Ah! a letter, still in its envelope inviolate, addressed to Mrs. Harry English. Not his the hand. Oh, then, it is that he is dead now indeed! Broken woman with her belated grief, what wonder that her brain should work confusedly!
It was Mrs. English in very truth—fresh widowed, her boding heart telling her, but too surely, what last bitter detail she would find in this stranger's letter—who broke the seal at last after so many years.
DEAR MRS. ENGLISH,—We have wired to your friends to break the bad news to you. You will want to hear all about it. I suppose you know by this time, broadly speaking, what happened to us. We were hard pressed. The relief force—worn out by the march across the snows—was not strong enough to take the hill, which was the key of the position, unassisted. It was agreed that we should co-operate. English insisted on taking charge of the party. We all knew it was a forlorn-hope business, and the men had a superstitious feeling about him; with any one else they would not have gone with the same spirit. It was an hour before dawn, and the fight went on till sunrise. We—such of us as were left in the fort, hardly an able-bodied man except myself and Whiteley, the surgeon—did not know which way it was going with us till dawn, when we found the enemy in retreat. Then our men and the relief party came straggling in; none of us were up to pursuit, and we began to count our loss. English had saved us with his life. He had succeeded in capturing and holding the post on the hill, completely occupying the enemy's attention, until the guns of the relief force came down upon their flank. It was carried through by a stroke of genius, but it was absolute sacrifice. Only a third of his splendid fellows have come back to us—and English is gone.
His jemadar saw him fall (he swears it must have been instant death) amid the Ghasi swordsmen, and then in the rush they were swept apart. Mrs. English, you have the right to know the complete truth. We have been unable to recover any of our dead or wounded. The enemy carried them away; and, as we watched them in their retreat, we saw them strip the dead and roll them over the crags into the rapids. We shall not have Harry English's grave—but would he have desired a better one than the great cold mountain waters, in the desolate valley, utmost boundary of that Empire whose honour he died for? He will live in the hearts of his countrymen. To you I dare not offer any other words of consolation. What he was to us, these days of trial, I have no power to express. Without him we should have come badly through this business. What he was to me—forgive me, I can write no more. All his papers I have placed together. They will be brought to you with this letter. His last letter to his mother was mailed to England.—Yours truly,
RAYMOND BETHUNE.
Rosamond stared. Raymond Bethune.—So it was he who wrote. She had not recognised his hand.
Stupidly she sat, stunned. Then the wave gathered, reared itself and broke upon her, overwhelming, drenching her with waters of irremediable bitterness! Dead—he was dead—she had lost him. He had suffered hunger and thirst and fever, and longing for her and anguish of mind, and doubt; he had been hacked with swords, his beloved body had been dragged over the rocks, flung bleeding, perhaps still quick, into the swirling flood. But all this was nothing. All they had worked upon him was nothing compared with what she, his chosen one, had done! Faithless, betrayer of his love, what part could Lady Gerardine have with anything of Harry English? Even Bethune, even that cold, hard man, had been one with the old stricken mother in loyalty of grief. "He will live in the hearts of his countrymen." It was his wife who had thrust him away among the dead, to be forgotten.
"It is we who make our dead dead." For her now he must always be dead. On earth and in heaven alike she had lost him. What meeting could there ever be for her and him again, since she had given herself to another man; since she had willed him dead, in her cowardice; in base self-indulgence refused her soul to the dear and holy sorrow of his living memory?
She flung herself face downwards among his papers. No tears came to her relief, no blessed unconsciousness. For her there was no God; for her there could be no heaven, naught was left her but the hell of her own making!
CHAPTER XV
Three times since that first fruitless summons to lunch had Aspasia come to the door of the attic. Twice, with the engaging practicality of her nature, she had carried up a little tray. She would fain minister to a mind diseased, with soup or with tea, knowing no better medicine. Each time, however, her gentle knocking, her coaxing representations through the keyhole, had produced not the least response. But the girl's ear had caught the rustling of papers within; and, satisfied that there was nothing worse than one of her aunt's moods to account for the persistently closed door and the silence, she had withdrawn with her offering, more irritated, perhaps, than anxious.
Now, however, as she knocked and rattled at the handle and implored admittance, there was a double pressure of anxiety upon her; the demands of unexpected events without, and a new, deathlike stillness within.