The Man Who Rose Again Part 65

"You were at the funeral!" he gasped.

"Radford Leicester was at the funeral. He read what a certain religious paper had to say about him. Many preachers drew profitable morals from his career. After all was over, he went away. He had made up his mind what to do. He had died, and he meant to rise again. He has risen again.

He had a great battle to fight, Signor Winfield. You guess what it was.

He had well-nigh conquered his enemy once for love of a woman, now he determined to conquer him completely, but from a different motive."

"Whisky," said Winfield.

"Whisky," repeated the other. "He knew that while it had dominion over him he would be the plaything of--anything. For two years he went where he could not get it."

"Where?"

"Some time he will tell you himself--that and other things. But he fought it, and he mastered it, not for love, but for something different."

"What?"

"Can't you guess? Think of the kind of man Radford Leicester was, Winfield. What do you think would be his motive?"

Winfield was silent.

"When you get down to the bedrock of this little human nature of ours, Winfield, you find that the same elemental pa.s.sions exist, no matter what be our race or our country. Shakespeare knew it when he conceived the character of Shylock, and when he wrote _Oth.e.l.lo_. What do you think Radford Leicester would want to live for?"

"You love her still?"

"Love her! As much as Shylock loved Antonio, my friend; as much as any other man loves one who has lifted him into heaven only to hurl him into h.e.l.l."

"Then you do not love her?"

"Why should Radford Leicester love her, my friend? Tell me that."

"Perhaps because he cannot help it."

"No; he hates her because he cannot help it."

"Hate her!"

"If there is one thing the East teaches a man, it is how to hate well.

He has learnt his lesson. Great G.o.d, he has learnt it well!"

"And why have you come back?"

"Why should Radford Leicester come back, Winfield? Tell me that. Think out the whole case quietly. Why should he come back? That Bible of yours is full of human nature. Those old Jews realised the elemental pa.s.sions of life--an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That appeals to a man as just."

"But--but, I say----"

"Yes, tell me."

"Think of what it means. It is not right."

Ricordo laughed quietly.

"Right, wrong. They are a part of the stock-in-trade of your moralists.

Let a man go through what Leicester has gone, my friend, and even if he had a little respect for it before, it would all be crushed out of him.

Why, man, Radford Leicester has lived the life of a slave in Morocco, and away out in the great desert he has herded with wild beasts in the shape of men. He has seen the religion of the Christian and the Mohammedan and the Hindoo tested; he knows what it means. Do you think, after going through what he has gone, that your tawdry rag-tags of morality will have any weight with him? No, no; to hate is as natural as to love; and if love is right, so is hate."

"But, I say, old man----"

"Yes, go on."

"To put it in plain words, what you mean is this. When you realised that--that she--had cast you off--your love turned to hatred; that you played a grim joke on the world by making every one believe you were dead; that for six years you have brooded over what you believe to be your wrongs, nursing revenge all the time, and that you have come back to--to have, well, your revenge on the woman whom you once loved. Is that it?"

"It sounds melodramatic, eh? Just like a bit taken out of one of the old Adelphi melodramas. We used to laugh at them, didn't we, when we heard the pit and the gallery hissing the villain and cheering the hero. But even in those days I sympathised with the villain."

"But you don't mean that?"

"Why not?"

"It would not be right."

"Right! And even according to your smug morality, is it right for her to thrust a man where she thrust Leicester, to make him suffer the torments which he has suffered, and then to allow her to go unpunished?"

"Perhaps she has suffered."

"Suffered! Watch her even as I have watched her. Look at her smooth, fair face. There's not a line of care and suffering upon it. Hear her speak as I have heard her. Every word tells you she is without a care.

Hear her laugh as I have heard her, and you would know that she thinks no more of having driven a man to his doom than a heartless gambler cares for the victim he has ruined."

"And you have risen from the dead for----"

"Just that, my friend, just that."

"What revenge?"

"One that shall be sufficient, Signor Winfield."

The two men walked on. Presently the gorge was behind them, and they stood up on the high moorland, while on every side stretched the wild, rugged countryside. The sun shone brightly, the air was sweet and clean, the birds sang joyously. Revenge seemed to be impossible amidst such surroundings.

"I say, Lei--"

"Signor Ricordo. Yes."

"How do you know I shall not go to her, and tell her--everything?"

"You couldn't do it, my friend. Do you think I didn't think it all out before I told you--what I have? How do I know you will not tell her?

Because I know you. Besides, do you think it matters? Do you think you could baulk me? You do not know what is in my mind. You might tell her all you know--but that would not hinder me from carrying out my plans.

No, no, I have not risen again to be frustrated a second time."

"Shall I tell you what I think?"

"I know. You think it would have been better if I had not risen, that you would have preferred for me to have died in the Thames, to coming back here to make her suffer as I have suffered. Very well, Signor Winfield, but that does not alter me."