As he shook hands with the grey-haired woman who stood there with so tragic, so oppressed, a look on her face, there came across him the thought of his own long dead mother, and for a moment he was freed of the terrible happenings of the last few hours.
With an effort he set himself to remember all that he had heard to Bayworth Kaye"s credit. Those who had mentioned him had nearly all of them alluded to his reckless bravery, to his indifference to physical danger, to his Victoria Cross....
Ah! it was easy to utter a eulogy of such a son when speaking to the bereaved mother. It was so strange, so tragic, too, that he should have died in the way he had died, of fever. Lingard remembered hearing of the alternate hours of anxiety, of hope, and lastly of despair, through which the unfortunate parents had pa.s.sed between the time they had first heard of their son"s illness and of his lonely death.
Mrs. Kaye listened to the kind, heartfelt words of condolence, of respectful pity for herself and for her husband, in silence; and the eyes which she kept fixed on Lingard"s face were tearless and very bright. Lingard, moving a little uneasily under their fixed scrutiny, asked himself whether she really heard and understood what he was saying? So far, she had not asked him to sit down.
He remembered a long interview of this kind he had had with another mother. That poor lady had received him surrounded by mementoes of a son who had been a trusty and sure comrade to himself. He recalled the photographs which had been brought out for his inspection, the floods of tears which had punctuated each of his words. But Mrs. Kaye was far more truly stricken than that other mother had been--Mrs. Kaye required no photograph of her son to remind her of his face. She had not yet been granted the relief of tears. Hers was evidently grief of a terrible, a pa.s.sionate intensity.
"It is good of you to say these things to me, General Lingard--and to spare the time to come and see me," she said at last. "But I should not have troubled you--I should not have presumed to trouble you, were it not that I wish to consult you about what is to me a very important matter."
He bowed his head gravely, and sat down in the shabby armchair to which she rather imperiously motioned him.
"I am entirely at your service," he said quietly. No doubt she wanted some message transmitted to the War Office.
"I have no one else to ask or to consult," she said in low, rapid tones.
"It is not a matter about which I desire to trouble my husband, and I am glad to think that he knows, as yet, nothing of what I am going to say to you. Whether he has to learn it or not will depend, General Lingard, on your advice."
Lingard looked at her attentively. He was puzzled and rather disturbed by her words.
"When they told my son he was not likely to live," she said, "he persuaded the doctor to allow him to write a letter to me, his mother."
She stopped a moment, then went on steadily: "In it he made a certain request. It is about that request I wish to consult you, General Lingard. I wish to know whether you consider that I ought to be bound by his wishes. My son desired that his Victoria Cross and one or two other things which he greatly valued, and which we, his parents, naturally value even more than he valued them, should be handed over, given by us to--to a lady."
Lingard felt a sudden feeling of recoil from the woman who sat opposite to him, watching for his answer. Then it was jealousy, pathetic but rather ign.o.ble jealousy, that was making poor Mrs. Kaye look as she looked now--jealousy rather than grief....
There came the sound of a motor-car in the road which was above the level of the rectory garden.
It stopped, and Lingard saw through the window Wantele jump out and cross over to where Jane Oglander was walking up and down.
They spoke together for some moments, and Lingard felt a great lightening of his heart. Wantele must be telling Jane the awful thing which had happened, and he, Lingard, would be spared the dreadful task.
Jane came up close to the car. Lingard could not see the expression on her face. At last, or so it seemed to him, they both got in under the hood.
So Jane, breaking her promise to wait for him, had gone on to the house?
Making a determined effort over himself, Lingard forced himself to return to the matter--the painful, the rather absurd matter--in hand.
"I suppose you know all the circ.u.mstances," he began awkwardly.
"The circ.u.mstances, General Lingard, are perfectly simple." The fingers of Mrs. Kaye"s thin right hand plucked nervously at the b.u.t.tons which fastened her black woollen bodice. "The lady in question is a married woman. She got hold of my boy, and she bewitched him into forgetting the meaning of what I thought he valued more than life itself--his honour."
She rose up and stared down at Lingard, and there was a terrible look on her face.
"Having amused herself for the best part of a year--having got from him all she wanted--she threw my son aside like a squeezed orange. His heart was broken, General Lingard. I cannot doubt he allowed himself to die.
And it is to this woman that he desires I should give all that he has left me to remember him by----"
Lingard had also risen to his feet.
"You are bringing a very serious accusation," he said coldly, "against a lady for whom, as you yourself admit, Mrs. Kaye, your son entertained a great regard. Young men--forgive me for reminding you of what you must know as well as I--sometimes form strange, secret attachments which are, believe me, often as entirely unprovoked as--as--they are unrequited. I have known more than one such instance."
She drew from her breast a piece of paper.
"I ask you, nay, after what you have just said I implore you, to read what is written here----"
She almost thrust it into his reluctant hand.
"I don"t wish to trouble you with my private concerns, but read this--read these lines," her shaking finger drew his troubled eyes to the words: "Do not be hurt, mother. You"ve never understood. In the sight of G.o.d Athena is my wife. She was nothing--she was never anything, to that wretched, cruel old man whose name she bears--and to whom she is so good when he allows her to be."
Lingard read the words over twice very deliberately. Then he folded the letter, and handed it back to its owner.
"This letter," he said firmly, "should be destroyed. I am sorry you showed it me, Mrs. Kaye. It was meant for no eyes but yours."
"Ah!" she cried, and tears at last welled up into her eyes. "You blame my poor boy! But he told me nothing I did not already know----"
She went to the fire and, stooping down, held the piece of paper over the tongues of shooting flame till he thought her hand must surely be scorched.
She turned on him. "There! It"s gone!" she exclaimed. "No one but you, General Lingard, and I, his mother, will ever know that my son wrote that letter. Perhaps I was wrong to have shown it to you. But what you said--but what you said"--she gave a hard, short sob--"hurt me, made me angry. I did not know how else to make you understand. And now, if you say I ought to do what my son asks, I will abide by your decision."
"In your place," he said quietly, "I should certainly carry out your son"s wishes."
But as the mother looked into Lingard"s fiercely set face, she told herself, with sombre triumph, that her boy was avenged.
At the door he turned and faced her.
"I cannot help wondering," he said in measured tones, "whether you have heard what has happened at Rede Place? Mrs. Maule took an overdose of chloral last night. She was found dead this morning."
Mrs. Kaye was for a moment utterly astounded by the news. Then, quickly gathering herself together, she said in a low dry tone, "I will ask you to believe, General Lingard, that I was ignorant of this--this judgment when I spoke to you just now."
Lingard made no answer; he looked all round him like a man who seeks some way of escape.
Suddenly there came into his view the figure of Jane Oglander, moving patiently up and down on the road beyond the gate.
So she had waited for him....
As Mrs. Kaye went down the pa.s.sage leading to her husband"s study, she murmured once or twice, "Vengeance is mine!" It was a comfortable thought that she was alone in the house. She did not consider her husband anyone. "Vengeance is mine!" she repeated the words in a louder tone. And then she went into the rector"s study and very quietly told him what she had just heard.
Mr. Kaye was truly shocked and grieved. He had always liked Athena. She had always been quite civil to him, and so kind, so remarkably kind, to his dear dead son.
He got up and began looking for his hat. He hoped his wife would not interfere, and prevent his doing what he thought right. It was surely his place, as the clergyman of the parish, to go up to Rede Place and offer his sincere condolences to the bereaved husband.