The Judgment House Part 34

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 G.o.d's sake--oh, for G.o.d's sake, hus.h.!.+ ...

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 pa.s.sed, 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