The Judgment House by Gilbert Parker (page 5)

music-room. “He’s in the next room there. I mean to kill him–to kill him–now. I wanted you to know why, to know all, you, Stafford, my old friend and hers. And I’m going to do it now. Listen to him there!”

His words came brokenly and scarce above a whisper, but they were ghastly in their determination, in their loathing, their blind fury. He was gone mad, all the animal in him alive, the brain tossing on a sea of disorder.

“Now!” he said, suddenly, and, rising, he pushed back his chair. “Give that to me.”

He reached out his hand for the letter, but his confused senses were suddenly arrested by the look in Ian Stafford’s face, a look so strange, so poignant, so insistent, that he paused. Words could not have checked his blind haste like that look. In the interval which followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both, with exasperating insistence:

“Not like the roses shall our love be, dear–“

Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held Rudyard’s eyes.

“You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this letter,” he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, regaining his speech with blanching effort: “Byng, I think what you think–all you think; but I would not do what you want to do.”

As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon him. Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and that was to be understood–to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate life with another of another sex still untried. With the transition from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a thing twice. This was merely a wilful, miserable degeneracy. Rudyard had been wronged–terribly wronged–by himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came–in truth, he all but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, if no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it was monstrous. It was incredible but yet it was true. Thoughts that overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and whirled through his mind as he read the letter with assumed deliberation when he saw what it was. He read slowly that he might make up his mind how to act, what to say and do in this crisis. To do–what? Jasmine had betrayed him long ago when she had thrown him over for Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had married Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second betrayal? His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness. This business dated far beyond yesterday. The letter furnished that sure evidence.

What to do? Like lightning his mind was made up. What to do? Ah, but one thing to do–only one thing to do–save her at any cost, somehow save her! Whatever she was, whatever she had done, however she had spoiled his life and destroyed forever his faith, yet he too had betrayed this broken man before him, with the look in his eyes of an animal at bay, ready to do the last irretrievable thing. Even as her shameless treatment of himself smote him; lowered him to that dust which is ground from the heels of merciless humanity–even as it sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest depths of his being there came the indestructible thing. It was the thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet prevailing–the indestructible thing.

He knew now in a flash what he had to do. He must save her. He saw that Rudyard was armed, and that the end might come at any moment. There was in the wronged husband’s eyes the wild, reckless, unseeing thing which disregards consequences, which would rush blindly on the throne of God itself to snatch its vengeance. He spoke again: and just in time.

“I think what you think, Byng, but I would not do what you want to do. I would do something else.”

His voice was strangely quiet, but it had a sharp insistence which caused Rudyard to turn back mechanically to the seat he had just left. Stafford saw the instant’s advantage which, if he did not pursue, all would be lost. With a great effort he simulated intense anger and indignation.

“Sit down, Byng,” he said, with a gesture of authority. He leaned over the table, holding the other’s eyes, the letter in one clinched hand. “Kill him–,” he said, and pointed to the other room, from which came the maddening iteration of the jingling song–“you would kill him for his hellish insolence, for this infamous attempt to lead your wife astray, but what good will it do to kill him?”

“Not him alone, but her too,” came the savage, uncontrolled voice from the uncontrolled savagery of the soul.

Suddenly a great fear shot up in Stafford’s heart. His breath came in sharp, breaking gasps. Had he–had he killed Jasmine?

“You have not–not her?”

“No–not yet.” The lips of the avenger suddenly ceased twitching, and they shut with ominous certainty.

An iron look came into Stafford’s face. He had his chance now. One word, one defense only! It would do all, or all would be lost–sunk in a sea of tragedy. Diplomacy had taught him the gift of control of face and gesture, of meaning in tone and word. He made an effort greater than he had ever put forward in life. He affected an enormous and scornful surprise.

“You think–you dare to think that she–that Jasmine–“

“Think, you say! The letter–that letter–“

“This letter–this letter, Byng–are you a fool? This letter, this preposterous thing from the universal philanderer, the effeminate erotic! It is what it is, and it is no more. Jasmine–you know her. Indiscreet–yes; always indiscreet in her way, in her own way, and always daring. A coquette always. She has coquetted all her life; she cannot help it. She doesn’t even know it. She led him on from sheer wilfulness. What did it matter to her that he was of no account! She led him on, to be at her feet like the rest, like bigger and better men–like us all. Was there ever a time when she did not want to master us? She has coquetted since–ah, you do not know as I do, her old friend! She has coquetted since she was a little child. Coquetted, and no more. We have all been her slaves–yes, long before you came–all of us. Look at Mennaval! She–“

With a distracted gesture Byng interrupted. “The world believes the worst. Last night, by accident, I heard at De Lancy Scovel’s house that she and Mennaval–and now this–!”

But into the rage, the desperation in the wild eyes, was now creeping an eager look–not of hope, but such a look as might be in eyes that were striving to see through darkness, looking for a glimmer of day in the black hush of morning before the dawn. It was pitiful to see the strong man tossing on the flood of disordered understanding, a willing castaway, yet stretching out a hand to be saved.

“Oh, last night, Mennaval, you say, and to-day–this!” Stafford held up the letter. “This means nothing against her, except indiscretion, and indiscretion which would have been nothing if the man had not been what he is. He is of the slime. He does not matter, except that he has dared–!”

“He has dared, by God–!”

All Byng’s rage came back, the lacerated pride, the offended manhood, the self-esteem which had been spattered by the mud of slander, by the cynical defense, or the pitying solicitude of his friends–of De Lancy Scovel, Barry Whalen, Sobieski the Polish Jew, Fleming, Wolff, and the rest. The pity of these for him–for Rudyard Byng, because the flower in his garden, his Jasmine-flower, was swept by the blast of calumny! He sprang from his chair with an ugly oath.

But Stafford stepped in front of him. “Sit down, Byng, or damn yourself forever. If she is innocent–and she is–do you think she would ever live with you again, after you had dragged her name into the dust of the criminal courts and through the reek of the ha’penny press? Do you think Jasmine would ever forgive you for suspecting her? If you want to drive her from you forever, then kill him, and go and tell her that you suspect her. I know her–I have known her all her life, long before you came. I care what becomes of her. She has many who care what becomes of her–her father, her brother, many men, and many women who have seen her grow up without a mother. They understand her, they believe in her, because they have known her over all the years. They know her better than you. Perhaps they care for her– perhaps any one of them cares for her far more than you do.”

Now there came a new look into the big, staring eyes. Byng was as one fascinated; light was breaking in on his rage, his besmirched pride, his vengeance; hope was stealing tremblingly into his face.

“She was more to me than all the world–than twenty worlds. She–“

He hesitated, then his voice broke and his body suddenly shook violently, as tears rose in the far, deep wells of feeling and tried to reach the fevered eyes. He leaned his head in his big, awkward hands.

Stafford saw the way of escape for Jasmine slowly open out, and went on quickly. “You have neglected her “–Rudyard’s head came up in angry protest–“not wilfully; but you have neglected her. You have been too easy. You should lead, not follow, where a woman is concerned. All women are indiscreet, all are a little dishonourable on opportunity; but not in the big way, only in the small, contemptible way, according to our code. We men are dishonourable in the big way where they are concerned. You have neglected her, Byng, because you have not said, ‘This way, Jasmine. Come with me. I want you; and you must came, and come now.’ She wanted your society, wanted you all the time; but while you did not have her on the leash she went playing–playing. That is it, and that is all. And now, if you want to keep her, if you want her to live on with you, I warn you not to tell her you know of the insult this letter contains, nor ever say what would make her think you suspected her. If you do, you will bid good-bye to her forever. She has bold blood in her veins, rash blood. Her grandfather–“

“I know–I know.” The tone was credulous, understanding now. Hope stole into the distorted face.

“She would resent your suspicion. She, then, would do the mad thing, not you. She would be as frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine in there, to Al’mah’s lover–“

“Good God, Stafford–wait!”

“I don’t mean Barry Whalen, Fleming, De Lancy Scovel, and the rest. They are not her old friends, and they weren’t yours once–that breed; but the others who are the best, of whom you come, over there in Herefordshire, in Dorset, in Westmorland, where your and her people lived, and mine. You have been too long among the Outlanders, Byng. Come back, and bring Jasmine with you. And as for this letter–“

Byng reached out his hand for it.

“No, it contains an insult to your wife. If you get it into your hands, you will read it again, and then you will do some foolish thing, for you have lost grip of yourself. Here is the only place for such stuff–an outburst of sensuality!”

He threw the letter suddenly into the fire. Rudyard sprang to his feet as though to reclaim it, but stood still bewildered, as he saw Stafford push it farther into the coals.

Silent, they watched shrivel such evidence as brings ruin upon men and women in courts of law.

“Leave the whole thing–leave Fellowes to me,” Stafford said, after a slight pause. “I will deal with him. He shall leave the country to-night. I will see to that. He shall go for three years at least. Do not see him. You will not contain yourself, and for your own chance of happiness with the woman you love, you must do nothing, nothing at all now.”

“He has keys, papers–“

“I will see to that; I will see to everything. Now go, at once. There is enough for you to do. The war, Oom Paul’s war, will be on us to day. Do you hear, Byng–to-day! And you have work to do for this your native country and for South Africa, your adopted country. England and the Transvaal will be at each other’s throat before night. You have work to do. Do it. You are needed. Go, and leave this wretched business in my hands. I will deal with Fellowes–adequately.”

The rage had faded from Byng’s fevered eyes, and now there was a moisture in them, a look of incalculable relief. To believe in Jasmine, that was everything to him. He had not seen her yet, not since he left the white rose on her pillow last night–Adrian Fellowes’ tribute; and after he had read the letter, he had had no wish to see her till he had had his will and done away with Fellowes forever. Then he would see her–for the last time: and she should die, too,–with himself. That had been his purpose. Now all was changed. He would not see her now, not till Fellowes was gone forever. Then he would come again, and say no word which would let her think he knew what Fellowes had written. Yes, Stafford was right. She must not know, and they must start again, begin life again together, a new understanding in his heart, new purposes in their existence. In these few minutes Stafford had taught him much, had showed him where he had been wrong, had revealed to him Jasmine’s nature as he never really understood it.

At the door, as Stafford helped him on with a light overcoat, he took a revolver from his pocket.

“That’s the proof of what I meant to do,” he said; “and this is proof of what I mean to do,” he added, as he handed over the revolver and Stafford’s fingers grasped it with a nervous force which he misinterpreted.

“Ah yes,” he exclaimed, sadly, “you don’t quite trust me yet–not quite, Stafford; and I don’t wonder; but it’s all right…. You’ve been a good, good friend to us both,” he added. “I wish Jasmine might know how good a friend you’ve been. But never mind. We’ll pay the debt sometime, somehow, she and I. When shall I see you again?”

At that moment a clear voice rang out cheerily in the distance. “Rudyard–where are you, Ruddy?” it called.

A light broke over Byng’s haggard face. “Not yet?” he asked Stafford.

“No, not yet,” was the reply, and Byng was pushed through the open door into the street.

“Ruddy–where are you, Ruddy?” sang the voice like a morning song.

Then there was silence, save for the music in the room beyond the little room where the two men had sat a few moments ago.

The music was still poured forth, but the tune was changed. Now it was “Pagliacci”–that wonderful passage where the injured husband pours out his soul in agony.

Stafford closed the doors of the little room where he and Byng had sat, and stood an instant listening to the music. He shuddered as the passionate notes swept over his senses. In this music was the note of the character of the man who played–sensuous emotion, sensual delight. There are men who by nature are as the daughters of the night, primary prostitutes, with no minds, no moral sense; only a sensuous organization which has a gift of shallow beauty, while the life is never deep enough for tears nor high enough for real joy.

In Stafford’s pocket was the revolver which Byng had given him. He took it out, and as he did so, a flush swept over his face, and every nerve of his body tingled.

“That way out?” he thought. “How easy–and how selfish…. If one’s life only concerned oneself…. But it’s only partly one’s own from first to last.” . . . Then his thoughts turned again to the man who was playing “Pagliacci.” “I have a greater right to do it than Byng, and I’d have a greater joy in doing it; but whatever he is, it is not all his fault.” Again he shuddered. “No man makes love like that to a woman unless she lets him, . . . until she lets him.” Then he looked at the fire where the cruel testimony had shrivelled into smoke. “If it had been read to a jury . . . Ah, my God! How many he must have written her like that … How often….”

With an effort he pulled himself together. “What does it matter now! All things have come to an end for me. There is only one way. My letter to her showed it. But this must be settled first. Then to see her for the last time, to make her understand….”

He went to the beaded curtain, raised it, and stepped into the flood of warm sunlight. The voluptuous, agonizing music came in a wave over him. Tragedy, poignant misery, rang through every note, swelled in a stream which drowned the senses. This man-devil could play, Stafford remarked, cynically, to himself.

“A moment–Fellowes,” he said, sharply.

The music frayed into a discord and stopped.

CHAPTER XXI

THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE

There was that in Stafford’s tone which made Fellowes turn with a start. It was to this room that Fellowes had begged Jasmine to come this morning, in the letter which Krool had so carefully placed for his master to find, after having read it himself with minute scrutiny. It was in this room they had met so often in those days when Rudyard was in South Africa, and where music had been the medium of an intimacy which had nothing for its warrant save eternal vanity and curiosity, the evil genius of the race of women. Here it was that Krool’s antipathy to Jasmine and fierce hatred of Fellowes had been nurtured. Krool had haunted the room, desiring the end of it all; but he had been disarmed by a smiling kindness on Jasmine’s part, which shook his purpose again and again.

It had all been a problem which Krool’s furtive mind failed to master. If he went to the Baas with his suspicions, the chance was that he would be flayed with a sjambok and turned into the streets; if he warned Jasmine, the same thing might happen, or worse. But fate had at last played into his hands, on the very day that Oom Paul had challenged destiny, when all things were ready for the ruin of the hated English.

Fate had sent him through the hallway between Jasmine’s and Rudyard’s rooms in the moment when Jasmine had dropped Fellowes’ letter; and he had seen it fall. He knew not what it was, but it might be of importance, for he had seen Fellowes’ handwriting on an envelope among those waiting for Jasmine’s return home. In a far dark corner he had waited till he saw Lablanche enter her mistress’ room hurriedly, without observing the letter. Then he caught it up and stole away to the library, where he read it with malevolent eyes.

He had left this fateful letter where Rudyard would see it when he rose in the morning. All had worked out as he had planned, and now, with his ear against the door which led from the music-room, he strained to hear what passed between Stafford and Fellowes.

“Well, what is it?” asked Fellowes, with an attempt to be casual, though there was that in Stafford’s face which gave him anxiety, he knew not why. He had expected Jasmine, and, instead, here was Stafford, who had been so much with her of late; who, with Mennaval, had occupied so much of her time that she had scarcely spoken to him, and, when she did so, it was with a detachment which excluded him from intimate consideration.

His face wore a mechanical smile, as his pale blue eyes met the dark intensity of Stafford’s. But slowly the peach-bloom of his cheeks faded and his long, tapering fingers played nervously with the leather-trimming of the piano-stool.

“Anything I can do for you, Stafford?” he added, with attempted nonchalance.

“There is nothing you can do for me,” was the meaning reply, “but there is something you can do advantageously for yourself, if you will think it worth while.”

“Most of us are ready to do ourselves good turns. What am I to do?”

“You will wish to avoid it, and yet you will do yourself a good turn in not avoiding it.”

“Is that the way you talk in diplomatic circles–cryptic, they call it, don’t they?”

Stafford’s chin hardened, and a look of repulsion and disdain crossed over his face.

“It is more cryptic, I confess, than the letter which will cause you to do yourself a good turn.”

Now Fellowes’ face turned white. “What letter?” he asked, in a sharp, querulous voice.

“The letter you wrote Mrs. Byng from the Trafalgar Club yesterday.”

Fellowes made a feint, an attempt at bravado. “What business is it of yours, anyhow? What rights have you got in Mrs. Byng’s letters?”

“Only what I get from a higher authority.”

“Are you in sweet spiritual partnership with the Trinity?”

“The higher authority I mean is Mr. Byng. Let us have no tricks with words, you fool.”

Fellowes made an ineffective attempt at self-possession.

“What the devil . . . why should I listen to you?” There was a peevish stubbornness in the tone.

“Why should you listen to me? Well, because I have saved your life. That should be sufficient reason for you to listen.”

“Damnation–speak out, if you’ve got anything to say! I don’t see what you mean, and you are damned officious. Yes, that’s it–damned officious.” The peevishness was becoming insolent recklessness.

Slowly Stafford drew from his pocket the revolver Rudyard had given him. As Fellowes caught sight of the glittering steel he fell back against the piano-stool, making a clatter, his face livid.

Stafford’s lips curled with contempt. “Don’t squirm so, Fellowes. I’m not going to use it. But Mr. Byng had it, and he was going to use it. He was on his way to do it when I appeared. I stopped him . . . I will tell you how. I endeavoured to make him believe that she was absolutely innocent, that you had only been an insufferably insolent, presumptuous, and lecherous cad–which is true. I said that, though you deserved shooting, it would only bring scandal to Rudyard Byng’s honourable wife, who had been insulted by the lover of Al’mah and the would-be betrayer of an honest girl–of Jigger’s sister…. Yes, you may well start. I know of what stuff you are, how you had the soul and body of one of the most credulous and wonderful women in the world in your hands, and you went scavenging. From Al’mah to the flower-girl! . . . I think I should like to kill you myself for what you tried to do to Jigger’s sister; and if it wasn’t here”–he handled the little steel weapon with an eager fondness–” I think I’d do it. You are a pest.”

Cowed, shivering, abject, Fellowes nervously fell back. His body crashed upon the keys of the piano, producing a hideous discord. Startled, he sprang aside and with trembling hands made gestures of appeal.

“Don’t–don’t! Can’t you see I’m willing! What is it you want me to do? I’ll do it. Put it away…. Oh, my God–Oh!” His bloodless lips were drawn over his teeth in a grimace of terror.

With an exclamation of contempt Stafford put the weapon back into his pocket again. “Pull yourself together,” he said. “Your life is safe for the moment; but I can say no more than that. After I had proved the lady’s innocence–you understand, after I had proved the lady’s innocence to him–“

“Yes, I understand,” came the hoarse reply.

“After that, I said I would deal with you; that he could not be trusted to do so. I said that you would leave England within twenty-four hours, and that you would not return within three years. That was my pledge. You are prepared to fulfil it?”

“To leave England! It is impossible–“

“Perhaps to leave it permanently, and not by the English Channel, either, might be worse,” was the cold, savage reply. “Mr. Byng made his terms.”

Fellowes shivered. “What am I to do out of England–but, yes, I’ll go, I’ll go,” he added, as he saw the look in Stafford’s face and thought of the revolver so near to Stafford’s hand.

“Yes, of course you will go,” was the stern retort. “You will go, just as I say.”

“What shall I do abroad?” wailed the weak voice.

“What you have always done here, I suppose–live on others,” was the crushing reply. “The venue will be changed, but you won’t change, not you. If I were you, I’d try and not meet Jigger before you go. He doesn’t know quite what it is, but he knows enough to make him reckless.”

Fellowes moved towards the door in a stumbling kind of way. “I have some things up-stairs,” he said.

“They will be sent after you to your chambers. Give me the keys to the desk in the secretary’s room.”

“I’ll go myself, and–“

“You will leave this house at once, and everything will be sent after you–everything. Have no fear. I will send them myself, and your letters and private papers will not be read…. You feel you can rely on me for that–eh?”

“Yes . . . I’ll go now . . . abroad . . . where?”

“Where you please outside the United Kingdom.”

Fellowes passed heavily out through the other room, where his letter had been read by Stafford, where his fate had been decided. He put on his overcoat nervously and went to the outer door.

Stafford came up to him again. “You understand, there must be no attempt to communicate here…. You will observe this?”

Fellowes nodded. “Yes, I will…. Good-night,” he added, absently.

“Good-day,” answered Stafford, mechanically.

The outer door shut, and Stafford turned again to the little room where so much had happened which must change so many lives, bring so many tears, divert so many streams of life.

How still the house seemed now! It had lost all its charm and homelikeness. He felt stifled. Yet there was the warm sun streaming through the doorway of the music-room, making the beaded curtains shine like gold.

As he stood in the doorway of the little morning-room, looking in with bitter reflection and dreading beyond words what now must come–his meeting with Jasmine, the story he must tell her, and the exposure of a truth so naked that his nature revolted from it, he heard a footstep behind him. It was Krool.

Stafford looked at the saturnine face and wondered how much he knew; but there was no glimmer of revelation in Krool’s impassive look. The eyes were always painful in their deep animal-like glow, and they seemed more than usually intense this morning; that was all.

“Will you present my compliments to Mrs. Byng, and say–“

Krool, with a gesture, stopped him.

“Mrs. Byng is come now,” he said, making a gesture towards the staircase. Then he stole away towards the servants’ quarters of the house. His work had been well done, of its kind, and he could now await consequences.

Stafford turned to the staircase and saw–in blue, in the old sentimental blue–Jasmine slowly descending, a strange look of apprehension in her face.

Immediately after calling out for Rudyard a little while before, she had discovered the loss of Adrian Fellowes’ letter. Hours before this she had read and re-read Ian’s letter, that document of pain and purpose, of tragical, inglorious, fatal purpose. She was suddenly conscious of an air of impending catastrophe about her now. Or was it that the catastrophe had come? She had not asked for Adrian Fellowes’ letter, for if any servant had found it, and had not returned it, it was useless asking; and if Rudyard had found it–if Rudyard had found it . . . !

Where was Rudyard? Why had he not come to her, Why had he not eaten the breakfast which still lay untouched on the table of his study? Where was Rudyard?

Ian’s eyes looked straight into hers as she came down the staircase, and there was that in them which paralyzed her. But she made an effort to ignore the apprehension which filled her soul.

“Good-morning. Am I so very late?” she said, gaily, to him, though there was a hollow note in her voice.

“You are just in time,” he answered in an even tone which told nothing.

“Dear me, what a gloomy face! What has happened? What is it? There seems to be a Cassandra atmosphere about the place–and so early in the day, too.”

“It is full noon–and past,” he said, with acute meaning, as her daintily shod feet met the floor of the hallway and glided towards him. How often he had admired that pretty flitting of her feet!

As he looked at her he was conscious, with a new force, of the wonder of that hair on a little head as queenly as ever was given to the modern world. And her face, albeit pale, and with a strange tremulousness in it now, was like that of some fairy dame painted by Greuze. All last night’s agony was gone from the rare blue eyes, whose lashes drooped so ravishingly betimes, though that droop was not there as she looked at Ian now.

She beat a foot nervously on the floor. “What is it–why this Euripidean air in my simple home? There’s something wrong, I see. What is it? Come, what is it, Ian?”

Hesitatingly she laid a hand upon his arm, but there was no loving-kindness in his look. The arms which yesterday–only yesterday–had clasped her passionately and hungrily to his breast now hung inert at his side. His eyes were strange and hard.

“Will you come in here,” he said, in an arid voice, and held wide the door of the room where he and Rudyard had settled the first chapter of the future and closed the book of the past.

She entered with hesitating step. Then he shut the door with an accentuated softness, and came to the table where he had sat with Rudyard. Mechanically she took the seat which Rudyard had occupied, and looked at him across the table with a dread conviction stealing over her face, robbing it of every vestige of its heavenly colour, giving her eyes a staring and solicitous look.

“Well, what is it? Can’t you speak and have it over?” she asked, with desperate impatience.

“Fellowes’ letter to you–Rudyard found it,” he said, abruptly.

She fell back as though she had been struck, then recovered herself. “You read it?” she gasped.

“Rudyard made me read it. I came in when he was just about to kill Fellowes.”

She gave a short, sharp cry, which with a spasm of determination her fingers stopped.

“Kill him–why?” she asked in a weak voice, looking down at her trembling hands which lay clasped on the table before her.

“The letter–Fellowes’ letter to you.”

“I dropped it last night,” she said, in a voice grown strangely impersonal and colourless. “I dropped it in Rudyard’s room, I suppose.”

She seemed not to have any idea of excluding the terrible facts, but to be speaking as it were to herself and of something not vital, though her whole person was transformed into an agony which congealed the lifeblood.

Her voice sounded tuneless and ragged. “He read it–Rudyard read a letter which was not addressed to him! He read a letter addressed to me–he read my letter…. It gave me no chance.”

“No chance–?”

A bitter indignation was added to the cheerless discord of her tones. “Yes, I had a chance, a last chance–if he had not read the letter. But now, there is no chance…. You read it, too. You read the letter which was addressed to me. No matter what it was–my letter, you read it.”

“Rudyard said to me in his terrible agitation, ‘Read that letter, and then tell me what you think of the man who wrote it.’ . . . I thought it was the letter I wrote to you, the letter I posted to you last night. I thought it was my letter to you.”

Her eyes had a sudden absent look. It was as though she were speaking in a trance. “I answered that letter–your letter. I answered it this morning. Here is the answer . . . here.” She laid a letter on the table before him, then drew it back again into her lap. “Now it does not matter. But it gives me no chance….”

There was a world of despair and remorse in her voice. Her face was wan and strained. “No chance, no chance,” she whispered.

“Rudyard did not kill him?” she asked, slowly and cheerlessly, after a moment, as though repeating a lesson. “Why?”

“I stopped him. I prevented him.”

“You prevented him–why?” Her eyes had a look of unutterable confusion and trouble. “Why did you prevent it–you?”

“That would have hurt you–the scandal, the grimy press, the world.”

Her voice was tuneless, and yet it had a strange, piteous poignancy. “It would have hurt me–yes. Why did you not want to hurt me?”

He did not answer. His hands had gone into his pockets, as though to steady their wild nervousness, and one had grasped the little weapon of steel which Rudyard had given him. It produced some strange, malignant effect on his mind. Everything seemed to stop in him, and he was suddenly possessed by a spirit which carried him into that same region where Rudyard had been. It was the region of the abnormal. In it one moves in a dream, majestically unresponsive to all outward things, numb, unconcerned, disregarding all except one’s own agony, which seems to neutralize the universe and reduce all life’s problems to one formula of solution.

“What did you say to him that stopped him?” she asked in a whisper of awed and dreadful interest, as, after an earthquake, a survivor would speak in the stillness of dead and unburied millions.

“I said the one thing to say,” he answered after a moment, involuntarily laying the pistol on the table before him–doing it, as it were, without conscious knowledge.

It fascinated Jasmine, the ugly, deadly little vehicle of oblivion. Her eyes fastened on it, and for an instant stared at it transfixed; then she recovered herself and spoke again.

“What was the one thing to say?” she whispered.

“That you were innocent–absolutely, that–“

Suddenly she burst into wild laughter–shrill, acrid, cheerless, hysterical, her face turned upward, her hands clasped under her chin, her body shaking with what was not laughter, but the terrifying agitation of a broken organism.

He waited till she had recovered somewhat, and then he repeated his words.

“I said that you were innocent absolutely; that Fellowes’ letter was the insolence and madness of a voluptuary, that you had only been wilful and indiscreet, and that–“

In a low, mechanical tone from which was absent any agitation, he told her all he had said to Rudyard, and what Rudyard had said to him. Every word had been burned into his brain, and nearly every word was now repeated, while she sat silent, looking at her hands clasped on the table before her. When he came to the point where Rudyard went from the house, leaving Stafford to deal with Fellowes, she burst again into laughter, mocking, wilful, painful.

“You were left to set things right, to be the lord high executioner–you, Ian!”

How strange his name sounded on her lips now–foreign, distant, revealing the nature of the situation more vividly than all the words which had been said, than all that had been done.

“Rudyard did not think of killing you, I suppose,” she went on, presently, with a bitter motion of the lips, and a sardonic note creeping into the voice.

“No, I thought of that,” he answered, quietly, “as you know.” His eyes sought the weapon on the table involuntarily. “That would have been easy enough,” he added. “I was not thinking of myself, or of Fellowes, but only of you–and Rudyard.”

“Only of me–and Rudyard,” she repeated with drooping eyes, which suddenly became alive again with feeling and passion and wildness. “Wasn’t it rather late for that?”

The words stung him beyond endurance. He rose and leaned across the table towards her.

“At least I recognized what I had done, what you had done, and I tried to face it. I did not disguise it. My letter to you proves that. But nevertheless I was true to you. I did not deceive you–ever. I loved you–ah, I loved you as few women have been loved! . . . But you, you might have made a mistake where Rudyard was concerned, made the mistake once, but if you wronged him, you wronged me infinitely more. I was ready to give up all, throw all my life, my career, to the winds, and prove myself loyal to that which was more than all; or I was willing to eliminate myself from the scene forever. I was willing to pay the price–any price–just to stand by what was the biggest thing in my life. But you were true to nothing–to nothing–to nobody.”

“If one is untrue–once, why be true at all ever?” she said with an aching laugh, through which tears ran, though none dropped from her eyes. “If one is untrue to one, why not to a thousand?”

Again a mocking laugh burst from her. “Don’t you see? One kiss, a wrong? Why not, then, a thousand kisses! The wrong came in the moment that the one kiss was given. It is the one that kills, not the thousand after.”

There came to her mind again–and now with what sardonic force–Rudyard’s words that day before they went to Glencader: “If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers.”

“And so it is all understood between you and Rudyard,” she added, mechanically. “That is what you have arranged for me–that I go on living as before with Rudyard, while I am not to know from him anything has happened; but to accept what has been arranged for me, and to be repentant and good and live in sackcloth. It has been arranged, has it, that Rudyard is to believe in me?”

“That has not been arranged.”

“It has been arranged that I am to live with him as before, and that he is to pretend to love me as before, and–“

“He does love you as before. He has never changed. He believed in you, was so pitifully eager to believe in you even when the letter–“

“Where is the letter?”

He pointed to the fire.

“Who put it in the fire?” she asked. “You?”

He inclined his head.

“Ah yes, always so clever! A burst of indignation at his daring to suspect me even for an instant, and with a flourish into the fire, the evidence. Here is yours–your letter. Would you like to put it into the fire also?” she asked, and drew his letter from the folds of her dress.

“But, no, no, no–” She suddenly sprang to her feet, and her eyes had a look of agonized agitation. “When I have learned every word by heart, I will burn it myself–for your sake.” Her voice grew softer, something less discordant came into it. “You will never understand. You could never understand me, or that letter of Adrian Fellowes to me, and that he could dare to write me such a letter. You could never understand it. But I understand you. I understand your letter. It came while I was–while I was broken. It healed me, Ian. Last night I wanted to kill myself. Never mind why. You would not understand. You are too good to understand. All night I was in torture, and then this letter of yours–it was a revelation. I did not think that a man lived like you, so true, so kind, so mad. And so I wrote you a letter, ah, a letter from my soul! and then came down to this–the end of all. The end of everything–forever.”

“No, the beginning if you will have it so…. Rudyard loves you . . .”

She gave a cry of agony. “For God’s sake–oh, for God’s sake, hush! . . . You think that now I could . . .”

“Begin again with new purpose.”

“Purpose! Oh, you fool! You fool! You fool–you who are so wise sometimes! You want me to begin again with Rudyard: and you do not want me to begin again–with you?”

He was silent, and he looked her in the eyes steadily.

“You do not want me to begin again with you, because you believe me–because you believed the worst from that letter, from Adrian Fellowes’ letter…. You believed, yet you hypnotized Rudyard into not believing. But did you, after all? Was it not that he loves me, and that he wanted to be deceived, wanted to be forced to do what he has done? I know him better than you. But you are right, he would have spoken to me about it if you had not warned him.”

“Then begin again–“

“You do not want me any more.” The voice had an anguish like the cry of the tragic music in “Elektra.” “You do not want what you wanted yesterday–for us together to face it all, Ian. You do not want it? You hate me.”

His face was disturbed by emotion, and he did not speak for a moment.

In that moment she became transformed. With a sudden tragic motion she caught the pistol from the table and raised it, but he wrenched it from her hand.

“Do you think that would mend anything?” he asked, with a new pity in his heart for her.” That would only hurt those who have been hurt enough already. Be a little magnanimous. Do not be selfish. Give others a chance.”

“You were going to do it as an act of unselfishness,” she moaned. “You were going to die in order to mend it all. Did you think of me in that? Did you think I would or could consent to that? You believed in me, of course, when you wrote it. But did you think that was magnanimous–when you had got a woman’s love, then to kill yourself in order to cure her? Oh, how little you know! . . . But you do not want me now. You do not believe in me now. You abhor me. Yet if that letter had not fallen into Rudyard’s hands we might perhaps have now been on our way to begin life again together. Does that look as though there was some one else that mattered–that mattered?”

He held himself together with all his power and will. “There is one way, and only one way,” he said, firmly. “Rudyard loves you. Begin again with him.” His voice became lower. “You know the emptiness of your home. There is a way to make some recompense to him. You can pay your debt. Give him what he wants so much. It would be a link. It would bind you. A child . . .”

“Oh, how you loathe me!” she said, shudderingly. “Yesterday–and now . . . No, no, no,” she added, ” I will not, cannot live with Rudyard. I cannot wrench myself from one world into another like that. I will not live with him any more…. There–listen.”

Outside the newsboys were calling:

“Extra speshul! Extra speshul! All about the war! War declared! Extra speshul!”

“War! That will separate many,” she added. “It will separate Rudyard and me…. No, no, there will be no more scandal…. But it is the way of escape–the war.”

“The way of escape for us all, perhaps,” he answered, with a light of determination in his eyes. “Good-bye,” he added, after a slight pause. “There is nothing more to say.”

He turned to go, but he did not hold out his hand, nor even look at her.

“Tell me,” she said, in a strange, cold tone, “tell me, did Adrian Fellowes–did he protect me? Did he stand up for me? Did he defend me?”

“He was concerned only for himself,” Ian answered, hesitatingly.

Her face hardened. Pitiful, haggard lines had come into it in the last half-hour, and they deepened still more.

“He did not say one word to put me right?”

Ian shook his head in negation. “What did you expect?” he said.

She sank into a chair, and a strange cruelty came into her eyes, something so hard that it looked grotesque in the beautiful setting of her pain-worn, exquisite face.

So utter was her dejection that he came back from the door and bent over her.

“Jasmine,” he said, gently, “we have to start again, you and I–in different paths. They will never meet. But at the end of the road–peace. Peace the best thing of all. Let us try and find it, Jasmine.”

“He did not try to protect me. He did not defend me,” she kept saying to herself, and was only half conscious of what Ian said to her.

He touched her shoulder. “Nothing can set things right between you and me, Jasmine,” he added, unsteadily, “but there’s Rudyard–you must help him through. He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy Scovel’s. He didn’t believe it. It rests with you to give it all the lie…. Good-bye.”

In a moment he was gone. As the door closed she sprang to her feet. “Ian–Ian–come back,” she cried. “Ian, one word–one word.”

But the door did not open again. For a moment she stood like one transfixed, staring at the place whence he had vanished, then, with a moan, she sank in a heap on the floor, and rocked to and fro like one demented.

Once the door opened quietly, and Krool’s face showed, sinister and furtive, but she did not see it, and the door closed again softly.

At last the paroxysms passed, and a haggard face looked out into the world of life and being with eyes which were drowned in misery.

“He did not defend me–the coward!” she murmured; then she rose with a sudden effort, swayed, steadied herself, and arranged her hair in the mirror over the mantelpiece. “The low coward!” she said again. “But before he leaves . . . before he leaves England . . . “

As she turned to go from the room, Rudyard’s portrait on the wall met her eyes. “I can’t go on, Rudyard,” she said to it. “I know that now.”

Out in the streets, which Ian Stafford travelled with hasty steps, the newsboys were calling:

“War declared! All about the war!”

“That is the way out for me,” Stafford said, aloud, as he hastened on. “That opens up the road…. I’m still an artillery officer.”

He directed his swift steps toward Pall Mall and the War Office.

CHAPTER XXII

IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY

Kruger’s ultimatum, expected though it was, shook England as nothing had done since the Indian mutiny, but the tremour of national excitement presently gave way to a quiet, deep determination.

An almost Oriental luxury had gone far to weaken the fibre of that strong and opulent middle-class who had been the backbone of England, the entrenched Philistines. The value of birth as a moral asset which had a national duty and a national influence, and the value of money which had a social responsibility and a communal use, were unrealized by the many nouveaux riches who frequented the fashionable purlieus; who gave vast parties where display and extravagance were the principal feature; who ostentatiously offered large sums to public objects. Men who had made their money where copper or gold or oil or wool or silver or cattle or railways made commercial kings, supported schemes for the public welfare brought them by fine ladies, largely because the ladies were fine; and they gave substantial sums–upon occasion–for these fine ladies’ fine causes. Rich men, or reputed rich men, whose wives never appeared, who were kept in secluded quarters in Bloomsbury or Maida Vale, gave dinners at the Savoy or the Carlton which the scrapings of the aristocracy attended; but these gave no dinners in return.

To get money to do things, no matter how,–or little matter how; to be in the swim, and that swim all too rapidly washing out the real people–that was the almost universal ambition. But still the real people, however few or many, in the time of trouble came quietly into the necessary and appointed places with the automatic precision of the disciplined friend of the state and of humanity; and behind them were folk of the humbler sort, the lower middle- class, the labouring-man. Of these were the landpoor peer, with his sense of responsibility cultivated by daily life and duty in his county, on the one hand; the professional man of all professions, the little merchant, the sailor, the clerk and artisan, the digger and delver, on the other; and, in between, those people in the shires who had not yet come to be material and gross, who had old-fashioned ideas of the duty of the citizen and the Christian. In the day of darkness these came and laid what they had at the foot of the altar of sacrifice.

This at least the war did: it served as a sieve to sift the people, and it served as the solvent of many a life-problem.

Ian Stafford was among the first to whom it offered “the way out,” who went to it for the solution of their own set problem. Suddenly, as he stood with Jasmine in the little room where so many lives were tossed into the crucible of Fate that morning, the newsboy’s voice shouting, “War declared!” had told him the path he must tread.

He had astonished the War Office by his request to be sent to the Front with his old arm, the artillery, and he was himself astonished by the instant assent that was given. And now on this October day he was on his way to do two things–to see whether Adrian Fellowes was keeping his promise, and to visit Jigger and his sister.

There had not been a week since the days at Glencader when he had not gone to the sordid quarters in the Mile End Road to see Jigger, and to hear from him how his sister was doing at the opera, until two days before, when he had learned from Lou herself what she had suffered at the hands of Adrian Fellowes. That problem would now be settled forever; but there remained the question of Jigger, and that must be settled, whatever the other grave problems facing him. Jigger must be cared for, must be placed in a position where he could have his start in life. Somehow Jigger was associated with all the movements of his life now, and was taken as part of the problem. What to do? He thought of it as he went eastward, and it did not seem easy to settle it. Jigger himself, however, cut the Gordian knot.

When he was told that Stafford was going to South Africa, and that it was a question as to what he–Jigger–should now do, in what sphere of life his abnormally “cute” mind must run, he answered, instantly.

“I’m goin’ wiv y’r gryce,” he said. “That’s it–stryght. I’m goin’ out there wiv you.”

Ian shook his head and smiled sadly. “I’m afraid that’s not for you, Jigger. No, think again.”

“Ain’t there work in Souf Afriker–maybe not in the army itself, y’r gryce? Couldn’t I have me chanct out there? Lou’s all right now, I bet; an’ I could go as easy as can be.”

“Yes, Lou will be all right now,” remarked Stafford, with a reflective irony.

“I ain’t got no stiddy job here, and there’s work in Souf Afriker, ain’t they? Couldn’t I get a job holdin’ horses, or carryin’ a flag, or cleanin’ the guns, or nippin’ letters about–couldn’t I, y’r gryce? I’m only askin’ to go wiv you, to work, same as ever I did before I was run over. Ain’t I goin’ wiv you, y’r gryce?”

With a sudden resolve Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, you are going ‘wiv’ me, Jigger. You just are, horse, foot, and artillery. There’ll be a job somewhere. I’ll get you something to do, or–“

“Or bust, y’r gryce?”

So the problem lessened, and Ian’s face cleared a little. If all the difficulties perplexing his life would only clear like that! The babe and the suckling had found the way so simple, so natural; and it was a comforting way, for he had a deep and tender regard for this quaint, clever waif who had drifted across his path.

To-morrow he would come and fetch Jigger: and Jigger’s face followed him into the coming dusk, radiant and hopeful and full of life–of life that mattered. Jigger would go out to “Souf Afriker” with all his life before him, but he, Ian Stafford, would go with all his life behind him, all mile-stones passed except one.

So, brooding, he walked till he came to an underground station, and there took a train to Charing Cross. Here he was only a little distance away from the Embankment, where was to be found Adrian Fellowes; and with bent head he made his way among the motley crowd in front of the station, scarcely noticing any one, yet resenting the jostle and the crush. Suddenly in the crowd in front of him he saw Krool stealing along with a wide-awake hat well down over his eyes. Presently the sinister figure was lost in the confusion. It did not occur to him that perhaps Krool might be making for the same destination as himself; but the sight of the man threw his mind into an eddy of torturing thoughts.

The flare of light, white and ghastly, at Charing Cross was shining on a moving mass of people, so many of whom were ghastly also–derelicts of humanity, ruins of womanhood, casuals, adventurers, scavengers of life, prowlers who lived upon chance, upon cards, upon theft, upon women, upon libertines who waited in these precincts for some foolish and innocent woman whom they could entrap. Among them moved also the thousand other good citizens bent upon catching trains or wending their way home from work; but in the garish, cruel light, all, even the good, looked evil in a way, and furtive and unstable. To-night, the crowd were far more restless than usual, far more irritating in their purposeless movements. People sauntered, jerked themselves forward, moved in and out, as it were, intent on going everywhere and nowhere; and the excitement possessing them, the agitation in the air, made them seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with shrill voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere eager, nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy sensational rags.

Presently a girl jostled Stafford, then apologized with an endearing word which brought a sick sensation to his brain; but he only shook his head gravely at her. After all, she had a hard trade and it led nowhere–nowhere.

“Coming home with me, darling?” she added in response to his meditative look. Anything that was not actual rebuff was invitation to her blunted sense. “Coming home with me–?”

Home! A wave of black cynicism, of sardonic mirth passed through Stafford’s brain. Home–where the business of this poor wayfarer’s existence was carried on, where the shopkeeper sold her wares in the inner sanctuary! Home…. He shook the girl’s hand from his elbow and hastened on.

Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself. It was not moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word Home she used…. The dire mockery of it burned his mind like a corrosive acid. He had had no home since his father died years ago,–his mother had died when he was very young–and his eldest brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother’s chair and in her place at table.

He had wished so often in the past for a home of his own, where he could gather round him young faces and lose himself in promoting the interests of those for whom he had become forever responsible. He had longed for the Englishman’s castle, for his own little realm of interest where he could be supreme; and now it was never to be.

The idea gained in sacred importance as it receded forever from all possibility. In far-off days it had been associated with a vision in blue, with a face like a dresden-china shepherdess and hair like Aphrodite’s. Laughter and wit and raillery had been part of the picture; and long evenings in the winter-time, when they two would read the books they both loved, and maybe talk awhile of world events in which his work had place; in which his gifts were found, shaping, influencing, producing. The garden, the orchard–he loved orchards–the hedges of flowering ivy and lilacs; and the fine grey and chestnut horses driven by his hand or hers through country lanes; the smell of the fallen leaves in the autumn evenings; or the sting of the bracing January wind across the moors or where the woodcock awaited its spoiler. All these had been in the vision. It was all over now. He had seen an image, it had vanished, and he was in the desert alone.

A band was playing “The Banks o’ Garry Owen,” and the tramp of marching men came to his ears. The crowd surged round him, pushed him, forced him forward, carried him on, till the marching men came near, were alongside of him–a battalion of Volunteers, going to the war to see “Kruger’s farmers bite the dust!”–a six months’ excursion, as they thought. Then the crowd, as it cheered jostled him against the wall of the shops, and presently he found himself forced down Buckingham Street. It was where he wished to go in order to reach Adrian Fellowes’ apartments. He did not notice, as he was practically thrown into the street, that Krool was almost beside him.

The street was not well lighted, and he looked neither to right nor left. He was thinking hard of what he would say to Adrian Fellowes, if, and when, he saw him.

But not far behind him was a figure that stole along in the darker shadows of the houses, keeping at some distance. The same figure followed him furtively till he came into that part of the Embankment where Adrian Fellowes’ chambers were; then it fell behind a little, for here the lights were brighter. It hung in the shadow of a door-way and watched him as he approached the door of the big building where Adrian Fellowes lived.

Presently, as he came nearer, Stafford saw a hansom standing before the door. Something made him pause for a moment, and when, in the pause, the figure of a woman emerged from the entrance and hastily got into the hansom, he drew back into the darkness of a doorway, as the man did who was now shadowing him; and he waited till it turned round and rolled swiftly away. Then he moved forward again. When not far from the entrance, however, another cab–a four-wheeler–discharged its occupant at a point nearer to the building than where he waited. It was a woman. She paid the cabman, who touched his hat with quick and grateful emphasis, and, wheeling his old crock round, clattered away. The woman glanced along the empty street swiftly, and then hurried to the doorway which opened to Adrian Fellowes’ chambers.

Instantly Stafford recognized her. It was Jasmine, dressed in black and heavily veiled. He could not mistake the figure–there was none other like it; or the turn of her head–there was only one such head in all England. She entered the building quickly.

There was nothing to do but wait until she came out again. No passion stirred in him, no jealousy, no anger. It was all dead. He knew why she had come; or he thought he knew. She would tell the man who had said no word in defense of her, done nothing to protect her, who let the worst be believed, without one protest of her innocence, what she thought of him. She was foolish to go to him, but women do mad things, and they must not be expected to do the obviously sensible thing when the crisis of their lives has come. Stafford understood it all.

One thing he was certain Jasmine did not know–the intimacy between Fellowes and Al’mah. He himself had been tempted to speak of it in their terrible interview that morning; but he had refrained. The ignominy, the shame, the humiliation of that would have been beyond her endurance. He understood; but he shrank at the thought of the nature of the interview which she must have, at the thought of the meeting at all.

He would have some time to wait, no doubt, and he made himself easy in the doorway, where his glance could command the entrance she had used. He mechanically took out a cigar-case, but after looking at the cigars for a moment put them away again with a sigh. Smoking would not soothe him. He had passed beyond the artificial.

His waiting suddenly ended. It seemed hardly three minutes after Jasmine’s entrance when she appeared in the doorway again, and, after a hasty glance up and down the street, sped away as swiftly as she could, and, at the corner, turned up sharply towards the Strand. Her movements had been agitated, and, as she hurried on, she thrust her head down into her muff as a woman would who faced a blinding rain.

The interview had been indeed short. Perhaps Fellowes had already gone abroad. He would soon find out.

He mounted the deserted staircase quickly and knocked at Fellowes’ door. There was no reply. There was a light, however, and he knocked again. Still there was no answer. He tried the handle of the door. It turned, the door gave, and he entered. There was no sound. He knocked at an inner door. There was no reply, yet a light showed in the room. He turned the handle. Entering the room, he stood still and looked round. It seemed empty, but there were signs of packing, of things gathered together hastily.

Then, with a strange sudden sense of a presence in the room, he looked round again. There in a far corner of the large room was a couch, and on it lay a figure–Adrian Fellowes, straight and still–and sleeping.

Stafford went over. “Fellowes,” he said, sharply.

There was no reply. He leaned over and touched a shoulder. “Fellowes!” he exclaimed again, but something in the touch made him look closely at the face half turned to the wall. Then he knew.

Adrian Fellowes was dead.

Horror came upon Stafford, but no cry escaped him. He stooped once more and closely looked at the body, but without touching it. There was no sign of violence, no blood, no disfigurement, no distortion, only a look of sleep–a pale, motionless sleep.

But the body was warm yet. He realized that as his hand had touched the shoulder. The man could only have been dead a little while.

Only a little while: and in that little while Jasmine had left the house with agitated footsteps.

“He did not die by his own hand,” Stafford said aloud.

He rang the bell loudly. No one answered. He rang and rang again, and then a lazy porter came.

CHAPTER XXIII

“MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD”

Eastminster House was ablaze. A large dinner had been fixed for this October evening, and only just before half-past eight Jasmine entered the drawing-room to receive her guests. She had completely forgotten the dinner till very late in the afternoon, when she observed preparations for which she had given instructions the day before. She was about to leave the house upon the mission which had drawn her footsteps in the same direction as those of Ian Stafford, when the butler came to her for information upon some details. These she gave with an instant decision which was part of her equipment, and then, when the butler had gone, she left the house on foot to take a cab at the corner of Piccadilly.

When she returned home, the tables in the dining-room were decorated, the great rooms were already lighted, and the red carpet was being laid down at the door. The footmen looked up with surprise as she came up the steps, and their eyes followed her as she ascended the staircase with marked deliberation.

“Well, that’s style for you,” said the first footman. “Takin’ an airin’ on shanks’ hosses.”

“And a quarter of an hour left to put on the tirara,” sniggered the second footman. “The lot is asked for eight-thirty.”

“Swells, the bunch, windin’ up with the brother of an Emperor–‘struth!”

“I’ll bet the Emperor’s brother ain’t above takin’ a tip about shares on the Rand, me boy.”

“I’ll bet none of ’em ain’t. That’s why they come–not forgetting th’ grub and the fizz.”

“What price a title for the Byng Baas one of these days! They like tips down there where the old Markis rumbles through his beard–and a lot of hands to be greased. And grease it costs a lot, political grease does. But what price a title–Sir Rudyard Byng, Bart., wot oh!”

“Try another shelf higher up, and it’s more like it. Wot a head for a coronet ‘ers! W’y–“

But the voice of the butler recalled them from the fields of imagination, and they went with lordly leisure upon the business of the household.

Socially this was to be the day of Jasmine’s greatest triumph. One of the British royal family was, with the member of another great reigning family, honouring her table–though the ladies of neither were to be present; and this had been a drop of chagrin in her cup. She had been unaware of the gossip there had been of late,–though it was unlikely the great ladies would have known of it–and she would have been slow to believe what Ian had told her this day, that men had talked lightly of her at De Lancy Scovel’s house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful nature had not been sensitive to the quality of the social air about her. People came–almost “everybody” came–to her house, and would come, of course, until there was some open scandal; until her husband intervened. Yet everybody did not come. The royal princesses had not found it convenient to come; and this may have meant nothing, or very much indeed. To Jasmine, however, as she hastily robed herself for dinner, her mind working with lightning swiftness, it did not matter at all; if all the kings and queens of all the world had promised to come and had not come, it would have meant nothing to her this night of nights.

In her eyes there was the look of one who has seen some horrible thing, though she gave her orders with coherence and decision as usual, and with great deftness she assisted her maid in the hasty toilette. Her face was very pale, save for one or two hectic spots which took the place of the nectarine bloom so seldom absent from her cheeks, and in its place was a new, shining, strange look like a most delicate film–the transfiguring kind of look which great joy or great pain gives.

Coming up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her husband’s room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted sharply–something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard’s voice sounded as it did now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which came from some desolate place, distant, arid and alien. That was not the voice in which he had wooed her on the day when they heard of Jameson’s Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her marriage–that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two would meet, and she knew how it would be–an outward semblance, a superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be again; only acting, only make-believe, only the artifice of deceit.

Yet when she was dressed–in pure white, with only a string of pearls, the smallest she had, round her neck–she was like that white flower which had been placed on her pillow last night.

Turning to leave the bedroom she caught sight of her face and figure again in the big mirror, and she seemed to herself like some other woman. There was that strange, distant look of agony in her eyes, that transfiguring look in the face; there was the figure somehow gone slimmer in these few hours; and there was a frail appearance which did not belong to her.

As she was about to leave the room to descend the stairs, there came a knock at the door. A bunch of white violets was handed in, with a pencilled note in Rudyard’s handwriting.

White violets–white violets!

The note read, “Wear these to-night, Jasmine.”

White violets–how strange that he should send them! These they send for the young, the innocent, and the dead. Rudyard had sent them to her–from how far away! He was there just across the hallway, and yet he might have been in Bolivia, so far as their real life was concerned.

She was under no illusion. This day, and perhaps a few, a very few others, must be lived under the same roof, in order that they could separate without scandal; but things could never go on as in the past. She had realized that the night before, when still that chance of which she had spoken to Stafford was hers; when she had wound the coil of her wonderful hair round her throat, and had imagined that self-destruction which has tempted so many of more spiritual make than herself. It was melodramatic, emotional, theatrical, maybe; but the emotional, the theatrical, the egotistic mortal has his or her tragedy, which is just as real as that which comes to those of more spiritual vein, just as real as that which comes to the more classical victim of fate. Jasmine had the deep defects of her qualities. Her suffering was not the less acute because it found its way out with impassioned demonstration.

There was, however, no melodrama in the quiet trembling with which she took the white violets, the symbol of love and death. She was sure that Rudyard was not aware of their significance and meaning, but that did not modify the effect upon her. Her trouble just now was too deep for tears, too bitter for words, too terrible for aught save numb endurance. Nothing seemed to matter in a sense, and yet the little routine of life meant so much in its iron insistence. The habits of convention are so powerful that life’s great issues are often obscured by them. Going to her final doom a woman would stop to give the last careful touch to her hair–the mechanical obedience to long habit. It is not vanity, not littleness, but habit; never shown with subtler irony than in the case of Madame de Langrois, who, pacing the path to her execution at Lille, stooped, picked up a pin from the ground, and fastened it in her gown–the tyranny of habit.

Outside her own room Jasmine paused for a moment and looked at the closed door of Rudyard’s room. Only a step–and yet she was kept apart from him by a shadow so black, so overwhelming, that she could not penetrate it. It smothered her sight. No, no, that little step could not be taken; there was a gulf between them which could not be bridged.

There was nothing to say to Rudyard except what could be said upon the surface, before all the world, as it were; things which must be said through an atmosphere of artificial sounds, which would give no response to the agonized cries of the sentient soul. She could make believe before the world, but not alone with Rudyard. She shrank within herself at the idea of being alone with him.

As she went down-stairs a scene in a room on the Thames Embankment, from which she had come a half hour ago, passed before her vision. It was as though it had been imprinted on the film of her eye and must stay there forever.

When would the world know that Adrian Fellowes lay dead in the room on the Embankment? And when they knew it, what would they say? They would ask how he died–the world would ask how he died. The Law would ask how he died.

How had he died? Who killed him? Or did he die by his own hand? Had Adrian Fellowes, the rank materialist, the bon viveur, the man-luxury, the courage to kill himself by his own hand? If not, who killed him? She shuddered. They might say that she killed him.

She had seen no one on the staircase as she had gone up, but she had dimly seen another figure outside in the terrace as she came out, and there was the cabman who drove her to the place. That was all.

Now, entering the great drawing-room of her own house she shuddered as though from an icy chill. The scene there on the Embankment–her own bitter anger, her frozen hatred; then the dead man with his face turned to the wall; the stillness, the clock ticking, her own cold voice speaking to him, calling; then the terrified scrutiny, the touch of the wrist, the realization, the moment’s awful horror, the silence which grew more profound, the sudden paralysis of body and will…. And then–music, strange, soft, mysterious music coming from somewhere inside the room, music familiar and yet unnatural, a song she had heard once before, a pathetic folk-song of eastern Europe, “More Was Lost at Mohacksfield.” It was a tale of love and loss and tragedy and despair.

Startled and overcome, she had swayed, and would have fallen, but that with an effort of the will she had caught at the table and saved herself. With the music still creeping in unutterable melancholy through the room, she had fled, closing the door behind her very softly as though not to disturb the sleeper. It had followed her down the staircase and into the street, the weird, unnatural music.

It was only when she had entered a cab in the Strand that she realized exactly what the music was. She remembered that Fellowes had bought a music-box which could be timed to play at will–even days ahead, and he had evidently set the box to play at this hour. It did so, a strange, grim commentary on the stark thing lying on the couch, nerveless as though it had been dead a thousand years. It had ceased to play before Stafford entered the room, but, strangely enough, it began again as he said over the dead body, “He did not die by his own hand.”

Standing before the fireplace in the drawing-room, awaiting the first guest, Jasmine said to herself: “No, no, he had not the courage to kill himself.”

Some one had killed him. Who was it? Who killed him–Rudyard–Ian–who? But how? There was no sign of violence. That much she had seen. He lay like one asleep. Who was it killed him?

“Lady Tynemouth.”

Back to the world from purgatory again. The butler’s voice broke the spell, and Lady Tynemouth took her friend in her arms and kissed her.

“So handsome you look, my darling–and all in white. White violets, too. Dear, dear, how sweet, and oh, how triste! But I suppose it’s chic. Certainly, it is stunning. And so simple. Just the weeny, teeny string of pearls, like a young under-secretary’s wife, to show what she might do if she had a fair chance. Oh, you clever, wonderful Jasmine!”

“My dressmaker says I have no real taste in colours, so I compromised,” was Jasmine’s reply, with a really good imitation of a smile.

As she babbled on, Lady Tynemouth had been eyeing her friend with swift inquiry, for she had never seen Jasmine look as she did to-night, so ethereal, so tragically ethereal, with dark lines under the eyes, the curious transparency of the skin, and the feverish brightness and far-awayness of the look. She was about to say something in comment, but other guests entered, and it was impossible. She watched, however, from a little distance, while talking gaily to other guests; she watched at the dinner-table, as Jasmine, seated between her two royalties, talked with gaiety, with pretty irony, with respectful badinage; and no one could be so daring with such ceremonious respect at the same time as she. Yet through it all Lady Tynemouth saw her glance many times with a strange, strained inquiry at Rudyard, seated far away opposite her; at another big, round table.

“There’s something wrong here,” Lady Tynemouth said to herself, and wondered why Ian Stafford was not present. Mennaval was there, eagerly seeking glances. These Jasmine gave with a smiling openness and apparent good-fellowship, which were not in the least compromising. Lady Tynemouth saw Mennaval’s vain efforts, and laughed to herself, and presently she even laughed with her neighbour about them.

“What an infant it is!” she said to her table companion. “Jasmine Byng doesn’t care a snap of her finger about Mennaval.”

“Does she care a snap for anybody?” asked the other. Then he added, with a kind of query in the question apart from the question itself: “Where is the great man–where’s Stafford to-night?”

“Counting his winnings, I suppose.” Lady Tynemouth’s face grew soft. “He has done great things for so young a man. What a distance he has gone since he pulled me and my red umbrella back from the Zambesi Falls!”

Then proceeded a gay conversation, in which Lady Tynemouth was quite happy. When she could talk of Ian Stafford she was really enjoying herself. In her eyes he was the perfect man, whom other women tried to spoil, and whom, she flattered herself, she kept sound and unspoiled by her frank platonic affection.

“Our host seems a bit abstracted to-night,” said her table companion after a long discussion about what Stafford had done and what he still might do.

“The war–it means so much to him,” said Lady Tynemouth. Yet she had seen the note of abstraction too, and it had made her wonder what was happening in this household.

The other demurred.

“But I imagine he has been prepared for the war for some time. He didn’t seem excessively worried about it before dinner, yet he seemed upset too, so pale and anxious-looking.”

“I’ll make her talk, make her tell me what it is, if there is anything,” said Lady Tynemouth to herself. “I’ll ask myself to stay with her for a couple of days.”

Superficial as Lady Tynemouth seemed to many, she had real sincerity, and she was a friend in need to her friends. She loved Jasmine as much as she could love any woman, and she said now, as she looked at Jasmine’s face, so alert, so full of raillery, yet with such an undertone of misery:

“She looks as if she needed a friend.”

After dinner she contrived to get her arm through that of her hostess, and gave it an endearing pressure. “May I come to you for a few days, Jasmine?” she asked.

“I was going to ask if you would have me,” answered Jasmine, with a queer little smile. “Rudyard will be up to his ears for a few days, and that’s a chance for you and me to do some shopping, and some other things together, isn’t it?”

She was thinking of appearances, of the best way to separate from Rudyard for a little while, till the longer separation could be arranged without scandal. Ian Stafford had said that things could go on in this house as before, that Rudyard would never hint to her what he knew, or rather what the letter had told him or left untold: but that was impossible. Whatever Rudyard was willing to do, there was that which she could not do. Twenty-four hours had accomplished a complete revolution in her attitude towards life and in her sense of things. Just for these immediate days to come, when the tragedy of Fellowes’ death would be made a sensation of the hour, there must be temporary expedients; and Lady Tynemouth had suggested one which had its great advantages.

She could not bear to remain in Rudyard’s house; and in his heart of hearts Rudyard would wish the same, even if he believed her innocent; but if she must stay for appearance’ sake, then it would be good to have Lady Tynemouth with her. Rudyard would be grateful for time to get his balance again. This bunch of violets was the impulse of a big, magnanimous nature; but it would be followed by the inevitable reaction, which would be the real test and trial.

Love and forgiveness–what had she to do with either! She did not wish forgiveness because of Adrian Fellowes. No heart had been involved in that episode. It had in one sense meant nothing to her. She loved another man, and she did not wish forgiveness of him either. No, no, the whole situation was impossible. She could not stay here. For his own sake Rudyard would not, ought not, to wish her to stay. What might the next few days bring forth?

Who had killed Adrian Fellowes? He was not man enough to take his own life–who had killed him? Was it her husband, after all? He had said to Ian Stafford that he would do nothing, but, with the maggot of revenge and jealousy in their brains, men could not be trusted from one moment to another.

The white violets? Even they might be only the impulse of the moment, one of those acts of madness of jealous and revengeful people. Men had kissed their wives and then killed them–fondled them, and then strangled them. Rudyard might have made up his mind since morning to kill Fellowes, and kill herself, also. Fellowes was gone, and now might come her turn. White violets were the flowers of death, and the first flowers he had ever given her were purple violets, the flowers of life and love.

If Rudyard had killed Adrian Fellowes, there would be an end to everything. If he was suspected, and if the law stretched out its hand of steel to clutch him–what an ignominious end to it all; what a mean finish to life, to opportunity, to everything worth doing!

And she would have been the cause of everything.

The thought scorched her soul.

Yet she talked on gaily to her guests until the men returned from their cigars; as though Penalty and Nemesis were outside even the range of her imagination; as though she could not hear the snap of the handcuffs on Rudyard’s–or Ian’s–wrists.

Before and after dinner only a few words had passed between her and Rudyard, and that was with people round them. It was as though they spoke through some neutralizing medium, in which all real personal relation was lost. Now Rudyard came to her, however, and in a matter-of-fact voice said: “I suppose Al’mah will be here. You haven’t heard to the contrary, I hope? These great singers are so whimsical.”

There was no time for Jasmine to answer, for through one of the far entrances of the drawing-room Al’mah entered. Her manner was composed–if possible more composed than usual, and she looked around her calmly. At that moment a servant handed Byng a letter. It contained only a few words, and it ran:

“DEAR BYNG,–Fellowes is gone. I found him dead in his rooms. An inquest will be held to-morrow. There are no signs of violence; neither of suicide or anything else. If you want me, I shall be at my rooms after ten o’clock to-night. I have got all his papers.” Yours ever,

“IAN STAFFORD.”

Jasmine watched Rudyard closely as he read. A strange look passed over his face, but his hand was steady as he put the note in his pocket. She then saw him look searchingly at Al’mah as he went forward to greet her.

On the instant Rudyard had made up his mind what to do. It was clear that Al’mah did not know that Fellowes was dead, or she would not be here; for he knew of their relations, though he had never told Jasmine. Jasmine did not suspect the truth, or Al’mah would not be where she was; and Fellowes would never have written to Jasmine the letter for which he had paid with his life.

Al’mah was gently appreciative of the welcome she received from both Byng and Jasmine, and she prepared to sing.

“Yes, I think I am in good voice,” she said to Jasmine, presently. Then Rudyard went, giving his wife’s arm a little familiar touch as he passed, and said:

“Remember, we must have some patriotic things tonight. I’m sure Al’mah will feel so, too. Something really patriotic and stirring. We shall need it–yes we shall need cheering very badly before we’ve done. We’re not going to have a walk-over in South Africa. Cheering up is what we want, and we must have it.”

Again he cast a queer, inquiring look at Al’mah, to which he got no response, and to himself he said, grimly: “Well, it’s better she should not know it–here.”

His mind was in a maze. He moved as in a dream. He was pale, but he had an air of determination. Once he staggered with dizziness, then he righted himself and smiled at some one near. That some one winked at his neighbour.

“It’s true, then, what we hear about him,” the neighbour said, and suggestively raised fingers to his mouth.

Al’mah sang as perhaps she had seldom sung. There was in her voice an abandon and tragic intensity, a wonderful resonance and power, which captured her hearers as they had never been captured before. First she sang a love-song, then a song of parting. Afterwards came a lyric of country, which stirred her audience deeply. It was a challenge to every patriot to play his part for home and country. It was an appeal to the spirit of sacrifice; it was an inspiration and an invocation. Men’s eyes grew moist.

And now another, a final song, a combination of all–of love, and loss and parting and ruin, and war and patriotism and destiny. With the first low notes of it Jasmine rose slowly from her seat, like one in a dream, and stood staring blindly at Al’mah. The great voice swelled out in a passion of agony, then sank away into a note of despair that gripped the heart.

“But more was lost at Mohacksfield–“

Jasmine had stood transfixed while the first words were sung, then, as the last line was reached, staring straight in front of her, as though she saw again the body of Adrian Fellowes in the room by the river, she gave a cry, which sounded half laughter and half torture, and fell heavily on the polished floor.

Rudyard ran forward and lifted her in his arms. Lady Tynemouth was beside him in an instant.

“Yes, that’s right–you come,” he said to her, and he carried the limp body up-stairs, the white violets in her dress crushed against his breast.

“Poor child–the war, of course; it means so much to them.”

Thus, a kindly dowager, as she followed the Royalties down-stairs.

CHAPTER XXIV

ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING

“A lady to see you, sir.”

“A lady? What should we be doing with ladies here, Gleg?”

“I’m sure I have no use for them, sir,” replied Gleg, sourly. He was in no good humour. That very morning he had been told that his master was going to South Africa, and that he would not be needed there, but that he should remain in England, drawing his usual pay. Instead of receiving this statement with gratitude, Gleg had sniffed in a manner which, in any one else, would have been impertinence; and he had not even offered thanks.

“Well, what do you think she wants? She looks respectable?”

“I don’t know about that, sir. It’s her ladyship, sir.”

“It’s what ‘ladyship,’ Gleg?”

“Her ladyship, sir–Lady Tynemouth.”

Stafford looked at Gleg meditatively for a minute, and then said quietly:

“Let me see, you have been with me sixteen years, Gleg. You’ve forgotten me often enough in that time, but you’ve never forgotten yourself before. Come to me to-morrow at noon…. I shall allow you a small pension. Show her ladyship in.”

Gone waxen in face, Gleg crept out of the room.

“Seven-and-six a week, I suppose,” he said to himself as he went down the stairs. “Seven-and-six for a bit of bonhommy.”

With great consideration he brought Lady Tynemouth up, and shut the door with that stillness which might be reverence, or something at its antipodes.

Lady Tynemouth smiled cheerily at Ian as she held out her hand.

“Gleg disapproves of me very greatly. He thinks I am no better than I ought to be.”

“I am sure you are,” answered Stafford, drily.

“Well, if you don’t know, Ian, who does? I’ve put my head in the lion’s mouth before, just like this, and the lion hasn’t snapped once,” she rejoined, settling herself cozily in a great, green leather-chair. “Nobody would believe it; but there it is. The world couldn’t think that you could be so careless of your opportunities, or that I would pay for the candle without burning it.”

“On the contrary, I think they would believe anything you told them.”

She laughed happily. “Wouldn’t you like to call me Alice, ‘same as ever,’ in the days of long ago? It would make me feel at home after Gleg’s icy welcome.”

He smiled, looked down at her with admiration, and quoted some lines of Swinburne, alive with cynicism:

“And the worst and the best of this is, That neither is most to blame
If she has forgotten my kisses,
And I have forgotten her name.”

Lady Tynemouth made a plaintive gesture. “I should probably be able to endure the bleak present, if there had been any kisses in the sunny past,” she rejoined, with mock pathos. “That’s the worst of our friendship, Ian. I’m quite sure the world thinks I’m one of your spent flames, and there never was any fire, not so big as the point of a needle, was there? It’s that which hurts so now, little Ian Stafford–not so much fire as would burn on the point of a needle.”

“‘On the point of a needle,'” Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a little quirk of humour at the corners of her mouth.

“The point of a needle might carry enough fire to burn up a good deal,” he said, reflectively. Then he added, slowly: “Do you remember Mr. Mappin and his poisoned needle at Glencader?”

“Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like martyrs and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night it was awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin’s needle horribly by–guess whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a little scream, to find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such a wurra-wurra, as he called it.”

“Well, it is a startling idea that there’s poison powerful enough to make a needle-point dipped in it deadly.”

“I don’t believe it a bit, but–“

Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress–she was all in black, with only a stole of pure white about her shoulders. “But tell me,” she added, presently–“for it’s one of the reasons why I’m here now–what happened at the inquest to-day? The evening papers are not out, and you were there, of course, and gave evidence, I suppose. Was it very trying? I’m sure it was, for I’ve never seen you look so pale. You are positively haggard, Ian. You don’t mind that from an old friend, do you? You look terribly ill, just when you should look so well.”

“Why should I look so well?” He gazed at her steadily. Had she any glimmering of the real situation? She was staying now in Byng’s house, and two days had gone since the world had gone wrong; since Jasmine had sunk to the floor unconscious as Al’mah sang, “More was lost at Mohacksfield.”

“Why should you look so well? Because you are the coming man, they say. It makes me so proud to be your friend–even your neglected, if not quite discarded, friend. Every one says you have done such splendid work for England, and that now you can have anything you want. The ball is at your feet. Dear man, you ought to look like a morning-glory, and not as you do. Tell me, Ian, are you ill, or is it only the reaction after all you’ve done?”

“No doubt it’s the reaction,” he replied.

“I know you didn’t like Adrian Fellowes much,” she remarked, watching him closely. “He behaved shockingly at the Glencader Mine affair–shockingly. Tynie was for pitching him out of the house, and taking the consequences; but, all the same, a sudden death like that all alone must have been dreadful. Please tell me, what was the verdict?”

“Heart failure was the verdict; with regret for a promising life cut short, and sympathy with the relatives.”

“I never heard that he had heart trouble,” was the meditative response. “But–well, of course, it was heart failure. When the heart stops beating, there’s heart failure. What a silly verdict!”

“It sounded rather worse than silly,” was Ian’s comment.

“Did–did they cut him up, to see if he’d taken morphia, or an overdose of laudanum or veronal or something? I had a friend who died of taking quantities of veronal while you were abroad so long–a South American, she was.”

He nodded. “It was all quite in order. There were no signs of poison, they said, but the heart had had a shock of some kind. There had been what they called lesion, and all that kind of thing, and not sufficient strength for recovery.”

“I suppose Mr. Mappin wasn’t present?” she asked, curiously. “I know it is silly in a way, but don’t you remember how interested Mr. Fellowes was in that needle? Was Mr. Mappin there?”

“There was no reason why he should be there.”

“What witnesses were called?”

“Myself and the porter of Fellowes’ apartments, his banker, his doctor–“

“And Al’mah?” she asked, obliquely.

He did not reply at once, but regarded her inquiringly.

“You needn’t be afraid to speak about Al’mah,” she continued. “I saw something queer at Glencader. Then I asked Tynie, and he told me that–well, all about her and Adrian Fellowes. Was Al’mah there? Did she give evidence?”

“She was there to be called, if necessary,” he responded, “but the coroner was very good about it. After the autopsy the authorities said evidence was unnecessary, and–“

“You arranged that, probably?”

“Yes; it was not difficult. They were so stupid–and so kind.”

She smoothed out the folds of her dress reflectively, then got up as if with sudden determination, and came near to him. Her face was pale now, and her eyes were greatly troubled.

“Ian,” she said, in a low voice, “I don’t believe that Adrian Fellowes died a natural death, and I don’t believe that he killed himself. He would not have that kind of courage, even in insanity. He could never go insane. He could never care enough about anything to do so. He–did–not–kill–himself. There, I am sure of it. And he did not die a natural death, either.”

“Who killed him?” Ian asked, his face becoming more drawn, but his eyes remaining steady and quiet.

She put her hand to her eyes for a moment. “Oh, it all seems so horrible! I’ve tried to shake it off, and not to think my thoughts, and I came to you to get fresh confidence; but as soon as I saw your face I knew I couldn’t have it. I know you are upset too, perhaps not by the same thoughts, but through the same people.”

“Tell me all you think or know. Be quite frank,” he said, heavily. “I will tell you why later. It is essential that you should be wholly frank with me.”

“As I have always been. I can’t be anything else. Anyhow, I owe you so much that you have the right to ask me what you will…. There it is, the fatal thing,” she added.

Her eyes were raised to the red umbrella which had nearly carried her over into the cauldron of the Zambesi Falls.

“No, it is the world that owes me a heavy debt,” he responded, gallantly. “I was merely selfish in saving you.”

Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away with a little laugh.

“Ah, how I wish it was that! I am just mean enough to want you to want me, while I didn’t want you. That’s the woman, and that’s all women, and there’s no getting away from it. But still I would rather you had saved me than any one else who wasn’t bound, like Tynie, to do so.”

“Well, it did seem absurd that you should risk so much to keep a sixpenny umbrella,” he rejoined, drily.

“How we play on the surface while there’s so much that is wearing our hearts out underneath,” she responded, wearily. “Listen, Ian, you know what I mean. Whoever killed Adrian Fellowes, or didn’t, I am sure that Jasmine saw him dead. Three nights ago when she fainted and went ill to bed, I stayed with her, slept in the same room, in the bed beside hers. The opiate the doctor gave her was not strong enough, and two or three times she half waked, and–and it was very painful. It made my heart ache, for I knew it wasn’t all dreams. I am sure she saw Adrian Fellowes lying dead in his room…. Ian, it is awful, but for some reason she hated him, and she saw him lying dead. If any one knows the truth, you know. Jasmine cares for you–no, no, don’t mind my saying it. She didn’t care a fig for Mennaval, or any of the others, but she does care for you–cares for you. She oughtn’t to, but she does, and she should have married you long ago before Rudyard Byng came. Please don’t think I am interfering, Ian. I am not. You never had a better friend than I am. But there’s something ghastly wrong. Rudyard is looking like a giant that’s had blood-letting, and he never goes near Jasmine, except when some one is with her. It’s a bad sign when two people must have some third person about to insulate their self-consciousness and prevent those fatal moments when they have to be just their own selves, and have it out.”

“You think there’s been trouble between them?” His voice was quite steady, his manner composed.

“I don’t think quite that. But there is trouble in that palace. Rudyard is going to South Africa.”