It was a disconnected letter at best, and nothing really but a confession of the man’s shame, which had to be pieced together from a knowledge of him, for he had made no coherent statement. He had fallen in with his own regiment, who were camped just outside Port Cecil, and what with the reaction in getting out of Key Island, and “the fellows” being glad to welcome him—well, the result was the same as it had been when he failed before, and the Administrator wanted him on the night of the threatened rising. He did not remember very much. He was not dead drunk this time—if he had been it might have saved him—but after dining with the regiment (and God knows what he had said to them, only they were decent fellows and would shield him), he had had an important interview with the men most involved in the insurrection. It was a private interview, and a diplomatic affair that was to be kept very dark. Melton Hanney arranged it, he had been most decent all through—there was no blame attached to him. He had settled with Ally as to when the meeting should take place, but had not been present at the interview. There was an argument—Ally did not remember the details very well—only his head was heated, and he got impatient, and lost his temper and threatened. The men saw his condition and drew him on—then he bragged of his Government, and their powers; and then—then—all that Gregory had explained to him so carefully lest he should make mistakes, was blurted out, and the very nation perhaps involved by his folly. He knew what he had done almost before they left him with smooth, guarded speeches, though no hint of animosity, and a kind of sullen despair settled down on him. That was three days ago, before his letter was written—three days of agonising suspense, and time to think over what he had done. Nothing was known as yet; he was supposed to be communicating with his chiefs, or forming an ultimatum. In the meantime he had arranged for a shooting excursion inland—and there was more truth in it than would appear! It seemed the only thing to do—but he must write the truth to Hanney. It was not Hanney’s fault, and it might leave him a chance to do something, and avert disaster.
“He is a thoroughly capable man, and knows the whole situation—in my opinion, if that goes for anything now, he ought to have managed it from the first,” wrote Alaric Lewin a few hours before death. “Why did they send me? You said I could not do it—you were right as usual. I’m no good, Chum—you always wanted me to do something, but you would never have made me. I’m better out of it—it’s the least I can do, for I should only disgrace you if I lived. You don’t know what I’ve done this time—it was a big thing, bigger than you all imagine, and I’ve hashed it. I only trust I shan’t get Gregory into the mess with me. It is not his fault any more than Hanney’s. The Home Government ought to leave it to the man on the spot, or be sure who they send. And there have been worse things in my life that concern you, that I can’t tell you either. They involve others. Only forgive us, and believe that I’m doing the best thing possible for you now. Good-bye, Chum—and God bless you!”
It was signed with his full name, but the letters were more scrawled than usual, and the whole letter was blotted and uncertain. The suspicion that hurt Brissy more than all was what the trembling handwriting betrayed—the man had been so afraid of the thing he was going to do! He had not wanted to die. Only his desperation and the stress of circumstances in which he found himself had driven him to a last bold action—forced him, morally at least, to go down with his back against the wall.
For the idea of cowardice had faded out of Captain Nugent’s mind. He saw from that piteous, confused letter of the man who had hardly understood his own disaster, that what might have been weakness in himself was a kind of furious bravery in Ally. With an unusual stretch of imagination, he fancied the beautiful set face, the splendidly-built figure in the lonely place in which his friend had chosen to die, and heard the crash of the revolver. Curiously enough he knew Ally’s revolvers; they were a pair he had given him himself. That they should come to such a use as this!
Mrs. Lewin had been standing beside him patiently while he read the letter. She made no comment, and asked no question as he handed back the sheets, but with a curious new speculation in her face she turned upon him suddenly.
“They know—at Government House?”
“Yes, there was a cable, and a letter followed by the mail from Beira.”
“When did the cable come?”
Brissy hesitated. “This morning, I suppose. I did not hear.”
“You are wrong,” she said quietly. “It came last night.”