Part 18 (2/2)
”About--about Arthur? Is it about Arthur?” whispered she, s.h.i.+vering a little.
Philip put his arm round her.
”I can't say. We shall perhaps never know certainly,” he replied. ”But it looks very like it. Listen, dear. Some little time ago--two or three years ago--Maynard spent some days at one of those awful leper settlements--never mind where. I would just as soon you did not know.
There, to his amazement, among the most devoted of the attendants upon the poor creatures he found an Englishman, young still, at least by his own account, though to judge by his appearance it would have been impossible to say. For he was himself far gone, very far gone in some ways, in the disease. But he was, or had been, a man of strong const.i.tution and enormous determination. Ill as he was, he yet managed to tend others with indescribable devotion. They looked upon him as a saint. Maynard did not like to inquire what had brought him to such a pa.s.s--he, the poor fellow, was a perfect gentleman. But the day Sir Abel was leaving, the Englishman took him to some extent into his confidence, and asked him to do him a service. This was his story. Some years before, in quite a different part of the world, the young man had nursed a leper--a dying leper--for some hours. He believed for long that he had escaped all danger, in fact he never thought of it; but it was not so.
There must have been an unhealed wound of some kind--a slight scratch would do it--on his hand. No need to go into the details of his first misgivings, of the horror of the awful certainty at last. It came upon him in the midst of the greatest happiness; he was going to be married to a girl he adored.”
”Oh, Philip, Philip, why did he not tell?” Daisy wailed.
”He consulted the best and greatest physician, who--as a friend, he said--approved of the course he had mapped out for himself. He decided to tell no one, to break off his engagement, and die out of her--the girl's--life; not once, after he was sure, did he see her again. He would not even risk touching her hand. And he believed that telling would only have brought worse agony upon her in the end than the agony he was forced to inflict. For he was a doomed man, though they gave him a few years to live. And he did the only thing he could do with those years. He set off to the settlement in question. Maynard was to call there some months later on his way home, and the young man knew he would be dead then, and so he was. But he showed Maynard a letter explaining all, that he had got ready--all but the address--_that_, he would not add till he was in the act of dying. There must be no risk of her knowing till he was dead. And this letter Maynard was to fetch on his return. He did so, but--there had been no time to add the address--death had come suddenly. All sorts of precautions had been ordered by the poor fellow as to disinfecting the letter and so on. But it did not seem to Maynard that these had been taken. So he contented himself by spreading out the paper on the sea-sh.o.r.e and learning it by heart, and then leaving it. The sum total of it was what I have told you, but not one name was named.”
Daisy was sobbing quietly.
”Was it he?” she said.
”Yes, I feel sure of it,” Philip replied. ”For I can supply the missing link. The one time I really quarrelled with Arthur was when we were in Siberia. He _would_ spend a night in a dying leper's hut. I would have done it myself, I believe and hope, had it been necessary. But by riding on a few miles we could have got help for the poor creature--which indeed I did--and more efficient help than ours. But Lingard was determined, and no ill seemed to come of it. I had almost forgotten the circ.u.mstance. I never a.s.sociated it with the mystery that caused you such anguish, my poor darling.”
”It was he,” whispered Daisy. ”Philip, he was a hero after all.”
”Not even you can feel that, as I do,” Keir replied.
Then they were silent.
A few weeks afterwards came a letter from Lady West, in her far-off South American home. Daisy had not heard from her for years.
”By circuitous ways, I need not explain the details,” she wrote, ”I have learnt that my darling brother is dead. I thought I had better tell you.
I am sure his most earnest wish was that you should live to be happy, dear Daisy, as I trust you are. And I know you have long forgiven him the sorrow he caused you--it was worse still for him.”
”I wonder,” said Daisy, ”if she knows more?”
But the letter seemed to add certainty to their own conviction.
THE CLOCK THAT STRUCK THIRTEEN.
”You misunderstand me wilfully, Helen. I neither said nor inferred anything of the kind.”
”What did you mean then, for if words to you bear a different interpretation from what they do to me, I must trouble you to speak in _my_ language when addressing me,” angrily retorted a young girl, with what nature had intended to be a very pretty face with a charming expression, but which at the present moment was far from deserving the latter part of the description. Eyes flas.h.i.+ng, cheeks burning and hands clenched in the excess of her indignation, stood Helen Beaumont by the window of her pretty little sitting-room, or ”studio” as she loved to call it, presenting a striking contrast to the peaceful scene without; where a carefully tended garden still looked bright with the remaining flowers of late September. Her companion, standing in the att.i.tude invariably a.s.sumed now-a-days by novelists' heroes, namely, leaning against the mantelpiece, was a young man of equally prepossessing appearance with her own. At first glance no one would have suspected him of sharing any of the young lady's excitement, for his expression was so calm as almost to merit the description of sleepy. Looking more closely, however, the signs of some unusual disturbance or annoyance were to be descried, for his face was slightly flushed and his blue eyes had lost the look of sweet temper evidently their ordinary expression.
”What I meant to say, Helen, was not, as you choose to misinterpret it, that I blame you for proper womanly courage and spirit, than which, I consider few things more admirable, nor as you are well aware do I admire the sweetly silly and affectedly timid order of young ladies. But this I do mean and repeat, that I think your persistence in this foolish scheme a piece of sheer bravado and foolhardiness, totally unworthy of any sensible person's approval, and what is more----”
”Thank you, Malcolm, or rather Mr. Willoughby, I have heard quite enough,”--and as she spoke, Helen turned from the window out of which she had been gazing while Malcolm spoke, with, it must be confessed, very little interest in the varied tints of the dahlias blooming in all their rich brilliance on the terrace,--”I have heard quite enough, and think myself exceedingly fortunate in having heard it now before it is too late. You may imagine,” she continued, ”that I am speaking in temper, but it is not so. I have for some time suspected, and now feel convinced, that we are not suited to each other. Your own words bear witness to your opinion of me, 'self-willed, foolhardy, unwomanly,' and I know not what other pretty expressions you have applied to me, and for my part I tell you simply that I cannot and will not marry a man whose opinion of what a woman should be is like yours; and who insults me constantly as you do, by telling me how far short I fall of his ideal.
Marry your ideal, Malcolm Willoughby, and I shall wish you joy of her.
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