Part 3 (1/2)

Knightley's voice was heard behind them, and they turned back into the room. The Ensign had shaved his matted beard and combed out his hair, which now curled and shone graciously about his head and shoulders; his face, too, for all that it was wasted, had taken almost a boyish zest, and his figure, revealed in the graceful dress of his regiment, showed youth in every movement. He was plainly by some years a younger man than Scrope.

He saluted the Major, and Wyley noticed that with his uniform he seemed to have drawn on something of a soldierly confidence.

”There's your supper, lad,” said Shackleton, pointing to a few poor herrings and a crust of bread which an orderly had spread upon the table. ”It is scanty.”

”I like it the better,” said Knightley with a laugh; ”for so I am a.s.sured I am at home, in Tangier. There is no beef, I suppose?”

”Not so much as a hoof.”

”No b.u.t.ter?”

”Not enough to cover a sixpence.”

”There is cheese, however.” He lifted up a sc.r.a.p upon a fork.

”There will be none to-morrow.”

”And as for pay?” he asked slyly.

”Two years and a half in arrears.”

Knightley laughed again.

”Moreover,” added Shackleton, ”out of our nothing we may presently have to feed the fleet. It is indeed the pleasantest joke imaginable.”

”In a week, no doubt,” rejoined Knightley, ”I shall be less sensible of its humour. But to-night--well, I am home in Tangier, and that contents me. Nothing has changed.” At that he stopped suddenly.

”Nothing has changed?” This time the phrase was put as a question, and with the halting timidity which he had shown before. No one answered the question. ”No, nothing has changed,” he said a third time, and again his eyes began to travel wistfully from face to face.

Tessin abruptly turned his back; Shackleton blinked his eyes at the ceiling with altogether too profound an unconcern; Scrope reached out for the wine, and spilt it as he filled his gla.s.s; Wyley busily drew diagrams with a wet finger on the table.

All these details Knightley remarked. He laid down his fork, he rested his elbow on the table, his forehead upon his hand. Then absently he began to hum over to himself a tune. The rhythm of it was somehow familiar to the Surgeon's ears. Where had he heard it before? Then with a start he remembered. It was this very rhythm, that very tune, which Scrope's fingers had beaten out on the table when he first saw Knightley. And as he had absently drummed it then, so Knightley absently hummed it now.

Surely, then, the tune had some part in the relations of the two men--perhaps a part in this story. ”A foolish song.” The words flashed into Wyley's mind.

”She was singing a foolish song.” What if the tune was the tune of that song? But then--Wyley's argument came to a sudden conclusion. For if the tune _was_ the tune of that song, why, then Knightley must know the truth, since he remembered that song. Was Scrope right after all?

Was Knightley playing with him? Wyley glanced at Knightley in the keenest excitement. He wanted words fitted to that tune, and in a little the words came--first one or two fitted here and there to a note, and murmured unconsciously, then an entire phrase which filled out a bar, finally this verse in its proper sequence:

”No, no, fair heretick, it needs must be But an ill love in me, And worse for thee; For were it in my power To love thee now this hour More than I did the last, 'Twould then so fall I might not love at all.

Love that can flow....”

And then the song broke off, and silence followed. Wyley looked again at Knightley, but the latter had not changed his position. He still sat with his face shaded by his hand.

The Surgeon was startled by a light touch on the arm. He turned with almost a jump, and he saw Scrope bending across the table towards him, his eyes ablaze with an excitement no less keen than his own.

”He knows, he knows!” whispered Scrope. ”It was that song she was singing; at that word 'flow' he pushed open the door of the room.”

Knightley raised his head and drew his hand across his forehead, as though Scrope's whisper had aroused him. Scrope seated himself hurriedly.

”Nothing has changed, eh?” Knightley asked, like a man fresh from his sleep. Then he stood, and quietly, slowly, walked round the table until he stood directly behind Scrope's chair. Scrope's face hardened; he laid the palms of his hands upon the edge of the table ready to spring up; he looked across to Wyley with the expectation of death in his eyes.

One of the officers shuffled his feet. Tessin said ”Hus.h.!.+” Knightley took a step forward and dropped a hand on Scrope's shoulder, very lightly; but none the less Scrope started and turned white as though he had been stabbed.

”Harry,” said the Ensign, ”my--my wife is still in Tangier?”