielded her from a misfortune, a punishment I might say, which would have fallen unjustly on her shoulders. I have taken a burden upon my shoulders because I love her—and I have the right to love her—but chiefly because it is my duty to do so. Where there is sin, Beatrice, there must also be atonement, otherwise its consequences can never be wiped out. I have chosen to atone."
Beatrice made no attempt to question him. Her eyes fell thoughtfully on the gaunt face, and for the first time she appreciated to the full what was great and generous in the nature she had condemned all too often as narrow and unbending. Whatever else he was, this man was no Pharisee. If he was narrow, he allowed himself no license; if unbending, he was at least least of all relenting toward his own conduct. She pitied him and she respected him, even though she could not understand his motives nor guess the weight of the responsibility which he had taken upon himself.
"I can not reproach you with deception," she said at last. "You never pretended that you loved me, and on my side I think the matter was pretty clear. I intended to marry you for your position. Afterward money added a further incentive. I saw the loss of our own fortune coming. Travers warned me on the same day that we became engaged."
A dark flood of indignant blood rushed to Stafford's forehead.
"The man is an unscrupulous adventurer—no doubt he has safeguarded his own interest carefully enough," he exclaimed bitterly.
"You are quite right. His wife has all the money, and he has taken care that it should be well tied up and out of reach. That is what my father did."
He turned to her again.
"Your father?"
"Yes, my father," she repeated, meeting his eyes gravely and unflinchingly. "He tried to do what Travers did. But he wasn't quite so clever. He ran too close to the wind, as he said himself, and they put him in prison. He died there."
He stood looking at her with a new interest. He too, was beginning to understand. The bitter line about the mouth was not the expression of a hard, unfeeling heart after all, then, and the sharp, mocking laugh which had jarred so often on his ears was not the echo of a shallow, worthless character? They were no more than the deep wounds left after a rough battle with a world that knows no pity for those branded with inherited shame and dishonor. He had misjudged her. There were unlimited possibilities of nobility and goodness in the beautiful face lifted to his. But he said nothing of the thoughts that flashed through his mind. In moments of crisis we always speak of what is least important.
"And you managed to keep it a secret in Marut?" he asked.
"Yes, it was a marvel, wasn't it?"—her eyes brightening with a spark of the old fun. "We lived in a constant state of alarms and excursions. But Mr. Travers did what he could. He knew all about it, and he helped us."
"On conditions, no doubt?"
"Of course, on conditions. But he said, quite truthfully, that he had no idea of blackmailing me. It was just a fair bargain between us." She paused a little before she went on: "Now, you understand what brought us to Marut, and what made you such a desirable catch. We wanted to get clear away from the past and build up a new life. But we couldn't. One can't build up anything on a lie."
"That is true," he returned sternly, "and yet this is hardly a time for you to talk of your failure. From the moment that you are my wife—"
"But, John, that's what I never shall be." She laughed wearily. "Do you think a clever woman would own up to an unpleasant past to the man she wanted to marry? And if you want to hear more detestable things about me, ask the Colonel, ask Mrs. Berry, ask the Rajah. They know all about me, for I told them yesterday. You don't need to look so white and haggard. I am not going to marry you. That is what I came to say. And I wanted to explain everything, and to ask you, if you can, to forgive me all the trouble I have brought upon you." She rose, and held out her hand to him. "Will you shake hands, John?"
He stood motionless by the table, watching her with a last stirring of the old distrust.
"I do not understand you," he said bluntly, and in truth he did not. This pale-faced woman with the earnest eyes deep underlined with the marks of sleepless nights was a riddle which his stiff, conventional imagination could not solve.
"Is it necessary that you should understand?" she answered. "I have not asked you to explain why, still loving her, you threw Lois over. I believe that you had some grave reason. It could not be graver than mine for doing what I am doing."
"Then you mean that—it is entirely over between us?"
"Yes, it is over between us. Your sense of justice will not have to undergo the ordeal of forcing your sense of honor to link itself with dishonor. To your credit, I believe you would have married me, John, and I am grateful. But there's an end of it. I have come to say good-by. I suppose it is absurd, but I wish we could remain friends."
This time he took her hand in his. Now that the artificial union between them was done away with, their real friendship for each other came back and took its rightful place in their lives.
"Why shouldn't we, Beatrice?" he said. "Heaven knows, we both have need of friends."
"It is a strange thing," she continued thoughtfully, "that, though you are so completely my opposite, I have always liked you. Even when you most jarred upon me with your prunes-and-prisms morality, I was never able quite to close my heart. I wonder why?"
He could not repress a faint amusement at the flash of her old self.
"It has been the same with me," he said. "Even when you trod on all my principles at once, I haven't been able to smother a sort of shamefaced respect for you. You always seemed more worthy of respect than—well, some of the others."
"I suppose it is our sincerity," she said. "You are sincere in your goodness, and I, paradoxical as it sounds, in my badness."
"I think not," he answered, looking her gravely in the face. "I think it is because the hidden best in both of us recognized each other and held out the hand of friendship almost without our knowing."
She smiled, but he saw a light sparkle in her eyes.
"Oh, practical John, you are making fast progress in the soul's world!
Who has taught you?"
He turned away from her back to the table and stood there gazing out over the garden.
"No one. It is a mood I have on today which makes me see clearer than
I have done before. Go now—if any one saw you here, you know what
Marut would say."
"Yes, I know Marut very well by now. Not that it much matters.
Good-by. Please—I found my way alone; I can find the way out."
She had reached the door before he stopped her.
"Beatrice!"
She turned.
"What is it?"
"I have a favor to ask of you—or rather, I have a trust to put in your hands. It is in a sort of way the seal upon our good understanding. There is no one else whom I could trust so much."
She came back to his side. A new color was in her cheeks. Her eyes looked less tired, less hopeless.
"A trust? That would make life worth living."
He took up the packet on the table and gave it to her.
"That is my will. I made it afresh last night. It was witnessed this morning. In it I have made you my executrix, with half my estate. The other half I have left to Lois."
"Now you must leave it all to her," she said.
"No, I wish it to remain as it is. Besides—" He broke off hurriedly, as though seeking to avoid an unpleasant train of thought. "Beatrice, the world won't understand that will. Lois won't, and I pray, for the sake of her happiness, that she may never have to—but if the time comes when this must be put into action, I want you to give her a message from me. Will you?"
"Of course I will. But"—she faced him with a sudden inspired appeal—"must you wait until you are dead to speak to her? Would it not be better to go to her now with your message? I do not know what has come between you both, but I know this much—all forms of pretense are fatal—"
He stopped her with a gesture of decision.
"No," he said. "The secret must remain secret. It has overshadowed my life. It has laden me with a burden of responsibility and shame which I have determined to share with no one. I have taken it upon my shoulders, and I shall carry it to the end. Tell Lois that I have never once swerved in my love for her. Ask her to trust me and think kindly of me. It is not I who have sinned against her—"
"Sinned against her! Who has sinned against her? Do you mean me?"
"No, not you. You also have been sinned against. I also." He sighed wearily. "When I look about me, it seems as though not one of us has not in turn sinned and been sinned against. It is an endless chain of the wrong we do one another."
She laughed, and for the first time there rang in her voice a note of the old harshness.
"Look at me, John. There is no turn and turn about with me. From the beginning I have tricked and lied and fought my way through life. I didn't care whom I hurt so long as I got through. I sinned. Who has sinned against me?"
"One person at least," he answered significantly.
She caught her breath, and the hand that passed hastily across her forehead trembled.
"Even if it were true what you say," she said, half inaudibly, "it does not alter the fact that we must atone for what has been done."
"It is the justice of the world," he assented. "We must make good the harm we do and the harm that has been done us." He threw back his shoulders with a movement of energetic protest. "Do not let us waste time talking. We can not help each other. All I ask is—do not forget my message."
She looked at him, strangely moved.
"You talk as though you were going to die to-night," she said.
"I talk as a man does whom death has already tapped on the shoulder more than once of late," he answered, with grim humor. "Good-by, Beatrice."
"Good-by."
He pushed his writing-table to one side so that she could pass out on to the verandah.
"Do not come with me farther," she said. "The carriage is waiting outside. I would rather go alone."
He stood and watched her as she passed lightly and quickly among the rose-bushes. It was as though he were trying to engrave upon his mind the memory of a lovely picture that he was never to see again,—as though he were bidding her a final farewell. Twice she turned and glanced back at him. Was it with the same intent, guided by the same strange foreboding? She disappeared, and the voice of a native orderly who had entered the room unheard recalled him to the reality.
"A letter for you, Captain Sahib," the man said, saluting.
Stafford took the sealed envelope and, tearing it open, ran hastily over the contents. It was from the Colonel. The subscription, as usual since the rupture in their relations, was cold and formal.
"I should be glad to see you at once," Colonel Carmichael had written. "Events occurred yesterday which I have not as yet been able to discuss with you, but which I fear are likely to have the most serious consequences. In the present weakened condition of our garrison, we can afford to run no risks. Nicholson is with me here. Your presence would simplify matters as regards forming our plans for the future."
Stafford turned to the waiting soldier.
"Present my compliments to the Colonel Sahib," he said. "I shall be with him immediately."