So, in drawing a bow at a venture, I had hit the mark. You may
remember that I had rapped out the word "blackmail" at Gedge; now
Randall justified the charge. Boyce was worth a thousand a year to
him. The more I speculated on the danger that might arise from
Gedge, the easier I grew in my mind. Your blackmailer is a
notorious saver of his skin. Gedge had no desire to bring Boyce to
justice and thereby incriminate himself. His visit to Sir Anthony
was actuated by sheer malignity. Without doubt, he counted on his
story being believed. But he knew enough of the hated and envied
aristocracy to feel assured that Sir Anthony would not subject his
beloved dead to such ghastly disinterment as a public denunciation
of Boyce would necessitate. He desired to throw an asphyxiating
bomb into the midst of our private circle. He reckoned on the
Mayor taking some action that would stop the reception and thereby
put a public affront on Boyce. Sir Anthony's violent indignation
and perhaps my appearance of cold incredulity upset his
calculations. He went out of the room a defeated man, with the
secret load (as I knew now) of blackmail on his shoulders.
I snapped my fingers at Gedge. Randall seemed to do the same,
undesirable father-in-law IN PROSPECTU as he was. But that was
entirely Randall's affair. The stomach that he had for fighting
with Germans would stand him in good stead against Gedge,
especially as he had formed so contemptuous an estimate of the
latter's valour.
I emerged again into my little world. I saw most of my friends.
Phyllis lay in wait for me at the hospital, radiant and blushing,
ostensibly to congratulate me on recovery from my illness, really
(little baggage!) to hear from my lips a word or two in praise of
Randall. Apparently he had come, in his warrior garb, seen, and
conquered on the spot. I saw Mrs. Holmes, who, gladdened by the
Distinguished Conduct Medallist's return, had wiped from her
memory his abominably unfilial behaviour. I saw Betty and I saw
Boyce.
Now here I come to a point in this chronicle where I am faced by
an appalling difficulty. Hitherto I have striven to tell you no
more about myself and my motives and feelings than was demanded by
my purpose of unfolding to you the lives of others. Primarily I
wanted to explain Leonard Boyce. I could only do it by showing you
how he reacted on myself--myself being an unimportant and
uninteresting person. It was all very well when I could stand
aside and dispassionately analyse such reactions. The same with
regard to my dear Betty. But now if I adopted the same method of
telling you the story of Betty and the story of Boyce--the method
of reaction, so to speak--I should be merely whining into your
ears the dolorous tale of Duncan Meredyth, paralytic and idiot.
The deuce of it is that, for a long time, nothing particular or
definite happened. So how can I describe to you a very important
period in the lives of Betty and Boyce and me?
I had to resume my intimacy with Boyce. The blind and lonely man
craved it and claimed it. It would be an unmeaning pretence of
modesty to under-estimate the value to him of my friendship. He
was a man of intense feelings. Torture had closed his heart to the
troops of friends that so distinguished a soldier might have had.
He granted admittance but to three, his mother, Betty and--for
some unaccountable reason--myself. On us he concentrated all the
strength of his affection. Mind you, it was not a case of a maimed
creature clinging for support to those who cared for him. In his
intercourse with me, he never for a moment suggested that he was
seeking help or solace in his affliction. On the contrary, he
ruled it out of the conditions of social life. He was as brave as
you please. In his laughing scorn of blindness he was the bravest
man I have ever known. He learned the confidence of the blind with
marvellous facility. His path through darkness was a triumphant
march.
Sometimes, when he re-fought old battles and planned new ones,
forecast the strategy of the Great Advance, word-painted scenes
and places, drew character sketches of great leaders and quaint
men, I forgot the tragedy of Althea Fenimore. And when the memory
came swiftly back, I wondered whether, after all, Gedge's story
from first to last had not been a malevolent invention. The man
seemed so happy. Of course you will say it was my duty to give a
hint of Gedge's revelation. It was. To my shame, I shirked it. I
could not find it in my heart suddenly to dash into his happiness.
I awaited an opportunity, a change of mood in him, an allusion to
confidences of which I alone of human beings had been the
recipient.
Betty visited me as usual. We talked war and hospital and local
gossip for a while and then she seemed to take refuge at the
piano. We had one red-letter day, when a sailor cousin of hers,
fresh from the North Sea, came to luncheon and told us wonders of
the Navy which we had barely imagined and did not dare to hope
for. His tidings gave subject for many a talk.
I knew that she was seeing Boyce constantly. The former
acquaintance of the elders of the two houses flamed into sudden
friendship. From a remark artlessly let fall by Mrs. Boyce, I
gathered that the old ladies were deliberately contriving such
meetings. Boyce and Betty referred to each other rarely and
casually, but enough to show me that the old feud was at an end.
And of what save one thing could the end of a feud between lovers
be the beginning? What did she know? Knowing all, how could she be
drawn back under the man's fascination? The question maddened me.
I suffered terribly.
At last, one evening, I could bear it no longer. She was playing
Chopin. The music grated on me. I called out to her:
"Betty!"
She broke off and turned round, with a smile of surprise. Again
she was wearing the old black evening dress, in which I have told
you she looked so beautiful.
"No more music, dear. Come and talk to me."
She crossed the room with her free step and sat near my chair.
"What shall I talk about?" she laughed.
"Leonard Boyce."
The laughter left her face and she gave me a swift glance.
"Majy dear, I'd rather not," she said with a little air of
finality.
"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.
