Part 86 (2/2)
”Then do not tell me.” She said it almost in a whisper. ”Dr. Saxham, I beg you most earnestly to spare yourself.” She dropped her eyes under the fierce earnestness of his, and knitted her cold little hands in one another. ”Please leave the rest unsaid,” she begged, without looking at him.
”It cannot be,” said Saxham. ”Miss Mildare, the Dop Doctor was only another nickname for the Town Drunkard. And now you know what you should have known before if I had not been a coward and a knave.”
She turned her eyes softly upon him, and they could not rest, it seemed to her, upon a man of braver and more lofty bearing.
”I _was_ the Town Drunkard,” Saxham went on, in the cold, clear voice that cut like a knife to the intelligence. ”Known in every liquor-saloon, and familiar to every constable, and a standing b.u.t.t for the clumsy jests that the most utter dolt of a Police Magistrate might splutter from the Bench.”
His jarring laugh hurt her. ”The Man in the Street, and the Woman of the Street, for that matter--pardon me if I offend your ears, but the truth must be told--were my G.o.dfather and my G.o.dmother, and they gave me that name between them. You are trembling, Miss Mildare. Sit down upon that balk, and I will finish.”
There was a remnant of timber lying near that had been used in the construction of a gun-mounting. She moved to it and sat down, and the Doctor went on:
”I am not going to weary you with the story of how I came to be--what I have told you. But that I had lived a clean and honourable and temperate life up to thirty years of age--when my world caved in with me--I swear is the very truth!”
She said gently: ”I can believe it, Dr. Saxham.”
”Even if you could not it would not alter the fact. And then, at the height of my success, and on the brink of a marriage that I dreamed would bring me the fulfilment of every hope a man may cherish, one impulse of pity and charity towards a wretched little woman brought me ruin, ruin, ruin!”
Pity for a wretched woman had brought it all about. She was glad to see the Saxham of her knowledge in that Saxham whom she had not known. He folded his great arms upon his broad breast and went on:
”Nothing was left to me. Everything was gone. Rehabilitation in the eyes of the Law--for I gained that much--did not clear me in the eyes of Society--that hugs the guilt-stained criminal to its heart in the full consciousness of what his deeds are, and shudders at the innocent man upon whom has once fallen the shadow of that grim and b.l.o.o.d.y Idol that civilisation misnames Justice. I was cast out. Even by the brother I had trusted and the woman I had loved. I had in a vague way believed in G.o.d until then; I know I used to pray to Him to bless those I loved, and help me to achieve great things for their sakes. But nothing at all was left of that except a dull aching desire to throw back in the face of the Deity the little He had left to me. My health, and my intellectual powers, and my self-respect....”
Her voice came to his ears in the half-whispered words:
”Had He left you so little, after all?”
”Little enough,” said Saxham doggedly, ”compared with what I had lost. And as it is the privilege of the Christian to blame either the Almighty or the devil for whatever ills are brought on him by his own blind, reckless challenging of the Inevitable--termed Fate and Destiny by cla.s.sical Paganism,--so I found myself at odds with One I had been taught to call my Maker.”
In His own acre, close to her beloved dead, with all those little white crosses marking where other dust that had once praised Him with the human voice lay waiting for the summons of the Resurrection, it was incredibly awful to her to hear Him thus denied. She grew pale and shuddered, and Saxham saw.
”You see that I wish to be honest with you, and open and above-board. I would not ever have you say to yourself, 'This man deceived--this man misled me, wis.h.i.+ng me to think him better than he was.' There is not much more to tell you--save that I took what money remained to me at the bank and from the sale of my last possessions--about a thousand pounds--and shook the dust off from my shoes, and came out here, drunk, to carry out my purpose of self-degradation to the uttermost. And I became a foul beast among beasts that were even fouler, but less vile and less shameful because their mental and moral standard was infinitely lower than my own.
And they gave me the name you know of.” His voice had the ring of steel smitten on steel. He drew himself up with a movement of almost savage pride, and the knotted veins swelled on his broad white forehead, and his blue eyes blazed under his thunderous smudge of black eyebrows.
”The name you know. It used to be called after me when I reeled the streets--they whispered it afterwards as I rode by. To-day it is forgotten.” His nostrils quivered, and he threw out his hands as if with that action he tossed something worthless to the winds. ”Miss Mildare, I have not touched Drink--the stuff that was my nourishment and my sustenance, my comfort and my bane, my deadliest enemy and my only friend--since that hour when with the last effort of my will I rallied all my mental and bodily forces to resist its base allurement.”
”I know it, Dr. Saxham. I am sure of it.” She rose and held out her hands to him, but he folded his arms more closely over his starving, famished heart, and would not see them yet.
”You can be sure of it. Alcohol is no longer my master and my G.o.d. I stand before you a free man, because I willed to be free.” There was a little blob of foam at one corner of his mouth, but the square pale face was composed, even impa.s.sive. ”Once, not so long ago, I filled a place of standing in the professions of Surgery and Medicine; I knew what it was to be esteemed and respected by the world. For your dear sake I promise to regain what I have lost; be even more than I used to be, achieve greater things than are done by other men of equal powers with mine. I am not a man to pledge my word lightly, Miss Mildare....” His voice shook now and his blue eyes glistened. ”If you would be so--so unutterably kind as to become my wife, I promise you a worthy husband. I swear to you upon what I hold dearest and most sacred--your own life, your own honour, your own happiness, never to give you cause to regret marrying me! For I may die, indeed, but living I will never fail you!”
There was a lump in her throat choking her. Her eyes had gone to that other grave some fifty paces distant from the Catholic portion of the Cemetery. There were freshly-gathered flowers upon it, as upon the grave that lay so near, and two gorgeous b.u.t.terflies were hovering about the blooms, in mingled dalliance and greediness.
”You loved him,” said Saxham, following the journey of her wistful eyes.
”Love him still; remember him for every trait and quality of his that was worthy of love from you. But give me the hope of one day gaining from you some shadow of--of return for what I feel for you. Is it Pa.s.sion? I hardly know. Whether it is Love, in the sense in which that word is employed by many of the women and nearly all the men I have met, I do not know either.
But that it is the life of my life to me and the breath of my being--you cannot look at me and doubt!”
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