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.