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"I know that," said I. "I also know that in your eyes I am
committing an unwarrantable impertinence."

"Not at all," she replied politely. "You have the right to talk to
me for my good. It's impertinence in me not to wish to hear it."

"Betty dear," said I, "will you tell me what was the cause of your
estrangement?"

She stiffened. "No one has the right to ask me that."

"A man who loves you very, very dearly," said I, "will claim it.
Was the cause Althea Fenimore?"

She looked at me almost in frightened amazement.

"Is that mere guesswork?"

"No, dear," said I quietly.

"I thought no one knew--except one person. I was not even sure
that Leonard Boyce was aware that I knew."

Another bow at a venture. "That one person is Gedge."

"You're right. I suppose he has been talking," she said, greatly
agitated. "He has been putting it about all over the place. I've
been dreading it." Then she sprang to her feet and drew herself up
and snapped her fingers in an heroical way. "And if he has said
that Althea Fenimore drowned herself for love of Leonard Boyce,
what is there in it? After all, what has Leonard Boyce done that
he can't be forgiven? Men are men and women are women. We've tried
for tens of thousands of years to lay down hard and fast lines for
the sexes to walk upon, and we've failed miserably. Suppose
Leonard Boyce did make love to Althea Fenimore--trifle with her
affections, in the old-fashioned phrase. What then? I'm greatly to
blame. It has only lately been brought home to me. Instead of
staying here while we were engaged, I would have my last fling as
an emancipated young woman in London. He consoled himself with
Althea. When she found he meant nothing, she threw herself into
the canal. It was dreadful. It was tragic. He went away and broke
with me. I didn't discover the reason till months afterwards. She
drowned herself for love of him, it's true. But what was his share
in it that he can't be forgiven for? Millions of men have been
forgiven by women for passing loves. Why not he? Why not a
tremendous man like him? A man who has paid every penalty for
wrong, if wrong there was? Blind!"

She walked about and threw up her hands and halted in front of my
chair. "I'll own that until lately I accused him of unforgivable
sin--deceiving me and making love to another girl and driving her
to suicide. I tore him out of my heart and married Willie. We
won't speak of that .... But since he has come back, things seem
different. His mother has told me that one day when he was asleep
she found he was still wearing his identification disc ... there
was an old faded photograph of me on the other side ... it had
been there all through the war .... You see," she added, after a
pause during which her heaving bosom and quivering lip made her
maddeningly lovely, "I don't care a brass button for anything that
Gedge may say."

And that was all my clean-souled Betty knew about it! She had no
idea of deeper faithlessness; no suspicion of Boyce's presence
with Althea on the bank of the canal. She stood pathetic in her
half knowledge. My heart ached.

From her pure woman's point of view she had been justified in her
denunciation of Boyce. He had left her without a word. A wall of
silence came between them. Then she learned the reason. He had
trifled with a young girl's affections and out of despair she had
drowned herself .... But how had she learned? I had to question
her. And it was then that she told me the story of Phyllis and her
father to which I have made previous allusion: how Phyllis, as her
father's secretary, had opened a letter which had frightened her;
how her father's crafty face had frightened her still more; how
she had run to Betty for the easing of her heart. And this letter
was from Leonard Boyce. "I cannot afford one penny more," so the
letter ran, according to Betty's recollection of Phyllis's
recollection, "but if you remain loyal to our agreement, you will
not regret it. If ever I hear of your coupling my name with that
of Miss Fenimore, I'll kill you. I am a man of my word." I think
Betty crystallised Phyllis's looser statement. But the exact
wording was immaterial. Here was Boyce branding himself with
complicity in the tragedy of Althea, and paying Gedge to keep it
dark. Like Sir Anthony, Betty remembered trivial things that
assumed grave significance. There was no room for doubt.
Catastrophe following on his villainy had kept Boyce away from
Wellingsford, had terrified him out of his engagement. And so her
heart had grown bitter against him. You may ask why her knowledge
of the world had not led her to suspect blacker wrong; for a man
does not pay blackmail because he has led a romantic girl into a
wrong notion of the extent of his affection. My only answer is
that Betty was Betty, clean-hearted and clean-souled like the
young Artemis she resembled.

And now she proclaimed that he had expiated his offence. She
proclaimed her renewed and passionate interest in the man. I saw
that deep down in her heart she had always loved him.

After telling me about Phyllis, she returned to the point where
she had broken off. She supposed that Gedge had been talking all
over the place.

"I don't think so, dear," said I. "So far as I know he has only
spoken, first to Randall Holmes--that was what made him break
away from Gedge, whose society he had been cultivating for other
reasons than those I imagined (you remember telling me Phyllis's
sorrowful little tale last year?)." She nodded. "And secondly to
Sir Anthony and myself, a few hours before the Reception."

She clenched her fists and broke out again. "The devil! The
incarnate devil! And Sir Anthony?"

"Pretended to treat Gedge's story as a lie, threw into the fire
without reading it an incriminating letter--possibly the letter
that Phyllis saw, ordered Gedge out of the house and, like a great
gentleman, went through the ceremony."

"Does Leonard know?"

"Not that I'm aware of," said I.

"He must be told. It's terrible to have an enemy waiting to stab
you in the dark--and you blind to boot. Why haven't you told him?"

Why? Why? Why?

It was so hard to keep to the lower key of her conception of
things. I made a little gesture signifying I know not what: that
it was not my business, that I was not on sufficient terms of
intimacy with Boyce, that it didn't seem important enough .... My
helpless shrug suggested, I suppose, all of these excuses. Why
hadn't I warned him? Cowardice, I suppose.

"Either you or I must do it," she went on. "You're his friend. He
thinks more of you than of any other man in the world. And he's
right, dear--" she flashed me a proud glance, sweet and stabbing--
"Don't I know it?"

Then suddenly a new idea seemed to pass through her brain. She
bent forward and touched the light shawl covering my knees.

"For the last month or two you've known what he has done. It
hasn't made any difference in your friendship. You must think with
me that the past is past, that he has purged his sins, or whatever
you like to call them; that he is a man greatly to be forgiven."

"Yes, dear," said I, with a show of bravery, though I dreaded lest
my voice should break, "I think he is a man to be forgiven."

Her logic was remorseless.

With her frank grace she threw herself, in her old attitude, by
the side of my chair.

"I'm so glad we have had this talk, Majy darling. It has made
everything between us so clear and beautiful. It is always such a
grief to me to think you may not understand. I shall always be the
little girl that looked upon you as a wonderful hero and divine
dispenser of chocolates. Only now the chocolates stand for love
and forbearance and sympathy, and all kinds of spiritual goodies."

I passed my hand over her hair. "Silly child!"

"I got it into my head," she continued, "that you were blaming me
for--for my reconciliation with Leonard. But, my dear, my dear,
what woman's heart wouldn't be turned to water at the sight of
him? It makes me so happy that you understand. I can't tell you
how happy."

"Are you going to marry him?" I think my voice was steady and kind
enough.

"Possibly. Some day. If he asks me."

I still stroked her hair. "I wouldn't let it be too soon," said I.

Her eyes were downcast. "On account of Willie?" she murmured.

"No, dear. I don't dare touch on that side of things."

Again a whisper. "Why, then?"

How could I tell her why without betrayal of Boyce? I had to turn
the question playfully. I said, "What should I do without my
Betty?"

"Do you really care about me so much?"

I laughed. There are times when one has to laugh--or overwhelm
oneself in dishonour.

"Now you see my nature in all its vile egotism," said I, and the
statement led to a pretty quarrel.

But after it was over to our joint satisfaction, she had to return
to the distressful main theme of our talk. She harked back to Sir
Anthony, touched on his splendid behaviour, recalled, with a
little dismay, the hitherto unnoted fact that, after the ceremony
he had held himself aloof from those that thronged round Boyce.
Then, without hint from me, she perceived the significance of the
Fenimores' retirement from Wellingsford.

"Leonard's ignorance," she said, "leaves him in. a frightful
position. More than ever he ought to know."

"He ought, indeed, my dear," said I. "And I will tell him. I ought
to have done so before."

I gave my undertaking. I went to bed upbraiding myself for
cowardice and resolved to go to Boyce the next day. Not only Fate,
but honour and decency forced me to the detested task.

Alas! Next morning I was nailed to my bed by my abominable malady.
The attacks had become more frequent of late. Cliffe administered
restoratives and for the first time he lost his smile and looked
worried. You see until quite lately I had had a very tranquil
life, deeply interested in other folks' joys and sorrows, but
moved by very few of my own. And now there had swooped down on me
this ravening pack of emotions which were tearing me to pieces. I
lay for a couple of days tortured by physical pain, humiliation
and mental anguish.

On the evening of the second day, Marigold came into the bedroom
with a puzzled look on his face.

"Colonel Boyce is here, sir. I told him you were in bed and seeing
nobody, but he says he wants to see you on something important. I
asked him whether it couldn't wait till to-morrow, and he said
that if I would give you a password, Vilboek's Farm, you'd be sure
to see him."

"Quite right, Marigold," said I. "Show him in."

Vilboek's Farm! Fate had driven him to me, instead of me to him. I
would see him though it killed me, and get the horrible business
over for ever.

Marigold led him in and drew up a chair for him by the bedside.
After pulling on the lights and drawing the curtains, for the warm
May evening was drawing to a close,

"Anything more, sir, for the present?" he asked.

"Could I have materials for a whisky and soda to hand?" said
Boyce.

"Of course," said I.

Marigold departed. Boyce said:

"If you're too ill to stand me, send me away. But if you can stand
me, for God's sake let me talk to you."

"Talk as much as you like," said I. "This is only one of my stupid
attacks which a man without legs has to put up with."

"But Marigold--"

"Marigold's an old hen," said I.

"Are you sure you're well enough? That's the curse of not being
able to see. Tell me frankly."

"I'm quite sure," said I.

I have never been able to get over the curious embarrassment of
talking to a man whose eyes I cannot see. The black spectacles
seemed to be like a wall behind which the man hid his thoughts. I
watched his lips. Once or twice the odd little twitch had appeared
at the corners.

Even with his baffling black spectacles he looked a gallant figure
of a man. He was precisely dressed in perfectly fitting dinner
jacket and neat black tie; well-groomed from the points of his
patent leather shoes to his trim crisp brown hair. And beneath
this scrupulousness of attire lay the suggestion of great
strength.

Marigold brought in the tray with decanter, siphon and glasses,
and put them on a table, together with cigars and cigarettes, by
his side. After a few deft touches, so as to identify the objects,
Boyce smiled and nodded at Marigold.

"Thanks very much, Sergeant," he said.

If there is one thing Marigold loves, it is to be addressed as
"Sergeant." "Marigold" might--indicate a butler, but "Sergeant"
means a sergeant.

"Perhaps I might fetch the Colonel a more comfortable chair, sir,"
said he.

But Boyce laughed, "No, no!" and Marigold left us.

Boyce's ear listened for the click of the door. Then he turned to
me.

"I was rather mean in sending you in that password. But I felt as
if I should go mad if I didn't see you. You're the only man living
who really knows about me. You're the only human being who can
give me a helping hand. It's strange, old man--the halt leading
the blind. But so it is. And Vilboek's Farm is the damned essence
of the matter. I've come to you to ask you, for the love of God,
to tell me what I am to do."

I guessed what had happened. "Betty Connor has told you something
that I was to tell you."

"Yes," said he. "This afternoon. And in her splendid way she
offered to marry me."

"What did you say?"

"I said that I would give her my answer to-morrow."

"And what will that answer be?"

"It is for you to tell me," said Boyce.

"In order to undertake such a terrible responsibility," said I, "I
must know the whole truth concerning Althea Fenimore."

"I've come here to tell it to you," said he.





CHAPTER XXIII


It was to a priest rather than to a man that he made full
confession of his grievous sin. He did not attempt to mitigate it
or to throw upon another a share of the blame. From that attitude
he did not vary a hair's breadth. Meea culpa; mea maxima culpa.
That was the burthen of his avowal.

I, knowing the strange mingling in his nature of brutality and
sensitiveness, of animal and spiritual, and knowing something of
the unstable character of Althea Fenimore, may more justly, I
think, than he, sketch out the miserable prologue of the drama.
That she was madly, recklessly in love with him there can be no
doubt. Nor can there be doubt that unconsciously she fired the
passion in him. The deliberate, cold-blooded seducer of his
friend's daughter, such as Boyce, in his confession, made himself
out to be, is a rare phenomenon. Almost invariably it is the woman
who tempts--tempts innocently and unknowingly, without intent to
allure, still less with thought of wrong--but tempts all the same
by the attraction which she cannot conceal, by the soft promise
which she cannot keep out of her eyes.

That was the beginning of it. Betty, whom he loved, and to whom he
was engaged, was away from Wellingsford. In those days she was
very much the young Diana, walking in search of chaste adventures,
quite contented with the love that lay serenely warm in her heart
and thinking little of a passionate man's needs--perhaps starting
away from too violent an expression of them--perhaps prohibiting
them altogether. The psychology of the pre-war young girl
absorbed, even though intellectually and for curiosity's sake, in
the feminist movement, is yet to be studied. Betty, then, was
away. Althea, beata possidens, made her artless, innocent appeal
for victory. Unconsciously she tempted. The man yielded. A touch
of the lips in a moment of folly, the man blazed, the woman
helpless was consumed. This happened in January, just before
Althea's supposed visit to Scotland. Boyce was due at a Country
House party near Carlisle. In the first flush of their madness
they agreed upon the wretched plan. She took rooms in the town and
he visited her there. Whether he or she conceived it, I do not
know. If I could judge coldly I should say that it was of feminine
inspiration. A man, particularly one of Boyce's temperament, who
was eager for the possession of a passionately loved woman, would
have carried her off to a little Eden of their own. A calm
consideration of the facts leads to the suggestion of a half-
hearted acquiescence on the part of an entangled man in the
romantic scheme of an inexperienced girl to whom he had suddenly
become all in all.

Such is my plea in extenuation of Boyce's conduct (if plea there
can be), seeing that he raised not a shadow of one of his own. You
may say that my plea is no excuse for his betrayal; that no man,
even if he is tempted, can be pardoned for non-control of his
passions. But I am asking for no pardon; I am trying to obtain
your understanding. Remember what I have told you about Boyce, his
great bull-neck, his blood-sodden life-preserver, the physical
repulsion I felt when he carried me in his arms. In such men the
animal instinct is stronger at times than the trained will.
Whether you give him a measure of your sympathy or not, at any
rate do not believe that his short-lived liaison with Althea was a
matter of deliberate and dastardly seduction. Nor must you think
that I am setting down anything in disparagement of a child whom I
once loved. Long ago I touched lightly on the anomaly of Althea's
character--her mid-Victorian sentimentality and softness, combined
with her modern spirit of independence. A fatal anomaly; a
perilous balance of qualities. Once the soft sentimentality was
warmed into romantic passion, the modern spirit led it recklessly
to a modern conclusion.

The liaison was short-lived. The man was remorseful. He loved
another woman. Very quickly did the poor girl awaken from her
dream.

"I was cruel," said Boyce, fixing me with those awful black
spectacles, "I know it. I ought to have married her. But if I had
married her, I should have been more cruel. I should have hated
her. It would have been an impossible life for both of us. One day
I had to tell her so. Not brutally. In a normal state I think I am
as kind-hearted and gentle as most men. And I couldn't be brutal,
feeling an unutterable cur and craving her forgiveness. But I
wanted Betty and I swore that only one thing should keep me from
her."

"One thing?" I asked.

"The thing that didn't happen," said he.

And so it seemed that Althea accepted the inevitable. The placid,
fatalistic side of her nature asserted itself. Pride, too, helped
her instinctive feminine secretiveness. She lived for months in
her father's house without giving those that were dear to her any
occasion for suspicion. In order to preserve the secrecy Boyce was
bound to continue his visits to Wellings Park. Now and then, when
they met alone, she upbraided him bitterly. On the whole, however,
he concluded that they had agreed to bury an ugly chapter in their
lives.

Yes, it was an ugly chapter. From such you cannot get away, bury
it, as you will, never so deep.

"And all the time remember," he said, "that I was mad for Betty.
The more shy she was, the madder I grew. I could not rest in
Wellingsford without her. When she came here, I came. When she
went to town, I went to town. She was as elusive as a dream.
Finally I pinned her down to a date for our marriage in August. It
was the last time I saw her. She went away to stay with friends.
That was the beginning of June. She was to be away two months. I
knew, if I had clamoured, she would have made it three. It was the
shyness of the exquisite bird in her that fascinated me. I could
never touch Betty in those days without dreading lest I might soil
her feathers. You may laugh at a hulking brute like me saying such
things, but that's the way I saw Betty, that's the way I felt
towards her. I could no more have taken her into my bear's hug and
kissed her roughly than I could have smashed a child down with my
fist. And yet--My God, man! how I ached for her!"

Long as I had loved Betty in a fatherly way, deeply as I loved her
now, the man's unexpected picture of her was a revelation. You see
it was only after her marriage, when she had softened and grown a
woman and come so near me that I felt the great comfort of her
presence when she was by, the need of it when she was away. How
could I have known anything of the elusiveness in her maidenhood
before which he knelt so reverently?

That he so knelt is the keynote of the man's soul untainted by the
flesh.

It made clear to me the tenderness that lay beneath that which was
brutal; the reason of that personal charm which had captivated me
against my will; his defencelessness against the Furies.

So far the narrative has reached the latter part of June. He had
spent the month with his mother. As Betty had ordained that July
should be blank, a month during which the moon should know no
changes but only the crescent of Diana should shine supreme in the
heavens, he had made his mundane arrangements for his fishing
excursion to Norway. On the afternoon of the 23rd he paid a
farewell call at Wellings Park. Althea, in the final settlement of
their relations, had laid it down as a definite condition that he
should maintain his usual social intercourse with the family. A
few young people were playing tennis. Tea was served on the lawn
near by the court. Althea gave no sign of agitation. She played
her game, laughed with her young men, and took casual leave of
Boyce, wishing him good sport. He drew her a pace aside and
murmured: "God bless you for forgiving me."

She laughed a reply out loud: "Oh, that's all right."

When he told me that, I recalled vividly the picture of her, in my
garden, on the last afternoon of her life, eating the strawberries
which she had brought me for tea. I remembered the little slangy
tone in her voice when she had asked me whether I didn't think
life was rather rotten. That was the tone in which she had said to
him, "Oh, that's all right."

During the early afternoon on the 25th, she rang him up on the
telephone. Chance willed that he should receive the call at first
hand. She must see him before he left Wellingsford. She had
something of the utmost importance to tell him. A matter of life
and death. With one awful thought in his mind, he placed his time
at her disposal. For what romantic, desperate or tragic reason she
appointed the night meeting at the end of the chestnut avenue
where the towing-path turns into regions of desolate quietude, he
could not tell. He agreed without argument, dreading the possible
lack of privacy in their talk over the wires.

On that afternoon she came to me, as I have told you, with her
strawberries and her declaration of the rottenness of life.

They met and walked along the towing-path. It was bright
moonlight, but she could not have chosen a lonelier spot, more
free from curious eyes or ears. And then took place a scene which
it is beyond my power to describe. I can only picture it to myself
from Boyce's broken, self-accusing talk. He was going away. She
would never see him again until he returned to marry another
woman. She was making her last frantic bid for happiness. She wept
and sobbed and cajoled and upbraided--You know what women at the
end of their tether can do. He strove to pacify her by the old
arguments which hitherto she had accepted. Suddenly she cried: "If
you don't marry me I am disgraced for ever." And this brought them
to a dead halt.

When he came to this point I remembered the diabolical accuracy of
Gedge's story.

Boyce said: "There is one usual reason why a man should marry a
woman to save her from disgrace. Is that the reason?"

She said "Yes."

The light went out of the man's life.

"In that case," said he, "there can be no question about it. I
will marry you. But why didn't you tell me before?"

She said she did not know. She made the faltering excuses of the
driven girl. They walked on together and sat on the great bar of
the lock gates.

"Till then," said he, "I had never known what it was to have death
in my heart. But I swear to God, Meredyth, I played my part like a
man. I had done a dastardly thing. There was nothing left for me
but to make reparation. In a few moments I tore my life asunder.
The girl I had wronged was to be the mother of my child. I
accepted the situation. I was as kind to her as I could be. She
laid her head on my shoulder and cried, and I put my arm around
her. I felt my heart going out to her in remorse and pity and
tenderness. A man must be a devil who could feel otherwise. ...
Our lives were bound up together. ... I kissed her and she clung
to me. Then we talked for a while--ways and means. ... It was time
to go back. We rose. And then--Meredyth--this is what she said:

"'You swear to marry me?'

"'I swear it,' said I.

"'In spite of anything?'

"I gave my promise. She put her arms round my neck.

"'What I've told you is not wholly true. But the moral disgrace is
there all the time.'

"I took her wrists and disengaged myself and held her and looked
at her.

"'What do you mean--not wholly true?' I asked.

"My God! I shall never forget it." He stuck both his elbows on the
bed and clutched his hair and turned his black glasses wide of me.
"The child crumpled up. She seemed to shrivel like a leaf in the
fire. She said:

"'I've tried to lie to you, but I can't. I can't. Pity me and
forgive me.'

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