Part 57 (1/2)

”If you'd only told me, Caesar!”

”It was my one hope you should not know.”

”I don't think I've earned that,” he said reproachfully.

”It was myself, not you, I thought of. You've got to know the whole thing now. Go and sit there in your old place and don't look at me till I've finished.”

So Aymer at last reached the moment when he must break the seals of silence--that expected moment that had hung over him like some shadowy fate as a foretaste of judgment, when he must retrace the painful footsteps of his life across the black gulf from which he had climbed.

But as he turned his face to the darkness, there was light also on the other side, and he forgot he had feared.

”Peter and I were friends, as you know. He was five years my senior, but it did not make much difference. He was a worker, just as I was a player. He had tremendous capabilities and he put all his big brain into his work and when he wanted change he came to me. I represented to him the reverse side of his strenuous life and he was oddly fond of me. Before he was thirty he had well started his fortune as he raced to wealth. I raced to ruin and found every inch of the road made easy for me. Peter came into conflict with the socialistic party. There was a certain James Hibbault, who was a great power, and Peter, who was not so heavy a power in those days, employed the wisdom of the serpent to crush him. He came up to London and offered me a chance of new amus.e.m.e.nt in abetting his plans. The Hibbaults were middle cla.s.s people without middle cla.s.s virtues. They lived a scrambling, noisy life propagating their crude ideas and sowing broadcast the seeds of a greater power than they knew. They were, however, a real force to be reckoned with, they and their party, because of certain truths hidden in their wildest creeds--truths which did not suit Peter's creed in the least. He made their acquaintance, and he introduced me to them.

They were sufficiently new to amuse me, but I should have probably have tired of them soon had it not been for your mother.”

He paused a moment. ”Do you remember her, Christopher?”

Christopher nodded.

”Elizabeth Hibbault,” went on Aymer slowly, ”was extraordinarily beautiful, with the beauty of grace rather than of feature. She was as distinct from the rest of her clamorous family as a pearl from pebbles. She was an enthusiast, a dreamer, pa.s.sionately sincere, pa.s.sionately pitiful. She recognised truth as a water diviner finds water. She was brought up in a labyrinth of theories, creeds of equality, in hatred for the rich, and out of all the jargon she gathered some eternal truths which she made her own. She did not live with her people: she had rooms of her own and she was a black-and-white artist. But she was often at the Hibbaults. Peter probably knew her accustomed days. She used to speak of her faiths. It was like one note of gold in the discordant babble. Men came and listened to her and she never knew it was not for her words but for her magnetic wonderful unknown self that they came. She might, and probably did, impress men who were dreamers or fanatics already, but those to whom all her beliefs were childish nonsense went just the same, Peter and I with them.”

He stopped a moment and shot a glance at Christopher, who never moved.

”I lost my interest in Peter's schemes and he ceased to explain them to me, but I still visited Elizabeth at her own rooms when I was allowed. She was very anxious to convert Peter and myself, more especially Peter. I was not in love with her, Christopher, yet, but she fascinated me. I speculated as to how it would be with her if all the fire and devotion she brought to a mere Cause were turned into a more personal direction. She paid more attention to Peter than to myself, and she evidently considered him a more desirable convert. One evening we went together to call on her and they fell into the usual line of discussion, he answering her in a tolerant amused way as if she were a precocious child. I stayed behind when he left and she walked up and down in restless agitation, half forgetful of me. 'The personality of the man!' she cried fiercely, 'he is too strong, he is ruthless! One cannot escape him. I cannot get him out of my head.' I told her she had much better tackle me. She told me plainly that I was a negative force in the world and my cousin an active. That was enough for me. I thought she despised me and I vowed she should recognise my possibilities as well as Peter's. If any man were to turn the pa.s.sionate stream of her nature back on herself, or to love--to see the woman rise above the fanatic--it should be I, not Peter. But I said nothing of this to him. I do not think he ever knew it at all. It began in pique on my side, then jealousy, lastly pa.s.sion. Christopher, if I had loved her from the first beginning of things I should not be ashamed to meet your eyes now. Don't look round yet. I laid deliberate siege to her heart and found she possessed my mind night and day. Soon it was not Peter who was my rival, but her own soul. I was confident I should win, though Peter, it was clear, was also wooing her persistently. He at least meant her well, Christopher. He loved her in his uncomprehending way, wanting her for the woman she was _not_--except in his mind. And I--I wanted her for the outward woman she was.”

He paused long enough for his listener to face clearly the portrait of the worn, broken woman he remembered, the outward woman that bore no likeness to the clear knowledge of the inner soul.

Aymer continued:

”At last I felt it was time to end it. Peter had been in town some time then. I knew the senior Hibbault and he were coming to some understanding, but I guessed nothing of the nature of it. She never mentioned him to me at this time. She stood, poor girl, between the two of us like a trapped creature, and because she feared herself and neither of us, she overstepped one snare to fall into the other.

Christopher, I don't know what was in my mind when I went to her that last evening: I had not seen her for some days, but when I stood before her I knew suddenly I loved her, and then, like a flash, I saw it was neither Peter nor her that stood between us, but my own evil self. I told her all--that she was the victor and I the conquered. I was proud of my new humbleness. For once I recognised myself and my true place in the order of the world. But she knew me better than I guessed, and she was afraid to tell me the truth. She put me off with gentle words, terrified lest I should guess before I left her--Don't turn away, Christopher--At last she owned she had written me a letter and I should find it when I got back. Her att.i.tude maddened me. The better self, if it ever existed, got stamped out. I told her nothing should come between us, that nothing short of death should keep me from her, while I could move hand or foot.”

The white scar on Aymer's forehead was very plain and his face had grown thin and sharp. Christopher for the first time looked up at him and away again.

”I went home at last, Christopher, wild to get this mysterious letter to which she would refer me. I went back and took seven devils with me--my pa.s.sion and love fighting for possession. Nevil and I had a room of our own on the ground floor. I think they use it for storing papers in now.”

Christopher gave a slight movement: he knew that well.

”I went straight in, knowing any letter for me would be taken there.

Nevil was going upstairs as I crossed the hall and he called to me across the banisters that Wayband had sent back my revolver and he had opened it. Revolver shooting was a pa.s.sion just then and I was accounted a crack shot. I answered him savagely and went on. The letter lay on the table. She had been married to Peter two days before at a Registrar's office. I felt I must have known it from eternity, but it caught me on the crest of my fury, it overwhelmed me in a torrent of mad shame and wild jealousy. I had failed--had been beaten at my own game--beaten and fooled by some G.o.d who had used my pa.s.sion for his own ends. Those short minutes of purer love burnt my soul like fire till I raged at my folly. Christopher, I'd give all I have left to say I was mad. I wasn't. I knew what I was doing. The revolver lay there on the table and an open box of cartridges by it. It was the coward's way out of the agony, and I took it. I shot myself--the crack shot of Waybands Club missed his own life by a hair's-breadth.”

Even then, after the long years, Christopher caught an echo of bitterness in the voice. He dully wondered at his own inability to move or speak or send out a thought of consolation to the man who had suffered so fiercely.

Aymer gave a little gasp and was still a moment Then he went on:

”That's all my story, Christopher. Now comes your mother's part of it.

The first result of her marriage was that the Hibbaults' name ceased to be a power for the Socialist party--became less than a power. James Hibbault severed his connection with them entirely. I think Peter gave him a place at one of his big affairs. He had bought them out, and for a time the party fell into disrepute. But Elizabeth, whom he had married, he had not bought. I think she believed she had and could influence him, that she could sway him without loss of her own being.