Part 29

"Yes, God had been very good—"

"I think it is over," Mrs. Boucicault said suddenly. "I can hear some one coming—"

Both women rose instinctively to their feet and turned towards the door. Anne's heart throbbed painfully. As Dr. Martin entered she felt a sudden weakness overcome her so that she could hardly stand. The doctor had discarded his white overalls, but he brought in with him a deeper tinge of that nauseating odour. Through a mist she heard him talking, and even in that moment she was conscious of a bitter resentment. He was speaking to her mother.

"Yes—wonderfully successful, Mrs. Boucicault. To tell you the truth I had no idea the I.M.S. concealed such a talent for the knife. Remarkable hand—almost inspired, one might say. Major Tristram can set up in Harley Street any day. Of course we're not out of the wood yet. We can't hope to see much change in your husband for some weeks. Shock and all that, you know. There was a lot more trouble than we suspected. Old trouble which must have caused a good deal of—eh—mental unrest." He rubbed his chin as though on the point of some further information. "Well, I daresay Tristram will go into details. He wants me to stop in Gaya till we know better where we are, and I shall try and arrange to. Very interesting case—very. Hullo, here's Major Tristram himself."

With a little cry of joy Anne turned to run to her husband, but as she saw the man who entered her purpose faltered. She was not given to analysis, and the change in him, because it was not entirely physical, eluded her. And it frightened her. It was as though all her instinctive fears had taken shape in him. He looked exhausted to the point of breakdown, but that she had seen before, and it was not that which had brought her to a standstill. It was something behind the white stillness of his face the passionless detachment, the Nirvana which, had she but known it, comes to men who have passed through a vast spiritual crisis.

"Tris!" she whispered.

She came to him at last and he put his arm round her.

"It's all right," he said simply. His eyes were on Mrs. Boucicault. "Your husband will live," he said. "He may get well."

She nodded, twisting the rings round her thin fingers.

"How long will it take before he is strong again?"

"A few months perhaps."

"Then I—I have that much time left me."

"Mother!" Anne cried out. She felt Tristram's arm slip from her shoulder. He went to Mrs. Boucicault and took her hand in his.

"He may change very much," he said.

She laughed.

"Perhaps—but it will be too late." She made a little grimace. "Well, I have learned the value of time at any rate. Dr. Martin, come and see me into my carriage. My daughter wants to have a good cry."

Dr. Martin offered his arm with a grave courtesy surprising in a man of his somewhat casual temperament, and the two went down the verandah steps talking in an undertone. Anne watched them in bitter silence. The attitude of these two men towards the wizened, painted woman had thrown a shadow of disgust over her happiness. They had treated her as though she occupied the centre of their stage, accepting her flippant cruelty without reproof, offering her an austere reverence. A scornful comment trembled on Anne's lips, but, turning, she saw that Tristram had dropped down in one of the chairs, his face hidden in his hands, and her heart melted towards him. She knelt down and put her arms about his neck.

"Tris!" she whispered. He looked up. "Tris!" she repeated on a note of faint reproach. For she had seen that his face was wet, and tears in a man had always seemed to her rather repulsive. "What's the matter, dear?" she asked.

He smiled faintly.

"I am an ass, aren't I? I don't often do this sort of thing—some things touch me horribly. Besides, I'm a bit rattled still. Those two hours were devilish—you don't know—"

She kissed him solemnly.

"I know how splendid you are—Dr. Martin told us."

"Did he? Well, honestly, I don't believe any other man could have done what I did today. No one else could have wanted to win so badly as I did."

"For my sake, husband?"

"For yours and mine."

"That's sweet of you," she said gently. Her moment's irritation had passed. She rested on his bigness, his redeeming strength and tenderness. "I am very happy, Tristram."

"Are you?" He looked into her face eagerly. "Really happy?"

"Happier than ever in my life. So much that is wonderful has happened. It seems to have made everything worth while. All the suffering." She leant against him, her eyes half-closed in dreamy recollection. "Sometimes I think it's all been for the best. It's taught us charity, hasn't it—to be gentle in our judgment? I know I have often been hard too. Today I could forgive even the man who caused it all."

His arm tightened about her.

"He'd be glad to hear that, Anne—"

"I could forgive." She drew herself up a little. "But I wouldn't help him to escape his punishment, Tristram."

"You couldn't, dear. No one escapes."

"Yes, that's true, isn't it? Sooner or later they are found out. They say criminals always return to the scenes of their crime. Mother told me Ayeshi had been seen slinking about Heerut at night—"

"Ayeshi?" he interrupted perplexedly.

She gave a quick glance into his face.

"Yes—of course, I'd forgotten, no one's ever told you. You see, you were so fond of Ayeshi, and you were ill, and so we arranged that we wouldn't tell you unless—unless he was caught. Afterwards no one liked to, and you're such an old hermit—you never hear anything. But now it doesn't matter, does it? It was Ayeshi who tried to kill my father."

He pushed her away from him as though she had suddenly ceased to exist for him.

"I don't understand—"

She laughed uncertainly—half-angrily.

"Why, Tris, I've just explained—"

"I understood that no one was suspected—"

"I've explained that, too, dear. I thought you would guess when you heard that he had disappeared like that—"

He turned on her almost violently, but even she realized in that moment that he was scarcely conscious of her. His blazing eyes had a sightless look in them that frightened her to her feet.

"I might have known," he stammered, "but I am too big a fool—an idiotic sentimentalist—" He steadied and looked at her straightly with seeing eyes. "Ayeshi must have disappeared to shield me," he said. "It was I who nearly killed your father."

Her face was at first only stupid-looking as though his words had had no meaning—then every trace of colour ebbed from her lips. She wavered, and he sprang to her side, and carried her to the chair which he had just left. An intense, torturing pity swept him. She was so small, so very fragile. He felt himself as something monstrous riding over all her happiness. She clung to him.

"Tris—Tris—please don't say things to frighten me—"

"I've got to. Sooner or later I had to tell you. I didn't mean to be so sudden. But it's true."

She freed herself. There was no strength in her arms, but he had felt her whole body cower and shrink from him and he stood back from her as though she had struck him.

"I can't—I can't believe—" she whispered.

"You must, Anne." He paused, and then went on quietly. "It was after that time at Bjura. I was riding home as best I could with a temperature God knows where—I don't tell you that as an excuse, but as a sort of explanation—and I found your father torturing Wickie. I know now that probably he was as mad and irresponsible as I was, but at the moment I thought he was simply a devil. I intervened—I believe I appealed to him I tried to stop him. He struck me repeatedly, but as long as he didn't touch Wickie I didn't care. Then he ran Wickie through with the sharp end of a bamboo stick—and I struck him. I am very strong—and I had no self-control. It was as though all the brakes had given way—and I struck too hard. That was how it happened, Anne."

He waited. He could not have said for what, but he knew that it was something great in her. He had seen this moment many times before and seen it both as an end and as a beginning of a new life between them. It was in her hands. But at the last a kind of proud confidence had swept over him. It did not occur to him to appeal to her. Understanding is above forgiveness. Either she understood, and there would be no need to forgive, or he was simply a murderer, and then her forgiveness would be valueless.

But he had believed that now she would understand. She crouched in her chair, looking at him with horror in her eyes.

"I can't—it's too terrible—to have done that—and then to have shirked the responsibility—"

Still he waited. He had to explain—that was only fair to her and to himself. But he began to lose hope. He saw himself with her eyes and the eyes of her world.

"You know that I was delirious for a long time afterwards. When I recovered the whole thing seemed finished. No one was suspected as far as I knew. Well, your father meant to smash me. I saw that much in his face. And, frankly, Anne, I did not choose to be ruined for his sake. My life—my work—was of value to others to whom I owed more than I did to him. If I made no effort to escape the consequences of what I had done I also did not immolate myself to a false idea of justice—" He broke off. It was not what he had meant to say to her. It was cold and ugly. But her eyes told him that everything he could tell her, of the deliberately accepted burden of silence, of the motive of a great filial love which had chosen to crush the inborn, conventional instincts of honour rather than tread the easy, chivalrous road of self-accusation, of all that the intervening time had held of doubt, and weariness—would be to her so much hypocrisy and cowardly subterfuge. The crisis struck no fire of sympathy in her which might have illuminated his curt and clumsy sentences. To her he was simply a criminal, and before her he became one—tongue-tied, self-distrustful.

She spoke at last and instinctively he braced himself.

"Are you taking shelter behind your mother, or whom?" she asked sneeringly. Then, as he did not answer, she got up. The stupor which had restrained her hitherto gave way. She shivered from head to foot, and her face was twisted and livid with the violence of her feeling. "And then you married me!" she cried out—"just to shield yourself—"

"Anne!"

"Well, didn't you?"

He strode at her and took her by the shoulders. For a moment she thought, in her horror of him, that he would have struck her, and she threw back her head defying the blow with all the strength of her contempt. But his eyes daunted her. They were neither angry nor guilty—but bewildered.

"Anne, why in God's name did you marry me if you thought of me like that?"

Her lips quivered.

"I didn't think of you like that."

"No, perhaps you didn't. You couldn't have thought of me at all. You just imagined me—you never knew or wanted to know the man I really am. Now that the image is broken, there's nothing left. I am just—somebody you don't know—a total stranger, capable of anything—"

"Isn't it true?" she persisted stubbornly.

"No," he said. "It is not true." He thought a moment and then added with grave simplicity, "It would never have occurred to me. You were just some one I was very fond of. I wanted to take care of you."

She tried to laugh.

"I suppose, having murdered the father, you thought it was your duty to marry the daughter."

His hands dropped wearily to his sides.

"If I hadn't been instrumental in your father's loss, if I had had the faintest hope of his ever being able to take his place in your life again, I wouldn't have asked you to be my wife. I shouldn't have dared draw you into my life. But you were lonely and unhappy—much as I was—"

"You felt guilty and you pitied me," she interrupted with feverish excitement. "I suppose you think you've sacrificed yourself. You never wanted to marry me. It was always that woman—that woman—"

"For pity's sake—don't, Anne!" he pleaded.

"Why shouldn't I? I've the right—"

"You have not the right to say that," he said sternly. "I have behaved like a fool—I have done you, as things turned, a great wrong; but I have never thought of any other woman as my wife."

"Not as your wife, perhaps," she interrupted wildly.

He turned away from her. He felt physically sick and broken. The room, with its suffocating propriety, its prim order, seemed to him an integral part of the scene's sordidness. He had only one instinct left—the thirst for the free air and the loneliness of the life to which he had belonged. She watched him in breathless silence, clasping and unclasping her thin hands. She was the more resentful because he had driven her to an outburst of which she was ashamed.

"When you found my father was going to get better, what did you expect?" she began again. "I wonder since you had gone so far—that you didn't finish your work."

A faint, bitter amusement touched his white lips.

"Yes, Anne, you would wonder that. But I am a doctor—not so much by profession as by instinct. I have to save—to heal where I can. Even then I might have failed in this instance and not found myself guilty. But he was your father—I wanted you to be happy—I think it—it inspired me to do more than I could otherwise have done."

"What did you expect—between us afterwards?" she persisted.

The smile lingered, but without its bitterness.

"Oh, I don't know, Anne—but something different from this. I knew that you'd be pained, even horrified—that was only natural. But I thought you knew me well enough to see the less ugly side. I had a foolish fancy even—that in such a crisis we might find each other—understand each other better. Well—I've been wrong all the way."

She was silent for a moment, gathering together the storm-scattered principles of her life. She was trying to be just, charitable, towards him. The tears glistened on her cheeks.

"I daresay you did mean to make me happy, Tris. But you see, you couldn't. One can't build up happiness on sin."

"I did not feel myself guilty—not in that way," he said gently.

"But you were guilty." Her voice hardened. "It was a crime to have struck a man down for the sake of a mongrel dog—"

He turned quickly. He felt mysteriously outraged, as though she had struck straight and deep into something vital in him.

"It wasn't only a dog, Anne," he said. "It was the pain—all the needless suffering—" He did not try to finish. He could not have explained, because he knew it was not in her power to understand. For the first time he saw all that separated them—not so much a gulf as a world, making her day his night. They were both silent. In a few minutes the superficial wrappings of their life had been torn off and its nakedness held them appalled.

The door opened softly and the new nurse who had come with Dr. Martin looked in for an instant.

"He is coming round, Major Tristram," she said.

"Very well, nurse. I'll be with you at once."

He went towards the door, but Anne forestalled him. Her face was composed and very set, though the tears still hung on her long lashes.

"I don't want you to—I don't think you ought to—"

He looked at her grimly.

"As you wish. Dr. Martin must be outside somewhere. I'll explain. He can take over the case."

"Explain—what do you mean?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"We've got to begin somewhere. Better now."

She stared at him blankly.

"You don't mean—you can't mean—you're not going to tell people?"

"I must. Besides, isn't it what you wish?"

She turned away and sat down, burying her face in her hands. She was crying softly, helplessly, like a child. He came back to her and stood over her as though his first impulse to comfort, her had been checked by recollection.

"Anne, I am a clumsy beggar—I don't understand—I don't know what you want—"

"You can't tell everyone," she sobbed wildly. "You can't, Tris. It would be too cruel. Think of all the people you'd hurt—who would have to suffer with you—all of us, even—even our child—even father. You mustn't do it, Tris. Father may have changed—he will be so happy—I shall beg him for his own sake as well as for mine. He'll do as I ask—I'm sure he will. Tris—it's awful to know this awful thing oneself—but for others to know too—and all the scandal—"

She was incoherent in her piteous despair, but now he understood her.

"You forget Ayeshi, Anne," he said, "and all I owe him."

"Ayeshi—? But people only suspect—he's in hiding because of some money he took—what does he matter? No one could prove anything—only father—and he can clear Ayeshi best of all. Don't you see that—or don't you care? Do you want me to suffer?"

He winced.

"I'll do whatever you want, Anne," he said heavily. "Everything on earth I can do. But I've got to think. I'll tell Martin I've had marching orders, or some lie. He knows the case, and can do everything as well as I could. I'll clear out to Heerut. I've got to see Ayeshi. In the meantime, you'll have breathing space to think things over too—and to decide. You can let me know." He went to the door and there hesitated and looked back at her with pitying wistfulness. "Anne, I don't repent much what I did to your father—I can't—but you didn't deserve to be hurt. And I've hurt you. I can't forgive myself that—ever."

He waited an instant. She did not move and he went out closing the door softly behind him.

CHAPTER VIII

RETURN

"When I heard folks say the place was haunted I just laughed in their faces," Mrs. Smithers asserted moodily. "I don't hold with ghosts and them sort, and in a general way I don't believe in them. But I believe in this ghost all right. We've tried to scrub it out, but it won't go and it's got the grouch on us for trying. It's just sucking the polish out of the furniture. And it's sucking the life out of me; I know that."

She turned to her companion lying curled up in the big basket chair and challenged contradiction with her own appearance. Sigrid looked back at her gravely.

"Your wig's crooked, Smithy dear. Of late its angle has been persistently drunken."

"What's it matter!" Mrs. Smithers returned. "Who cares? We might as well be drunk for all the notice these stuck-up nobodies take of us. What's the use of being respectable, if there's no one to see? Might as well fade away, comfy, that's my opinion." Whereupon, suiting her action to her words, she snatched the offending erection from her head, sat on it, and proceeded to rumple up the short grey hair till the last vestige of propriety was lost in a ludicrously rakish disorder. "Well, I've been respectable for your sake for two solid years, Sigrid, and it's nigh done for me. Now I'm myself again, and I mean to stick to meself or bust; so there."

Sigrid gave a laugh that ended with a sigh.

"Your nice, wicked, unprincipled self, Smithy! It reminds me of old times."

"H'm, does it? Well, nothing reminds me of old times in this horrible place. Nothing—not even you. You're just the outsides of what you were, Sigrid—a sort of husk. I don't know where you are—but the real you isn't here at all—and a good job too." She paused and then wistfully, rather shyly: "You don't even play nowadays, my dear."

Sigrid got up slowly.

"Smithy, one couldn't play in this room. I could play in a garret or in the streets, but not here. Fancy Beethoven and that marble atrocity! Even Elgar! No, no, I couldn't." She went out past Mrs. Smithers on to the verandah and there lingered for a moment. "Look at the sunshine!" she said dreamily. "That, at least, is always the same for the just and the unjust, the happy and the unhappy. Doesn't that console you?"