“We had better shake hands, Mr. Strong. Your son was innocent, perfectly innocent. This, of course, is in confidence. In the witness-box I should swear the opposite.”
“By God!” said the elder man, “where are we, on our heads or on our feet?”
“Ask God, sir,” said the soldier, “for is not God Himself a paradox?”
Thus, with this last gross piece of inconsistency, the parley ended, as many such a passage of passion has ended, and will end. Maltravers had sheltered himself behind the woman who had trusted him. Wrong-doer and avenger cried a truce over the business, shirking the last death-grip, the one from selfishness, the other because hearts more dear would have been the more deeply wounded. For man cannot conquer truth at times save by dragging the innocent through the dust, even as Achilles dragged Hector about the walls of Troy.
XLV
IN her turret-room at Gabingly, Ophelia sat before an open window with a letter lying in her lap. There was a look of apathy upon her face, an apathy so deep and utter that life seemed stagnant in her as though her heart stood still. Her eyes stared over the woods and meadows towards the sea, eyes that beheld nothing, comprehended nothing. Only her deep breathing betrayed the passions that still worked within.
It was Maltravers’ letter that lay open in her lap, the letter of a coward and a hypocrite, full of euphemistic cunning and of subtle sentiment. For an hour or more Ophelia had sat silent and motionless before the window, with the glib sentences ebbing and flowing through her brain. Anger had failed her in that hour; shame and loneliness seemed closing about her soul.
“My dear Phyl [began the epistle],—I write to you in great haste, for my news is of such a nature that the more speedily it is told the better.
“Understand, in the first place, my dear girl, that what I am now doing is for your welfare, and goes grievously against the grain with me. We have ventured so much for each other in the past that this flouting at the eleventh hour comes like a thunderclap upon my soul.”
After some such preamble, Maltravers proceeded to paint a vivid picture of their betrayal and of John Strong’s relentless determination to unearth the truth. He described the interview at the manor, and recounted his own heroic stand and his desperate attempts to impress upon the master of Saltire the hopelessness of his cause. The letter went on to state that, though his arguments had brought John Strong to a temporary stand-still, he feared that the old man, “like a mad elephant, would soon break through the net.”