But Stapledon was in no mental mood for retrospective or other thought. A wide turmoil tossed the sea of his soul into storm; the terrible weakness of the strong got hold upon him, and he rocked in one of those moments when capacity to think deserts the mind, when intellect seems overwhelmed.
"I cannot see what you see," he said. "I admit that I am blind and a fool, but for God's sake don't ask me any more questions beyond my power to answer. Tell me what you think, or know, or believe you know. Consider what this means to me—the fact that Christopher Yeoland may be alive—may have stood behind a hedge yesterday, and watched me pass, and laughed. Don't you see? I've got Honor by falsehood—a false pretence—a fraud."
"Not of your own breeding, if it is so. Your true and loving wife she is for all time now, whether the man be dead or alive—though of that there's a certain proof in my mind. I'd be the last to tear you with questions at this minute. I only wanted you to see what has rushed in upon me so sudden and fierce. Light in it every way—light in it for you and for Honor, I pray God. If what I make out of this puzzle is true, and Christopher Yeoland alive, then there may be matter for rejoicing in the fact rather than gloom. Not darkness anyway. Now call home to your mind that night in the woods, when at her silly whim, which I was fool enough to support, you took your wife for a drive to Lee Bridge."
"I remember it well enough."
"You left her to fetch water from the river, and while you were away she got out of the pony carriage, light-footed and silent as a moonbeam, to pick bluebells. Then suddenly there! Out of the mist and night—out of the dim woods—the man! Wandering alone no doubt They met, and she, being in no trim for such a fearful shock as the sight of one long dead walking the earth again, went down before it. Think of her suddenly eye to eye and face to face with him in the midst of night and sleep! It froze her blood, and froze the poor little one's blood too—that thawed no more. For she thought him a spectral thing, an' thinks so still—thinks so still! That's the dark secret she's dumb about and won't whisper to you or me, though she's been near telling us once or twice. That's what has been eating her heart out; that's what neither your prayers nor mine could get from her. She must be made to understand in careful words that will ask your best skill to choose aright She must learn that you have discovered what she's hiding, and that it was flesh and blood, not phantom, she saw. 'Tis a pity, if what I say is fact, that the fool ran away when he saw you coming to succour her. The harm was done by that time; and if we had known, how many of these ghost-haunted hours might we have saved her! I may be spinning thin air, yet I think what I tell is true."
But Stapledon was glaring at the impassive face before him with a gaze that seemed to burrow through Mark's sightless eyes and reach his brain. Now Myles spoke in a voice unfamiliar to his listener, for it was loud-pitched and turbulent with sudden passion.
"That man killed my child!"
A glass vessel 90 the dresser echoed the deep, dominant note of this cry and reverberated it; one moment of silence followed; and then came shuffle of feet on the flagged way, with laughter and echo of time-worn jests, as Churdles Ash, Pinsent, and the others returned from their pleasure. Mark Endicott, however, had opportunity for a final word.
"It may be as you say—a dark accident, and worse ten thousand times for him than even you. Be just—be very just to the madman, if he has really done this wayward deed and is coming back into your life again. Be just, and don't swerve an inch out of your even-handed course, for your road is like to get difficult if you do."
"Us have viewed a gert pomp of braave horsemanship," announced Mr. Ash. "Never seed no better riders nor merry-men nowheer, though the hosses was poor."