But Thresk only shook his head. "I am very sorry. I see to-night the stricken woman of the tent in Chitipur. I am very sorry," and Stella caught at the commiseration in his voice. She dropped the cloak from her shoulders; she was dressed as she had been at the dinner some hours before, but all her radiance had gone, her cheeks trembled, her eyes pleaded desperately.
"Sorry! I knew you would be. You are not hard. You couldn"t be. You must come close day by day in your life to so much that is pitiful. One can talk to you and you"ll understand. This is my first chance, the first real chance I have ever had, Henry, the very first."
Thresk looked backwards over the years of Stella Ballantyne"s unhappy life. It came upon him with a shock that what she said was the bare truth; and remorse followed hard upon the heels of the shock. This was her first real chance and he himself was to blame that it had come no earlier. The first chance of a life worth the living--it had been in his hands to give her and he had refused to give it years ago on Bignor Hill.
"It"s quite true," he admitted. "But I don"t ask you to give it up, Stella." She looked at him eagerly. "No! You would have understood that if you had read my letter instead of tearing it up. I only ask you to tell your lover the truth."
"He knows it," she said sullenly.
"No!"
"He does! He does!" she protested, her voice rising to a low cry.
"Hush! You"ll be heard," said Thresk, and she listened for a moment anxiously. But there was no sound of any one stirring in the house.
"We are safe here," she said. "No one sleeps above us. Henry, he knows the truth."
"Would you be here now if he did?"
"I came because this afternoon you seemed to be threatening me. I didn"t understand. I couldn"t sleep. I saw the light in this room. I came to ask you what you meant--that"s all."
"I"ll tell you what I meant," said Thresk, and Stella with her eyes fixed upon him sank down upon a chair. "I left my pipe behind me in the tent on the night I dined with you. Your lover, Stella, doesn"t know that. I came back to fetch it. He doesn"t know that. You were standing by the table--" and Stella Ballantyne broke in upon him to silence the words upon his lips.
"There was no reason why he should know," she exclaimed. "It had nothing to do with what happened. We know what happened. There was a thief"--and Thresk turned to her then with such a look of sheer amazement upon his face that she faltered and her voice died to a murmur of words--"a lean brown arm--a hand delicate as a woman"s."
"There was no thief," he said quietly. "There was a man delirious with drink who imagined one. There was you with the bruises on your throat and the unutterable misery in your eyes and a little rifle in your hands.
There was no one else."
She ceased to argue; she sat looking straight in front of her with a stubborn face and a resolution to cling at all costs to her chance of happiness.
"Come, Stella," Thresk pleaded. "I don"t say tell every one. I do say tell him. For unless you do I must."
Stella stared at him.
"You?" she said. "You would tell him that you came back into the tent and saw me?"
"Oh, much more--that I lied at the trial, that the story which secured your acquittal was false, that I made it up to save you. That I told it again this afternoon to give you a chance of slipping out from an impossible position."
She looked at Thresk for a moment in terror. Then her expression changed.
A wave of relief swept over her; she laughed in Thresk"s face.
"You are trying to frighten me," she said. "Only I know you. Do you realise what it would mean to you if it were ever really known that you had lied at the trial?"
"Yes."
"Your ruin. Your absolute ruin."
"Worse than that."
"Prison!"
"Perhaps. Yes."
Stella laughed again.
"And you would run the risk of the truth becoming known by telling it to so much as one person. No, no! Another, perhaps--not you! You have had one dream all your life--to rise out of obscurity, to get on in the world, to hold the high positions. Everything and every one has been sacrificed to its fulfilment. Oh, who should know better than I?" and she struck her hands together sharply as she uttered that bitter cry. "You have lain down late and risen early, and you have got on. Well, are you the man to throw away all this work and success now that they touch fulfilment? You are in the chariot. Will you step down and run tied to the wheels? Will you stand up and say, "There was a trial. I perjured myself"? No. Another, perhaps. Not you, Henry."
Thresk had no answer to that indictment. All of it was true except its inference, and it was no news to him. He made no effort to defend himself.
"You are not very generous, Stella," he replied gently. "For if I lied, I saved you by the lie."
Stella was softened by the words. Her voice lost its hardness, she reached out her hand in an apology and laid it on his arm.
"Oh, I know. I sent you a little word of thanks when you gave me my freedom. But it won"t be of much value to me if I lose--what I am fighting for now."
"So you use every weapon?"
"Yes."
"But this one breaks in your hand," he said firmly. "The thing you think it incredible that I should do I shall do none the less."
Stella looked at him in despair. She could no longer doubt that he really meant his words. He was really resolved to make this sacrifice of himself and her. And why? Why should he interfere?
"You save me one day to destroy me the next," she said.
"No," he replied. "I don"t think I shall do that, Stella," and he explained to her what drove him on. "I had no idea why Hazlewood asked me here. Had I suspected it I say frankly that I should have refused to come. But I am here. The trouble"s once more at my door but in a new shape. There"s this man, young Hazlewood. I can"t forget him. You will be marrying him by the help of a lie I told."
"He loves me," she cried.
"Then he can bear the truth," answered Thresk. He pulled up a chair opposite to that in which Stella sat. "I want you to understand me, if you will. I don"t want you to think me harsh or cruel. I told a lie upon my oath in the witness-box. I violated my traditions, I struck at my belief in the value of my own profession, and such beliefs mean a good deal to any man." Stella stirred impatiently. What words were these?
Traditions! The value of a profession!
"I am not laying stress upon them, Stella, but they count," Thresk continued. "And I am telling you that they count because I am going to add that I should tell that lie again to-morrow, were the trial to-morrow and you a prisoner. I should tell it again to save you again. Yes, to save you. But when you go and--let me put it very plainly--use that lie to your advantage, why then I am bound to cry "stop." Don"t you see that?
You are using the lie to marry a man and keep him in ignorance of the truth. You can"t do that, Stella! You would be miserable yourself if you did all your life. You would never feel safe for a moment. You would be haunted by a fear that some day he would learn the truth and not from you. Oh, I am sure of it." He caught her hands and pressed them earnestly. "Tell him, Stella, tell him!"
Stella Ballantyne rose to her feet with a strange look upon her face. Her eyes half closed as though to shut out a vision of past horrors. She turned to Thresk with a white face and her hands tightly clenched.
"You don"t know what happened on that night, after you rode away to catch your train?"
"No."
"I think you ought to know--before you sit in judgment"; and so at last in that quiet library under the Suss.e.x Downs the tragic story of that night was told. For Thresk as he listened and watched, its terrors lived again in the eyes and the hushed voice of Stella Ballantyne, the dark walls seemed to fall back and dissolve. The moonlit plain of far-away Chitipur stretched away in front of him to the dim hill where the old silent palaces crumbled; and midway between them and the green signal-lights of the railway the encampment blazed like the cl.u.s.tered lights of a small town. But Thresk learnt more than the facts. The springs of conduct were disclosed to him; the woman revealed herself, dark places were made light; and he bowed himself beneath a new burden of remorse.
CHAPTER XXVI
TWO STRANGERS