A strange smile shot into Crozier’s face, and the dark passion of reminiscence fled from his eyes. “Yes, you are right, little friend,” he said. “That was the real tragedy after all. There was the horse doing his best, his most beautiful best, as though he knew so much depended on him, stretching himself with the last ounce of energy he could summon, feeling the psalm of success in his heart—yes, he knows, he knows what he has done, none so well!—and out comes a black, hateful thing against him, and down he goes, his game over, his course run. I felt exactly as you do, and I felt that before everything else when it happened. Then I felt for myself afterwards, and I felt it hard, as you can think.”
The break went from his voice, but it rang with reflective, remembered misery. “I was ruined. One thing was clear to me. I would not live on my wife’s money. I would not eat and drink what her money bought. No, I would not live on my wife. Her brother, a good enough, impulsive lad, with a tongue of his own and too small to thresh, came to me in London the night of the race. He said his sister had been in the country-down at Epsom—and that she bitterly resented my having broken my promise and lost all I had. He said he had never seen her so angry, and he gave me a letter from her. On her return to town she had been obliged to go away at once to see her sister taken suddenly ill. He added, with an unfeeling jibe, that he wouldn’t like the reading of the letter himself. If he hadn’t been such a chipmunk of a fellow I’d have wrung his neck. I put the letter her letter-in my pocket, and next day gave my lawyer full instructions and a power of attorney. Then I went straight to Glasgow, took steamer for Canada, and here I am. That was near five years ago.”
“And the letter from your wife?” asked Kitty Tynan demurely and slyly.
The Young Doctor looked at Crozier, surprised at her temerity, but Crozier only smiled gently. “It is in the desk there. Bring it to me, please,” he said.
In a moment Kitty was beside him with the letter. He took it, turned it over, examined it carefully as though seeing it for the first time, and laid it on his knee.
“I have never opened it,” he said. “There it is, just as it was handed to me.”
“You don’t know what is in it?” asked Kitty in a shocked voice. “Why, it may be that—”
“Oh, yes, I know what is in it!” he replied. “Her brother’s confidences were enough. I didn’t want to read it. I can imagine it all.”
“It’s pretty cowardly,” remarked Kitty.
“No, I think not. It would only hurt, and the hurting could do no good. I can hear what it says, and I don’t want to see it.”