Part 30 (1/2)

His hand reached out for the letter. With eyes almost blind he raised it, and slowly and mechanically took the doc.u.ment of tragedy from the envelope. Why should Rudyard insist on his reading it? It was a devilish revenge, which he could not resent. But time--he must have time; therefore he would do Rudyard's bidding, and read this thing he had written, look at it with eyes in which Penalty was gathering its mists.

So this was the end of it all--friends.h.i.+p gone with the man before him; shame come to the woman he loved; misery to every one; a home-life shattered; and from the souls of three people peace banished for evermore.

He opened out the pages with a slowness that seemed almost apathy, while the man opposite clinched his hands on the table spasmodically.

Still the music from the other room with cheap, flippant sensuousness stole through the burdened air:

”Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year--”

He looked at the writing vaguely, blindly. Why should this be exacted of him, this futile penalty? Then all at once his sight cleared; for this handwriting was not his--this letter was not his; these wild, pa.s.sionate phrases--this terrible suggestiveness of meaning, these references to the past, this appeal for further hours of love together, this abjectly tender appeal to Jasmine that she would wear one of his white roses when he saw her the next day--would she not see him between eleven and twelve o'clock?--all these words were not his.

They were written by the man who was playing the piano in the next room; by the man who had come and gone in this house like one who had the right to do so; who had, as it were, fed from Rudyard Byng's hand; who lived on what Byng paid him; who had been trusted with the innermost life of the household and the life and the business of the master of it.

The letter was signed, Adrian.

His own face blanched like the face of the man before him. He had braced himself to face the consequences of his own letter to the woman he loved, and he was face to face with the consequences of another man's letter to the same woman, to the woman who had two lovers. He was face to face with Rudyard's tragedy, and with his own.... She, Jasmine, to whom he had given all, for whom he had been ready to give up all--career, fame, existence--was true to none, unfaithful to all, caring for none, but pretending to care for all three--and for how many others? He choked back a cry.

”Well--well?” came the husband's voice across the table. ”There's one thing to do, and I mean to do it.” He waved a hand towards the music-room. ”He's in the next room there. I mean to kill him--to kill him--now. I wanted you to know why, to know all, you, Stafford, my old friend and hers. And I'm going to do it now. Listen to him there!”

His words came brokenly and scarce above a whisper, but they were ghastly in their determination, in their loathing, their blind fury. He was gone mad, all the animal in him alive, the brain tossing on a sea of disorder.

”Now!” he said, suddenly, and, rising, he pushed back his chair. ”Give that to me.”

He reached out his hand for the letter, but his confused senses were suddenly arrested by the look in Ian Stafford's face, a look so strange, so poignant, so insistent, that he paused. Words could not have checked his blind haste like that look. In the interval which followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both, with exasperating insistence:

”Not like the roses shall our love be, dear--”

Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held Rudyard's eyes.

”You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this letter,”

he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, regaining his speech with blanching effort: ”Byng, I think what you think--all you think; but I would not do what you want to do.”

As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon him. Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and that was to be understood--to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate life with another of another s.e.x still untried. With the transition from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a thing twice. This was merely a wilful, miserable degeneracy. Rudyard had been wronged--terribly wronged--by himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came--in truth, he all but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, if no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it was monstrous. It was incredible but yet it was true. Thoughts that overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and whirled through his mind as he read the letter with a.s.sumed deliberation when he saw what it was. He read slowly that he might make up his mind how to act, what to say and do in this crisis. To do--what?

Jasmine had betrayed him long ago when she had thrown him over for Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had married Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second betrayal?

His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness. This business dated far beyond yesterday. The letter furnished that sure evidence.

What to do? Like lightning his mind was made up. What to do? Ah, but one thing to do--only one thing to do--save her at any cost, somehow save her! Whatever she was, whatever she had done, however she had spoiled his life and destroyed forever his faith, yet he too had betrayed this broken man before him, with the look in his eyes of an animal at bay, ready to do the last irretrievable thing. Even as her shameless treatment of himself smote him; lowered him to that dust which is ground from the heels of merciless humanity--even as it sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest depths of his being there came the indestructible thing. It was the thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet prevailing--the indestructible thing.

He knew now in a flash what he had to do. He must save her. He saw that Rudyard was armed, and that the end might come at any moment. There was in the wronged husband's eyes the wild, reckless, unseeing thing which disregards consequences, which would rush blindly on the throne of G.o.d itself to s.n.a.t.c.h its vengeance. He spoke again: and just in time.

”I think what you think, Byng, but I would not do what you want to do.

I would do something else.”

His voice was strangely quiet, but it had a sharp insistence which caused Rudyard to turn back mechanically to the seat he had just left.

Stafford saw the instant's advantage which, if he did not pursue, all would be lost. With a great effort he simulated intense anger and indignation.

”Sit down, Byng,” he said, with a gesture of authority. He leaned over the table, holding the other's eyes, the letter in one clinched hand.

”Kill him--,” he said, and pointed to the other room, from which came the maddening iteration of the jingling song--”you would kill him for his h.e.l.lish insolence, for this infamous attempt to lead your wife astray, but what good will it do to kill him?”