Part 32 (1/2)

Then he asked suddenly:

”Had you any motive, any reason for your suspicion?”

”It was the name Crichton--the man's pseudonym on the _Outcry_. It flashed across me then that she was after Lightmark. He was just severing his connection with the paper. He had always kept it very close, and I dare say I was one of the few persons who were in the secret. That is why, at the bottom of his heart, he is afraid of me--afraid that I shall bring it up. It's the one thing he is ashamed of.”

”I see, I see,” cried Rainham wearily; ”the wretched fellow!”

”Dear man, why should we think of him?” broke in Oswyn; ”he isn't worth it. Now of all seasons can't we find a topic less unsavoury?”

”You don't understand,” continued Rainham, after a slight pause in his thin, far-away voice. ”I am not thinking of him, or only indirectly. I have found him out, and I should be content enough to forget him if it were possible. Only, unfortunately, he happens to be inextricably entangled with all that is most sacred, most important to me. It is of his wife--Mrs. Lightmark: do you know her?--that I think.”

Oswyn shook his head.

”I know her only by sight, as we all do; she is very beautiful.”

”I don't mind telling you that I have considered her a great deal--yes, immensely. I should not speak of it--of her--unless I were dying; but, after all, when one is dying, there are things one may say. I have held my peace so long. And since I have been lying here I have had time to ponder it, to have thought it all out. It seems to me that simply for her sake someone should know before--before the occasion pa.s.ses--just the plain truth. Of course, Sylvester by rights ought to be the man, only I can't ask him to come to me--there are reasons; and, besides, he is an a.s.s.”

”Yes, he is an a.s.s,” admitted Oswyn simply; ”that is reason enough.”

And just then there flashed into his mind the one notable occasion on which the barrister had run across him, his intriguing letter and the ineffectual visit which had followed it--ineffectual as he had supposed, but which might nevertheless, he reflected now, have had its results, ironical and inopportune enough. It was a memory of no importance, and yet it seemed just then to be the last of a long train of small lights that led to a whole torch of illumination, in which the existence of little Margot and her quaint juxtaposition with his friend, which in his general easy att.i.tude towards the fantastic he had not troubled to investigate, was amply and generously justified. He turned round suddenly, caught his friend's thin hand, which he held.

”Ah, don't trouble to explain, to make me understand,” he murmured.

”It's enough that I understand you have done something very fine, that you are the most generous of men.”

Rainham was silent for a moment: he had no longer the physical capacity of smiling; but there was a gleam of the old humour in his eyes, as he replied:

”Only the most fortunate--in my friends; they are so clever, they see things so quickly. You make this very easy.”

Oswyn did not s.h.i.+ft for a while from his position: he was touched, moved more deeply than he showed; and there was a trace of emotion in his voice--of something which resembled envy.

”The happy woman! It is she who ought to know, to understand.”

”It is for that I wished to tell you,” went on Rainham faintly, ”that she might know some day, that there might be just one person who could give her the truth in its season. Yes! I wanted her to be always in ignorance of what she had made of her life, of the kind of man she has married. She was such a child; it seemed too pitiful. It was for that I did it, d.a.m.ned myself in her eyes, to give her a little longer--a sort of respite. Very likely I made a mistake!

Those things can't be concealed for ever, and the longer the illusion lasts, the more bitter the awakening. Only if it might serve her later, in her darkest hour, as a sort of after-thought, it won't have been quite vain. That is how I see it now: I want her to know immensely--to know that she has always been unspeakably dear to me. Ah, don't mistake me! It's not for myself, it's not yet; I shall have done with life, done with love, by that time. When one is as tired as I am, death seems very good; only it hasn't those things.

Nothing can make any difference to me; I am thinking of her, that some day or other it will be for her benefit to understand, to remember----”

”To remember?”

”Yes, to remember,” repeated Rainham quietly, ”that her unhappiness has its compensation; if she has been bitterly wronged, she has also been fervently loved.”

The other said nothing for a long time, simply considered the situation which Rainham's words, and still more even than anything that he had said, the things that he had not said, had strikingly revealed to him, leaving him, at the last, in a state of mingled emotions over which, perhaps, awe predominated.

At last he remarked abruptly:

”It _is_ you who are fortunate; you are so nearly done with it all; you've such a long rest before you.” Then he added with a new solemnity: ”You may trust me, Rainham. When it is seasonable, Mrs.

Lightmark shall know the truth. Perhaps she will come to me for it-- Heaven knows!--stranger things have happened. You have my hand upon it; I think you are right.”