“At Targai!” exclaimed Jim Airth, surprised into betraying his astonishment. Then at once recovering himself: “Ah, yes; of course. Seven months. I was there, you know.”
But, within himself, he was thinking rapidly, and much was becoming clear.
Sergeant O’Mara! Was it possible? An exquisite refined woman such as this, bearing about her the unmistakable hall-mark of high birth and perfect breeding? The Sergeant was a fine fellow, and superior—but, good Lord! Her husband! Yet girls of eighteen do foolish things, and repent ever after. A runaway match from an unhappy home; then cast off by her relations, and now left friendless and alone. But—Sergeant O’Mara! Yet no other O’Mara fell at Targai; and there was some link between him and Lord Ingleby.
Then, into his musing, came Myra’s soft voice, from close beside him, in the darkness: “My husband was always good to me; but——”
And Jim Airth laid his other hand over the one he held. “I am sure he was,” he said, gently. “But if you had been older, and had known more of love and life you would have done differently. Don’t try to explain. I understand.”
And Myra gladly left it at that. It would have been so very difficult to explain further, without explaining Michael; and all that really mattered was, that—with or without explanation—Jim Airth understood.
“And now—tell me,” she suggested, softly.
“Ah, yes,” he said, pulling himself together, with an effort. “My experience also misses the Best, and likewise covers ten long years. But it is a harder one than yours. I married, when a boy of twenty-one, a woman, older than myself; supremely beautiful. I went mad over her loveliness. Nothing seemed to count or matter, but that. I knew she was not a good woman, but I thought she might become so; and even if she didn’t it made no difference. I wanted her. Afterwards I found she had laughed at me, all the time. Also, there had all the time been another—an older man than I—who had laughed with her. He had not been in a position to marry her when I did; but two years later, he came into money. Then—she left me.”
Jim Airth paused. His voice was hard with pain. The night was very black. In the dark silence they could hear the rhythmic thunder of the waves pounding monotonously against the cliff below.
“I divorced her, of course; and he married her; but I went abroad, and stayed abroad. I never could look upon her as other than my wife. She had made a hell of my life; robbed me of every illusion; wrecked my ideals; imbittered my youth. But I had said, before God, that I took her for my wife, until death parted us; and, so long as we were both alive, what power could free me from that solemn oath? It seemed to me that by remaining in another hemisphere, I made her second marriage less sinful. Often, at first, I was tempted to shoot myself, as a means of righting this other wrong. But in time I outgrew that morbidness, and realised that though Love is good, Life is the greatest gift of all. To throw it away, voluntarily, is an unpardonable sin. The suicide’s punishment should be loss of immortality. Well, I found work to do, of all sorts, in America, and elsewhere. And a year ago—she died. I should have come straight home, only I was booked for that muddle on the frontier they called ‘a war.’ I got fever after Targai; was invalided home; and here I am recruiting and finishing my book. Now you can understand why loveliness in a woman, fills me with a sort of panic, even while a part of me still leaps up instinctively to worship it. I had often said to myself that if I ever ventured upon matrimony again, it should be a plain face, and a noble heart; though all the while I knew I should never bring myself really to want the plain face. And yet, just as the burnt child dreads the fire, I have always tried to look away from beauty. Only—my Fairy-land Princess, may I say it?—days ago I began to feel certain that in you—YOU in golden capitals—the loveliness and the noble heart went together. But from the moment when, stepping out of the sunset, you walked up the garden path, right into my heart, the fact of YOU, just being what you are, and being here, meant so much to me, that I did not dare let it mean more. Somehow I never connected you with widowhood; and not until you said this evening on the shore: ‘I am a soldier’s widow,’ did I know that you were free.—There! Now you have heard all there is to hear. I made a bad mistake at the beginning; but I hope I am not the sort of chap you need mind sitting on a ledge with, and calling ‘Jim’.”