"I"m not a d.a.m.ned fool," said he.
I nodded understandingly. No one would have accused him of mawkish sentiment. The woman whose portrait he wore night and day next his skin was the woman he loved. He had no other way of proving his sincerity than by exhibiting the token.
"I see," said I. "What do you propose to do?"
"I"ve told you. The V.C. or--" He snapped his fingers.
"But if it"s the V.C. and a Brigade, and perhaps a Division--if it"s everything else imaginable except--" I snapped my fingers in imitation--"What then?"
Again the hateful twitch of the lips, which he quickly dissimulated in a smile.
"I"ll begin to try to be a brave man." He lit another cigarette. "But all that, my dear Meredyth," he continued, "is away from the point. If I live, I"ll ask you to forget this rotten palaver. But I have a feeling that I shan"t come back. Something tells me that my particular form of extermination will be a head knocked into slush. I"m absolutely certain that I shall never see you again. Oh, I"m not morbid," he said, as I raised a protesting hand. "You"re an old soldier and know what these premonitions are. When I came in--before I had finally made up my mind to pan out to you like this--I felt like a boy who has been made captain of the school. But all the same, I know I shan"t see you again.
So I want you to promise me two things--quite honourable and easy."
"Of course, my dear fellow," said I rather tartly, for I did not like the wind-up of his sentence. It was unthinkable that an officer and a gentleman should inveigle a brother-officer into a solemn promise to do anything dishonourable. "Of course. Anything you like."
"One is to look after the old mother--"
"That goes without promising," said I.
"The other is to--what shall I say?--to rehabilitate my memory in the eyes of Betty Connor. She may hear all kinds of things about me--some true, others false--I have my enemies. She has heard things already. I didn"t know it till our last meeting here. There"s no one else on G.o.d"s earth can do what I want but you. Do you think I"m putting you into an impossible position?"
"I don"t think so," said I. "Go on."
"Well--there"s not much more to be said. Try to make her realise that, whatever may be my faults--my crimes, if it comes to that--I"ve done my d.a.m.ndest out there to make reparation. By G.o.d! I have," he cried, in a sudden flash of pa.s.sion. "See that she realises it. And--" he thumped the hidden identification disc, "tell her that she is the only woman that has ever really mattered in the whole of my blasted life."
He threw his half-smoked cigarette into the fire-place and walked over to the sideboard, where stood decanters and syphon.
"May I help myself to a drink?"
"Certainly," said I.
He gulped down half a whisky and soda and turned on me.
"You promise?"
"Of course," said I.
"She may have reasons to think the worst of me. But whatever I am there is some good in me. I"m not altogether a worthless hound. If you promise to make her think the best of me, I"ll go away happy. I don"t care a d.a.m.n whether I die or live. That"s the truth. As long as I"m alive I can take care of myself. I"m not dreaming of asking you to say a word to win her favour. That would be outrageous impudence. You clearly understand. I don"t want you ever to mention my name unless I"m dead. If I feel that I"ve an advocate in you--advocatus diaboli, if you like--I"ll go away happy. You"ve got your brief. You know my life at home. You know my record."
"My dear fellow," said I, "I promise to do everything in my power to carry out your wishes. But as to your record--are you quite certain that I know it?"
You must realise that there was a curious tension in the situation, at any rate as far as it affected myself. Here was a man with whom, for reasons you know, I had studiously cultivated the most formal social relations, claiming my active partic.i.p.ation in the secret motives of his heart. Since his first return from the front a bluff friendliness had been the keynote of our intercourse. Nothing more. Now he came and without warning enmeshed me in this intimate net of love and death. I promised to do his bidding--I could not do otherwise. I was in the position of an executor according to the terms of a last will and testament. Our comradeship in arms--those of our old Army who survive will understand--forbade refusal. Besides, his intensity of purpose won my sympathy and admiration. But I loved him none the more. To my cripple"s detested sensitiveness, as he stood over me, he loomed more than ever the hulking brute. His semi-confessions and innuendoes exacerbated my feelings of distrust and repulsion. And yet, at the same tune, I could not--nor did I try to--repress an immense pity for the man; perhaps less for the man than for the soul in pain. At the back of his words some torment burned at red heat, remorselessly. He sought relief. Perhaps he sought it from me because I was as apart as a woman from his physical splendour, a kind of bodiless creature with just a brain and a human heart, the ghost of an old soldier, far away from the sphere of poor pa.s.sions and little jealousies.
I felt the tentacles of the man"s nature blindly and convulsively groping after something within me that eluded them. That is the best way in which I can describe the psychology of these strange moments.
The morning sun streamed into my little oak-panelled dining-room and caught the silver and fruit on the breakfast table and made my frieze of old Delft glow blue like the responsive western sky. With his back to the vivid window, Leonard Boyce stood cut out black like a silhouette. That he, too, felt the tension, I know; for a wasp crawled over his face, from cheek-bone, across his temples, to his hair, and he did not notice it.
Instinctively I said the words: "Your record. Are you quite certain that I know it?"
With what intensity, with what significance in my eyes, I may have said them, I know not. I repeat that I had a subconsciousness, almost uncanny, that we were souls rather than men, talking to each other. He sat down once more, drawing the chair to the table and resting his elbow on it.
"My record," said he. "What about it?"
Again please understand that I felt I had the man"s soul naked before me. An imponderable hand plucked away my garments of convention.
"Some time ago," said I, "you spoke of my att.i.tude towards you being marked by a certain reserve. That is quite true. It dates back many years. It dates back from the South African War. From an affair at Vilboek"s Farm."
Again his lips twitched; but otherwise he did not move.
"I remember," he answered. "My men saw me run away. I came out of it quite clean."
I said: "I saw the man afterwards in hospital at Cape Town. His name was Somers. He told me quite a different story."
His face grew grey. He glanced at me for a fraction of a second. "What did he tell you?" he asked quietly.
In the fewest possible words I repeated what I have set down already in this book. When I had ended, he said in the same toneless way:
"You have believed that all these years?"
"I have done my best not to believe it. The last twelve months have disproved it."
He shook his head. "They haven"t. Nothing I can do in this world can disprove it. What that man said was true."
"True?"
I drew a deep breath and stared at him hard. His eyes met mine. They were very sad and behind them lay great pain. Although I expressed astonishment, it proceeded rather from some reflex action than from any realised shock to my consciousness. I say the whole thing was uncanny.
I knew, as soon as he sat down by the table, that he would confess to the Vilboek story. And yet, at last, when he did confess and there were no doubts lingering in my mind, I gasped and stared at him.
"I was a b.l.o.o.d.y coward," he said. "That"s frank enough. When they rode away and left me, I tried to shoot myself--and I couldn"t. If the man Somers hadn"t returned, I think I should have waited until they sent to arrest me. But he did come back and the instinct of self-preservation was too strong. I know my story about the men"s desertion and my forcing him to back me up was vile and despicable. But I clung to life and it was my only chance. Afterwards, with the horror of the thing hanging over me, I didn"t care so much about life. In the little fighting that was left for me I deliberately tried to throw it away. I ask you to believe that."
"I do," I said. "You were mentioned in dispatches for gallantry in action."
He pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes. Looking up, he said:
"It is strange that you of all men, my neighbour here, should have heard of this. Not a whisper of its being known has ever reached me.
How many people do you think have any idea of it?"
I told him all that I knew and concluded by showing him Reggie Dacre"s letter, which I had kept in the letter-case in my pocket. He returned it to me without a word. Presently he broke a spell of silence. All this time he had sat fixed in the one att.i.tude--only shifted once, when Marigold entered to clear away the breakfast things and was dismissed by me with a glance and a gesture.
"Do you remember," he said, "a talk we had about fear, in April, the first time I was over? I described what I knew. The paralysis of fear.
Since we are talking as I never thought to talk with a human being, I may as well make my confession. I"m a man of strong animal pa.s.sions.
When I see red, I daresay I"m just a brute beast. But I"m a physical coward. Owing to this paralysis of fear, this ghastly inhibition of muscular or nervous action, I have gone through things even worse than that South-African business. I go about like a man under a curse. Even out there, when I don"t care a d.a.m.n whether I live or die, the blasted thing gets hold of me." He swung himself away from the table and shook his great clenched firsts. "By the grace of G.o.d, no one yet has seemed to notice it. I suppose I have a swift brain and as soon as the thing is over I can cover it up. It"s my awful terror that one day I shall be found out and everything I"ve gained shall be stripped away from me."
"But what about a thing like this?" said I, tapping Colonel Dacre"s letter.
"That"s all right," he answered grimly. "That"s when I know what I"m facing. That"s deliberate pot-hunting. It"s saving face as the Chinese say. It"s doing any d.a.m.ned thing that will put me right with myself."
He got up and swung about the room. I envied him, I would have given a thousand pounds to do the same just for a few moments. But I was stuck in my confounded chair, deprived of physical outlet. Suddenly he came to a halt and stood once more over me.