"I tried my best," he said, "to be a friend to her after her marriage, and I hope, I think, that I succeeded. I even did my best to fight that woman"s influence with your father at Gibraltar. There I failed. I was foredoomed to failure! She had the trick of playing what tune she cared to on a man"s heartstrings. After it was all over, and your father and she had left the place, I spent years trying to persuade your mother to get a divorce and marry me. But she was the daughter of a Bishop, a High Churchwoman, and a holy woman. She died with your father"s name upon her lips."
I shuddered! The words were spoken so deliberately, and yet with such vibrant force.
"After that," Ray continued, "came Egypt, then India, and afterwards Khartoum. I came home before the last war, and I met Lady Angela. I am so little of a woman"s man that I suppose the girl whom I thought of at all became like an angel, a creature altogether apart from that s.e.x of whom I know so little. However that may be, she was the second woman to hold any place in my--heart--as she most surely will be the last. Then the war broke out, luck came my way, and I returned with a greater reputation than I deserved. The very night of my return I asked Lady Angela to marry me, and she consented."
He puffed vigorously at his pipe, but he seemed wholly ignorant of the fact that it was out. His face was set in its grimmest lines. He looked steadily at a certain spot in the fire, and went on.
"There are things," he said, "which troubled me little at the time, but which just lately have been on my mind. The first is that I am nearly fifty, and Lady Angela is twenty-one. The second is that I came home with all the tinsel and glamour of a popular hero. Heaven knows I loathed it, but the fact remains. The King"s reception, the V.C., and all that sort of thing, I suppose, accounted for it. Anyhow, I am troubled with this reflection. Lady Angela was very young, and I fear that her imagination was touched. She accepted my offer, and she has been very loyal. Until to-night no word of disagreement has pa.s.sed between us. But there have been times lately when I have fancied that I have noticed a change. A time has come now when I could give her back her freedom without reproach on either side. I want to know whether it is my duty to give it her back."
Then Ray looked straight into my face, and the colour flamed there, for I saw now why he had made me his confidant.
"What do you think, Guy? You are only a boy, but you are of her age, and you have seen a little of her lately. You are only a boy, but then only boys and novelists understand women. Speak up and tell me what is in your mind."
"I will tell you this," I answered hotly. "If I were you, and Lady Angela had promised to be my wife, I would not sit and hatch scruples about marrying her. I would marry her first, and make her happy afterwards, and as for the rest--for the questions which you have asked me, and yet not put into words--I have never heard or seen in Lady Angela the slightest sign that you were not her lover as well as the man whom she was engaged to marry. As for my own folly, since you seem to have noticed it, no one knows better than I that it is the rankest, most absurd presumption. But with me it begins and ends. That is a most absolute and certain fact."
Ray rapped his pipe upon the table.
"Listen," he said. "I found you nameless and practically lost. Yet you have powerful relatives, and your family is equal to the Duke"s. There may be money too some day. Bear these things in mind. Can you repeat what you have said?"
It was a wild dream--a wonderful one. But, before me I saw the stern white face of the man, eager for his share of happiness after all these magnificent years of dauntless service. I forgot my own distrust of him, his coldness, his brutality. I remembered only those other and greater things.
"Even were I in such a position," I said, "it would make no difference.
I am sure that Lady Angela is loyal. She has no idea--and it is not worth while that she should have."
"You would have me marry her, then?" he asked slowly.
"There is only one thing," I said, taking my courage into my hands.
"And that?" he asked sharply.
"That," I answered, "lies between you and your conscience."
He rose to his feet.
"Wait here," he said, "and I will show you my justification."
CHAPTER x.x.xI
MY FATHER"S LETTER
I heard Ray"s heavy footsteps ascending the stairs to his room. In a few moments he returned, bearing in his hand a letter.
"Guy," he said thoughtfully, "I am a man who is slow to place trust in any one. For that reason, and perhaps because ignorance was better for you, I have told you little of the events of that night. Now my first opinion of you has undergone some modifications. You are stronger than I thought, you have shown faith in me too, or I should not be here practically a guest under your roof to-night. Listen! The man whom you found dead in the marshes was not your father!"
I was not surprised. Always I had doubted it.
"Who was he, then?" I asked calmly.
"When your father went mad at Gibraltar," Ray said, "he needed help.
This man, Clery by name, supplied it. When I knew them both he was your father"s valet. Since then he has been his confederate in many schemes.
Your father on many occasions manifested the remnants of a sense of honour. This creature set himself deliberately and successfully to corrupt it. He was a parasite, a nerveless, bloodless thing without a single human attribute. He and that woman were alike responsible for your father"s ruined life."
"Once before," Ray continued, after a moment"s pause, "I had told him that if ever we should meet where his life would cost me nothing, I would kill him as I would set my heel upon an adder--and he only smiled as though I had paid him some delicate compliment. And that night, Guy, a hundred yards from your cottage, he sidled up to me in that lonely road, and bade me direct him to the abode of Mr. Guy Ducaine. A moment after he recognized me."
A grim smile parted Ray"s lips, but I could not repress a shudder.
Invariably at any reference to that awful night the old fear came back.
"He seemed at first paralyzed with fear," Ray continued. "He tried to slip away into the marshes, but I caught him easily, and held him so that he could not escape. He admitted that he had come to find you with a message from your father. He denied at first having a letter, but I searched him until I found it. As you see, it is addressed to you.
Nevertheless I struck matches, opened it, and with some difficulty managed to read it. All the time this creature was doubling about like an eel trying to get away. Read the letter."
I drew it from the envelope. It was dated from the Savoy Hotel.
"My DEAR SON,--I do not deserve that you should read beyond these three words. I have as little right to call you my son as you can have desire to claim me for your father. I am here, however, purely on an errand of justice. I have learned that you have been robbed of the sum set aside to give you a start in life. I am here to endeavor to replace it, for which purpose I desire that you will grant me a business interview within the next few days. I beg your reply by Clery, my faithful companion and servant. I am known here as
"RICHARD DREW FOSTER."
I laid the letter down without remark. Ray had filled his pipe whilst I had been reading, and was sitting now on the arm of his easy chair, facing me.
"I understood the letter and its meaning," he continued. "I knew that the whole neighbourhood was under the observation of the French Secret Service, and the man who signed himself Richard Drew Foster saw in you an excellent tool ready to his hand. It is very certain also that the matter would probably have presented itself to you in a wholly different light. Accordingly, I placed the letter in my own pocket, and I released my hold of Clery.
""You can go back to your master," I said, "and tell him that you have seen me, and that I have his letter. It will be sufficient. And you can tell him that I shall be in London to-morrow night, and if any such person as Mr. Drew Foster is staying at the Savoy Hotel, he will know the inside of a military prison before midnight."
"The man slunk away. I suppose he realized that with me in the way their game was up. But afterwards he must have hesitated, and then made up his mind to attempt what was probably the bravest action of his life.
He followed me, stole up softly behind, and with an old trick which they teach them on the other side of the Seine, he as nearly as possible throttled me. However, I got my finger inside the slipknot, and I held him by the throat. When I could breathe, I lifted him up and threw him into the marshes. There I left him. It seems the fall killed him.
That is the whole story. It was absolutely G.o.d"s justice, but I am quite aware that the laws of the country do not exactly favour such summary treatment. Accordingly I held my peace. I am sorry for it now."
"And Mr. Drew Foster?"
"Had left the Savoy Hotel when I reached there," Ray said drily, "and had omitted to leave an address."
"You might have trusted me," I remarked, thoughtfully.
"If I had known you as well then as I do now," Ray answered, "I would have risked it."
Then as we sat in silence there came a low tapping at the door. Ray looked at me keenly.
"Who visits you at this hour?" he asked.
"We will see," I answered.
I had meant to be careful whom I admitted, but I had scarcely withdrawn the latch when the door was pushed open, and a slim, thickly-cloaked figure glided past me into the room. I knew her by the supple swiftness of her movements. Ray sat still, and smoked with the face of a Sphinx.
I think that at first she did not see him. She swept round upon me and raised her veil.
"Guy," she cried, "forgive me, but I could not help it. I have made a mummy of myself, and I have walked along those awful sands that I might not be seen; but there is a question--"