Book: The Red Planet

W >> William J. Locke >> The Red Planet




"I started back from her in a sudden fury. I could not forgive
her. Think of the awful revulsion of feeling. Foolishly tricked! I
was mad with anger. I walked away and left her. I must have walked
ten or fifteen yards. Then I heard a splash in the water. I
turned. She was no longer on the bank. I ran up. I heard a cry. I
just saw her sinking. AND I COULDN'T MOVE. As God hears me, it is
true. I knew I must dive in and rescue her--I had run up with
every impulse to do so; BUT I COULD NOT MOVE. I stood shivering
with the paralysis of fear. Fear of the deep black water, the
steep brick sides of the canal that seemed to stretch away for
ever--fear of death, I suppose that was it. I don't know. Fear
irresistible, unconquerable, gripped me as it had gripped me
before, as it has gripped me since. And she drowned before my eyes
while I stood like a stone."

There was an awful pause. He had told me the end of the tragedy so
swiftly and in a voice so keyed to the terror of the scene, that I
lay horror-stricken, unable to speak. He buried his face in his
hands, and between the fleshy part of the palms I saw the muscles
of his lips twitch horribly. I remembered, with a shiver, how I
had first seen them twitch, in his mother's house, when he had
made his strange, almost passionate apology for fear. And he had
all but described this very incident: the reckless, hare-brained
devil standing on the bank of a river and letting a wounded
comrade drown. I remember how he had defined it: "the sudden thing
that hits a man's heart and makes him stand stock-still like a
living corpse--unable to move a muscle--all his will-power out of
gear--just as a motor is out of gear. ... It is as much of a fit
as epilepsy."

The span of stillness was unbearable. The watch on the little
table by my bedside ticked maddeningly. Marigold put his head in
at the door, apparently to warn me that it was getting late. I
waved him imperiously away. Boyce did not notice his entrance.
Presently he raised his head.

"I don't know how long I stood there. But I know that when I moved
she was long since past help. Suddenly there was a sharp crashing
noise on the road below. I looked round and saw no one. But it
gave me a shock--and I ran. I ran like a madman. And I thought as
I ran that, if I were discovered, I should be hanged for murder.
For who would believe my story? Who would believe it now?"

"I believe it, Boyce," I said.

"Yes. You. You know something of the hell my life has been. But
who else? He had every motive for the crime, the lawyers would
say. They could prove it. But, my God! what motive had I for
sending all my gallant fellows to their deaths at Vilboek's Farm?
... The two things are on all fours--and many other things with
them. ... My one sane thought through the horror of it all was to
get home and into the house unobserved. Then I came upon the man
Gedge, who had spied on me."

"I know about that," said I, wishing to spare him from saying more
than was necessary. "He told Fenimore and me about it."

"What was his version?" he asked in a low tone. "I had better hear
it."

When I had told him, he shook his head. "He lied. He was saving
his skin. I was not such a fool, mad as I was, as to leave him
like that. He had seen us together. He had seen me alone. To-
morrow there would be discovery. I offered him a thousand pounds
to say nothing. He haggled. Oh! the ghastly business! Eventually I
suggested that he should come up to London with me by the first
train in the morning and discuss the money. I was dreading lest
someone should come along the avenue and see me. He agreed. I
think I drank a bottle of whisky that night. It kept me alive. We
met in my chambers in London. I had sent my man up the day before
to do some odds and ends for me. I made a clear breast of it to
Gedge. He believed the worst. I don't blame him. I bought his
silence for a thousand a year. I made arrangements for payment
through my bankers. I went to Norway. But I went alone. I didn't
fish. I put off the two men I was to join. I spent over a month
all by myself. I don't think I could tell you a thing about the
place. I walked and walked all day until I was exhausted, and got
sleep that way. I'm sure I was going mad. I should have gone mad
if it hadn't been for the war. I suppose I'm the only Englishman
living or dead who whooped and danced with exultation when he
heard of it. I think my brain must have been a bit touched, for I
laughed and cried and jumped about in a pine-wood with a week old
newspaper in my hands. I came home. You know the rest."

Yes, I knew the rest. The woman he had left to drown had been ever
before his eyes; the avenging Furies in pursuit. This was the
torture in his soul that had led him to many a mad challenge of
Death, who always scorned his defiance. Yes, I knew all that he
could tell me.

But we went on talking. There were a few points I wanted cleared
up. Why should he have kept up a correspondence with Gedge?

"I only wrote one foolish angry letter," he replied.

And I told him how Sir Anthony had thrown it unread into the fire.
Gedge's nocturnal waylaying of him in my front garden was another
unsuccessful attempt to tighten the screw. Like Randall and
myself, he had no fear of Gedge.

Of Sir Anthony he could not speak. He seemed to be crushed by the
heroic achievement. It was the only phase of our interview during
which, by voice and manner and attitude, he appeared to me like a
beaten man. His own bravery at the reception had gone for naught.
He was overwhelmed by the hideous insolence of it.

"I shall never get that man's voice out of my ears as long as I
live," he said hoarsely.

After a while he added: "I wonder whether there is any rest or
purification for me this side of the grave."

I said tentatively, for we had never discussed matters of
religion: "If you believe in Christ, you must believe in the
promise regarding the sins that be as scarlet."

But he turned it aside. "In the olden days, men like me turned
monk and found salvation in fasting and penance. The times in
which we live have changed and we with them, my friend. Nos
mulamur in illis, as the tag goes."

We went on talking--or rather he talked and I listened. Now and
again he would help himself to a drink or a cigarette, and I
marvelled at the clear assurance with which he performed the
various little operations. I, lying in bed, lost all sense of
pain, almost of personality. My little ailments, my little selfish
love of Betty, my little humdrum life itself dwindled
insignificant before the tragic intensity of this strange, curse-
ridden being.

And all the tune we had not spoken of Betty--except the Betty of
long ago. It was I, finally, who gave him the lead.

"And Betty?" said I.

He held out his hand in a gesture that was almost piteous.

"I could tear her from my life. I had no alternative. In the
tearing I hurt her cruelly. To know it was not the least of the
burning hell I lit for myself. But I couldn't tear her from my
heart. When a brute beast like me does love a woman purely and
ideally, it's a desperate business. It means God's Heaven to him,
while it means only an earthly paradise to the ordinary man. It
clutches hold of the one bit of immortal soul he has left, and
nothing in this world can make it let go. That's why I say it's a
desperate business."

"Yes, I can understand," said I.

"I schooled myself to the loss of her. It was part of my
punishment. But now she has come back into my life. Fate has
willed it so. Does it mean that I am forgiven?"

"By whom?" I asked. "By God?"

"By whom else?"

"How dare man," said I, "speak for the Almighty?"

"How is man to know?"

"That's a hard question," said I. "I can only think of answering
it by saying that a man knows of God's forgiveness by the measure
of the Peace of God in his soul."

"There's none of it in mine, my dear chap, and never will be,"
said Boyce.

I strove to help him. For what other purpose had he come to me?

"You think then that the sending of Betty is a sign and a promise?
Yes. Perhaps it is. What then?"

"I must accept it as such," said he. "If there is a God, He would
not give me back the woman I love, only to take her away again.
What shall I do?"

"In what way?" I asked.

"She offered to marry me. I am to give her my answer to-morrow. If
I were the callous, murdering brute that everyone would have the
right to believe I am, I shouldn't have hesitated. If I hadn't
been a tortured, damned soul," he cried, bringing his great fist
down on the bed, "I shouldn't have come here to ask you what my
answer can be. My whole being is infected with horror." He rose
and stood over the bed and, with clenched hands, gesticulated to
the wall in front of him. "I'm incapable of judging. I only know
that I crave her with everything in me. I've got it in my brain
that she's my soul's salvation. Is my brain right? I don't know. I
come to you--a clean, sweet man who knows everything--I don't
think there's a crime on my conscience or a foulness in my nature
which I haven't confessed to you. You can judge straight as I
can't. What answer shall I give to-morrow?"

Did ever man, in a case of conscience, have a greater
responsibility? God forgive me if I solved it wrongly. At any
rate, He knows that I was uninfluenced by mean personal
considerations. All my life I have tried to have an honourable
gentleman and a Christian man. According to my lights I saw only
one clear course.

"Sit down, old man," said I. "You're a bit too big for me like
that." He felt for his chair, sat down and leaned back. "You've
done almost everything," I continued, "that a man can do in
expiation of offences. But there is one thing more that you must
do in order to find peace. You couldn't find peace if you married
Betty and left her in ignorance. You must tell Betty everything--
everything that you have told me. Otherwise you would still be
hag-ridden. If she learned the horror of the thing afterwards,
what would be your position? Acquit your conscience now before God
and a splendid woman, and I stake my faith in each that neither
will fail you."

After a few minutes, during which the man's face was like a mask,
he said:

"That's what I wanted to know. That's what I wanted to be sure of.
Do you mind ringing your bell for Marigold to take me away? I've
kept you up abominably." He rose and held out his hand and I had
to direct him how it could reach mine. When it did, he gripped it
firmly.

"It's impossible," said he, "for you to realise what you've done
for me to-night. You've made my way absolutely clear to me--for
the first time for two years. You're the truest comrade I've ever
had, Meredyth. God bless you."

Marigold appeared, answering my summons, and led Boyce away.
Presently he returned.

"Do you know what time it is, sir?" he asked serenely.

"No," said I.

"It's half-past one."

He busied himself with my arrangements for the night, and
administered what I learned afterwards was a double dose of a
sleeping draught which Cliffe had prescribed for special
occasions. I just remember surprise at feeling so drowsy after the
intense excitement of the evening, and then I fell asleep.

When I awoke in the morning I gathered my wits together and
recalled what had taken place. Marigold entered on tiptoe and
found me already aroused.

"I'm sorry to tell you, sir," said he, "that an accident happened
to Colonel Boyce after he left last night."

"An accident?"

"I suppose so, sir," said Marigold. "That's what his chauffeur
says. He got out of the car in order to sit by the side of the
canal--by the lock gates. He fell in, sir. He's drowned."





CHAPTER XXIV


It is Christmas morning, 1916, the third Christmas of the war. The
tragedy of Boyce's death happened six months ago. Since then I
have been very ill. The shock, too great for my silly heart,
nearly killed me. By all the rules of the game I ought to have
died. But I suppose, like a brother officer long since defunct,
also a Major, one Joe Bagstock, I am devilish tough. Cliffe told
me this morning that, apart from a direct hit by a 42-centimetre
shell, he saw no reason, after what I had gone through, why I
should not live for another hundred years. "I wash my hands of
you," said he. Which indeed is pleasant hearing.

I don't mind dying a bit, if it is my Maker's pleasure; if it
would serve any useful purpose; if it would help my country a
myriadth part of a millimetre on towards victory. But if it would
not matter to the world any more than the demise of a daddy-long-
legs, I prefer to live. In fact, I want to live. I have never
wanted to live more in all my life. I want to see this fight out.
I want to see the Light that is coming after the Darkness. For, by
God! it will come.

And I want to live, too, for personal and private reasons. If I
could regard myself merely as a helpless incumbrance, a useless
jellyfish, absorbing for my maintenance human effort that should
be beneficially exerted elsewhere, I think I should be the first
to bid them take me out and bury me. But it is my wonderful
privilege to look around and see great and beautiful human souls
coming to me for guidance and consolation. Why this should be I do
not rightly know. Perhaps my very infirmity has taught me many
lessons. ...

You see, in the years past, my life was not without its
lonelinesses. It was so natural for the lusty and joyous to
disregard, through mere thoughtlessness, the little weather-beaten
cripple in his wheelchair. But when one of these sacrificed an
hour's glad life in order to sit by the dull chair in a corner,
the cripple did not forget it. He learned in its terrible
intensity the meaning of human kindness. And, in his course
through the years, or as the years coursed by him, he realised
that a pair of gollywog legs was not the worst disability which a
human being might suffer. There were gollywog hearts, brains,
nerves, temperaments, destinies.

Perhaps, in this way, he came to the knowledge that in every human
being lies the spark of immortal beauty, to be fanned into flame
by one little rightly directed breath. At any rate, he learned to
love his kind.

It is Christmas day. I am as happy as a man has a right to be in
these fierce times in England. Love is all around me. I must tell
you little by little. Various things have happened during the last
six months.

At the inquest on the body of Leonard Boyce, the jury gave a
verdict of death by misadventure. The story of the chauffeur, an
old soldier servant devoted to Boyce, received implicit belief. He
had faithfully carried out his master's orders: to conduct him
from the road, across the field, and seat him on the boom of the
lock gates, where he wanted to remain alone in order to enjoy the
quiet of the night and listen to the lap of the water; to return
and fetch him in a quarter of an hour. This he did, dreaming of no
danger. When he came back he realised what had happened. His
master had got up and fallen into the canal. What had really
happened only a few of us knew.

Well, I have told you the man's story. I am not his judge. Whether
his act was the supreme amende, the supreme act of courage or the
supreme act of cowardice, it is not for me to say. I heard nothing
of the matter for many weeks, for they took me off to a nursing
home and kept me in the deathly stillness of a sepulchre. When I
resumed my life in Wellingsford I found smiling faces to welcome
me. My first public action was to give away Phyllis Gedge in
marriage to Randall Holmes--Randall Holmes in the decent kit of
an officer and a gentleman. He made this proposition to me on the
first evening of my return. "The bride's father," said I, somewhat
ironically, "is surely the proper person."

"The bride's father," said he, "is miles away, and, like a wise
and hoary villain, is likely to remain there."

This was news. "Gedge has left Wellingsford?" I cried. "How did
that come about?"

He stuck his hands on his hips and looked down on me pityingly.

"I'm afraid, sir," said he, "you'll never do adequate justice to
my intelligence and my capacity for affairs."

Then he laughed and I guessed what had occurred. My young friend
must have paid a stiff price; but Phyllis and peace were worth it;
and I have said that Randall is a young man of fortune.

"My dear boy," said I, "if you have exorcised this devil of a
father-in-law of yours out of Wellingsford, I'll do any mortal
thing you ask."

I was almost ecstatic. For think what it meant to those whom I
held dear. The man's evil menace was removed from the midst of us.
The man's evil voice was silenced. The tragic secrets of the canal
would be kept. I looked up at my young friend. There was a grim
humour around the corners of his mouth and in his eyes the quiet
masterfulness of those who have looked scornfully at death. I
realised that he had reached a splendid manhood. I realised that
Gedge had realised it too; woe be to him if he played Randall
false. I stuck out my hand.

"Any mortal thing," I repeated.

He regarded me steadily. "Anything? Do you really mean it?"

"You dashed young idiot," I cried, "do you think I'm in the habit
of talking through my hat?"

"Well," said he, "will you look after Phyllis when I'm gone?"

"Gone? Gone where? Eternity?"

"No, no! I've only a fortnight's leave. Then I'm off. Wherever
they send me. Secret Service. You know. It's no use planking
Phyllis in a dug-out of her own"--shades of Oxford and the
Albemarle Review!--"she'd die of loneliness. And she'd die of
culture in the mater's highbrow establishment. Whereas, if you
would take her in--give her a shake-down here--she wouldn't give
much trouble--"

He stammered as even the most audacious young warrior must do when
making so astounding a proposal. But I bade him not be an ass, but
send her along when he had to finish with her; with the result
that for some months my pretty little Phyllis has been an inmate
of my house. Marigold keeps a sort of non-commissioned parent's
eye on her. To him she seems to be still the child whom he fed
solicitously but unemotionally with Mrs. Marigold's cakes at tea
parties years ago. She gives me a daughter's dainty affection.
Thank God for it!

There have been other little changes in Wellingsford. Mrs. Boyce
left the town soon after Leonard's death, and lives with her
sister in London. I had a letter from her this morning--a brave
woman's letter. She has no suspicion of the truth. God still
tempereth the wind. ... Out of the innocent generosity of her
heart she sent me also, as a keepsake, "a little heavy cane, of
which Leonard was extraordinarily fond." She will never know that
I put it into the fire, and with what strange and solemn thoughts
I watched it burn.

It is Christmas Day. Dr. Cliffe, although he has washed his hands
of me, tyrannically keeps me indoors of winter nights, so that I
cannot, as usual, dine at Wellings Park. To counter the fellow's
machinations, however, I have prepared a modest feast to which I
have bidden Sir Anthony and Lady Fenimore and my dearest Betty.

As to Betty--

Phyllis comes in radiant, her pretty face pink above an absurd
panoply of furs. She has had a long letter from Randall from the
Lord knows where. He will be home on leave in the middle of
January. In her excitement she drops prayer-books and hymn-books
all over me. Then, picking them up, reminds me it is time to go to
church. I am an old-fashioned fogey and I go to church on
Christmas Day. I hope our admirable and conscientious Vicar won't
feel it his duty to tell us to love Germans. I simply can't do it.

New Year's Day, 1917.

I must finish off this jumble of a chronicle.

Before us lies the most eventful year in all the old world's
history. Thank God my beloved England is strong, and Great Britain
and our great Empire and immortal France. There is exhilaration in
the air; a consciousness of high ideals; an unwavering resolution
to attain them; a thrilling faith in their ultimate attainment. No
one has died or lost sight or limbs in vain. I look around my own
little circle. Oswald Fenimore, Willie Connor, Reggie Dacre,
Leonard Boyce--how many more could I not add to the list? All
those little burial grounds in France--which France, with her
exquisite sense of beauty, has assigned as British soil for all
time--all those burial grounds, each bearing its modest leaden
inscription--some, indeed, heart-rendingly inscribed "Sacred to
the memory of six unknown British soldiers killed in action"--are
monuments not to be bedewed with tears of lamentation. From the
young lives that have gone there springs imperishable love and
strength and wisdom--and the vast determination to use that love
and strength and wisdom for the great good of mankind. If there is
a God of Battles, guiding, in His inscrutable omniscience, the
hosts that fight for the eternal verities--for all that man in his
straining towards the Godhead has striven for since the world
began--the men who have died will come into their glory, and those
who have mourned will share exultant in the victory. From before
the beginning of Time Mithra has ever been triumphant and his foot
on the throat of Ahriman.

It was in February, 1915, that I began to expand my diary into
this narrative,--nearly two years ago. We have passed through the
darkness. The Dawn is breaking. Sursum corda.

I was going to tell you about Betty when Phyllis, with her furs
and happiness and hymn-books, interrupted me. I should like to
tell you now. But who am I to speak of the mysteries in the soul
of a great woman? But I must try. And I can tell you more now than
I could on Christmas Day.

Last night she insisted on seeing the New Year in with me. If I
had told Marigold that I proposed to sit up after midnight, he
would have come in at ten o'clock, picked me up with finger and
thumb as any Brobdingnagian might have picked up Gulliver, and put
me straightway to bed. But Betty made the announcement in her
airily imperious way, and Marigold, craven before Betty and Mrs.
Marigold, said "Very good, madam," as if Dr. Cliffe and his orders
had never existed. At half past ten she packed off the happy and,
I must confess, the somewhat sleepy Phyllis, and sat down, in her
old attitude by the side of my chair, in front of the fire, and
opened her dear heart to me.

I had guessed what her proud soul had suffered during the last six
months. One who loved her as I did could see it in her face, in
her eyes, in the little hardening of her voice, in odd little
betrayals of feverishness in her manner. But the outside world saw
nothing. The steel in her nature carried her through. She left no
duty unaccomplished. She gave her confidence to no human being. I,
to whom she might have come, was carried off to the sepulchre
above mentioned. Letters were forbidden. But every day, for all
her bleak despair, Betty sent me a box of fresh flowers. They
would not tell me it was Betty who sent them; but I knew. My
wonderful Betty.

When they took off my cerecloths and sent me back to Wellingsford,
Betty was the first to smile her dear welcome. We resumed our old
relations. But Betty, treating me as an invalid, forbore to speak
of Leonard Boyce. Any approach on my part came up against that
iron wall of reserve of which I spoke to you long ago.

But last night she told me all. What she said I cannot repeat. But
she had divined the essential secret of the double tragedy of the
canal. It had become obvious to her that he had made the final
reparation for a wrong far deeper than she had imagined. She was
very clear-eyed and clear-souled. During her long companionship
with pain and sorrow and death, she had learned many things. She
had been purged by the fire of the war of all resentments,
jealousies, harsh judgments, and came forth pure gold. ... Leonard
had been the great love of her life. If you cannot see now why she
married Willie Connor, gave him all that her generous heart could
give, and after his death was irresistibly drawn back to Boyce, I
have written these pages in vain.

A few minutes before midnight Marigold entered with a tray bearing
a cake or two, a pint of champagne and a couple of glasses. While
he was preparing to uncork the bottle Betty slipped from the room
and returned with another glass.

"For Sergeant Marigold," she said.

She opened the French window behind the drawn curtains and
listened. It was a still clear night. Presently the clock of the
Parish Church struck twelve. She came down to the little table by
my side and filled the glasses, and the three of us drank the New
Year in. Then Betty kissed me and we both shook hands with
Marigold, who stood very stiff and determined and cleared his
throat and swallowed something as though he were expected to make
a speech. But Betty anticipated him. She put both her hands on his
gaunt shoulders and looked up into his ugly face.

"You've just wished me a Happy New Year, Sergeant."

"I have," said he, "and I mean it."

"Then will you let me have great happiness in staying here and
helping you to look after the Major?"

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