"My dear, you must try and face it. And"--her voice shook a little--"you must try and forgive me for telling you. But I couldn"t let you marry Garth Trent in ignorance, could I?"
"Then it is true? Garth was court-martialled and--and cashiered?" Sara sank back against her pillows. Still, deep within her, there flickered a faint spark of hope. Against all reason, against all common sense the faith that was within her fought against accepting the bitter knowledge that Garth was guilty of what was in her eyes the one unpardonable sin.
Unpardonable! The word started a new and overwhelming train of thought.
She remembered that she had told Garth she did not care what sin he had been guilty of, had forced him to believe that nothing could make any difference to her love for him, to her willingness to become his wife, and share his burden. Yet now, now that the hidden thing in his life had been revealed to her, she found herself shrinking from it in utter loathing! Her promises of faith and loyalty were already crumbling under the strain of her knowledge of the truth.
She flinched from the recognition of the fact, seeking miserably to palliate and excuse it. When she had given Garth that impetuous a.s.surance of her confidence, she had not, in her crudest imaginings, dreamed of anything so hideous and ign.o.ble as the actual truth had proved to be. Vaguely, she had deemed him outcast for some big, reckless sin that by the splendour of its recklessness almost earned its own forgiveness.
And instead--_this_! This drab-hued, pitiful weakness for which she could find no pardon in her heart.
Through the turmoil of her thoughts she became conscious that Elisabeth was stooping over her, answering her wild incredulous questioning.
"Yes, it is true," she was saying steadily. "He was court-martialled and cashiered. But, if you still doubt it, ask him yourself, Sara."
Sara"s hands clenched themselves. Her eyes were feverishly brilliant in her white, shrunken face.
"Yes, I"ll ask him myself." She panted a little. "You must be wrong--there must be some horrible mistake somewhere. I"ve been mad--mad to believe it for a single moment." She slipped from the bed to her feet, and stood confronting Elisabeth with a kind of desperate defiance.
"Do you hear what I say?" she said loudly. "I don"t believe it. I will never believe it till Garth himself tells me that it is true."
"Oh, my dear"--Elisabeth shrank away a little, but her eyes were kind and infinitely pitying. Sara felt frightened of the pitying kindness in those eyes--its rejection of Garth"s innocence was so much stronger than any a.s.severation of mere words. Vaguely she heard Elisabeth"s patient voice: "I think you are right. Ask him yourself--but, Sara, he will not be able to deny it."
CHAPTER XXVIII
RED RUIN
"You sent for me, and I am here."
The brusque, curt speech sounded a knell to the faint hope which Sara had been tending whilst she waited for Garth"s coming. His voice, the dogged expression of his face, the chill, brief manner, each held its grievous message for the woman who had learned to recognize the signs of mental stress in the man she loved.
"Yes, I sent for you," she said. "I--I--Garth, I have seen Elisabeth."
"Yes?" Just the one brief monosyllable in response, uttered with a slightly questioning inflection. Nothing more.
Sara twisted her hands together. There was something unapproachable about Garth as he stood there--quiet, inflexible, waiting to hear what she had to say to him.
With an effort she began again.
"She has told me of something--something that happened to you, in the past."
"Yes? Quite a great deal happened--in my past. What was it, in particular, that she told you?"
The mocking quality in his tones stung her into open accusation.
"She told me that you had been court-martialled and cashiered from the Army--for cowardice." The words came slowly, succinctly.
"Ah--h!" He drew his breath sharply, and a grey shadow seemed to spread itself over his face.
Sara waited--waited with an intensity of longing that was well-nigh unendurable--for either the indignant denial or the easy, mirthful scorn wherewith an innocent man might be expected to answer such a charge.
But there came neither of these. Only silence--an endless, agonizing silence, while Garth stood utterly motionless, looking at her, his face slowly greying.
It was impossible to interpret the expression of his eyes. There was neither anger, nor horror, nor pleading in their cool indomitable stare, but only a hard, bright impenetrability, shuttering the soul behind it from the aching gaze of the woman who waited.
In that silence, Sara"s flickering hope that the accusation might prove false went out in blinding darkness. She _knew_, now--knew it as certainly as though Garth had answered her--that he was unable to deny it. Still, she would brace herself to hear it--to endure the ultimate anguish of words.
"Is it true?" she questioned him. "Is it true that you were--cashiered for cowardice?"
At last he spoke.
"Yes," he said. "It is true." His voice was altogether pa.s.sionless, but something had come into his face, into his whole att.i.tude, which denied the calm pa.s.sivity of his reply. The soul of the man--a soul in ineffable extremity of suffering--was struggling for expression, striving against the rigid bonds of the motionless body in which his iron will constrained it.
Sara could sense it--a tormented flame shut in a casing of steel--and she was swept by a torrent of uttermost pity and compa.s.sion.
"Garth! Garth! But there must have been some explanation! . . . You weren"t in your right senses at the moment. Ah! Tell me----" She broke off, her voice failing her, her arms outflung in a pa.s.sion of entreaty.
As she leaned towards him, a tremor seemed to run through his entire body--the tremor of leaping muscles straining against the leash. His hands clenched slowly, the nails biting into the bruised flesh. Then he spoke, and his voice was ringing and a.s.sured--arrogantly so. The tortured soul within him had been beaten back once more into its prison-house.
"I was quite in my right senses--that night on the Frontier--never more so, believe me"--and his lips twisted in a curious, enigmatical smile.
"And as far as explanations--excuses--are concerned, the court-martial made all that were possible. I--I was not shot, you see!"
There was something outrageous in the open derision of the last words.
He flung them at her--as though taunting, gibing at the impulse to compa.s.sion which had swayed her, sending her tremulously towards him with imploring, outstretched hands.
"The quality of mercy was not strained in the least," he continued. "It fell around me like the proverbial gentle rain. I"ve quite a lot to be thankful for, don"t you think?"--brutally.
"I--I don"t know what to think!" she burst out. "That you--_you_ should fall so low--so shamefully low."
"A man will do a good deal to preserve a whole skin, you know," he suggested hardily.
"Why do you speak like that?" she demanded in sharpened tones. "Do you want me to think worse of you than I do already?"
He took a step towards her and stood looking down at her with those bright, hard eyes.
"Yes, I do," he said decidedly. "I want you to think as badly of me as you possibly can. I want you to realize just what sort of a blackguard you had promised to marry, and when you"ve got that really clear in your mind, you"ll be able to forget all about me and marry some cheerful young fool who hasn"t been kicked out of the Army."
"As long as I live I shall never--be able--to forget that I loved--a coward." The words came haltingly from her lips. Then suddenly her shaking hands went up to her face, as though to shut him from her sight, and a dry, choking sob tore its way through her throat.
He made a swift stride towards her, then checked himself and stood motionless once more, in the utter quiescence of deliberately arrested movement. Only his hands, hanging stiffly at his sides, opened and shut convulsively, and his eyes should have been hidden. G.o.d never meant any man"s eyes to wear that look of unspeakable torment.
When at last Sara withdrew her hands and looked at him again, his face was set like a mask, the lips drawn back a little from the teeth in a way that suggested a dumb animal in pain. But she was so hurt herself that she failed to recognize his infinitely greater hurt.
"I think--I think I hate you," she whispered.
His taut muscles seemed to relax.
"I hope you do," he said steadily. "It will be better so."