Part 36 (1/2)

As he shook hands with the grey-haired woman who stood there with so tragic, so oppressed, a look on her face, there came across him the thought of his own long dead mother, and for a moment he was freed of the terrible happenings of the last few hours.

With an effort he set himself to remember all that he had heard to Bayworth Kaye's credit. Those who had mentioned him had nearly all of them alluded to his reckless bravery, to his indifference to physical danger, to his Victoria Cross....

Ah! it was easy to utter a eulogy of such a son when speaking to the bereaved mother. It was so strange, so tragic, too, that he should have died in the way he had died, of fever. Lingard remembered hearing of the alternate hours of anxiety, of hope, and lastly of despair, through which the unfortunate parents had pa.s.sed between the time they had first heard of their son's illness and of his lonely death.

Mrs. Kaye listened to the kind, heartfelt words of condolence, of respectful pity for herself and for her husband, in silence; and the eyes which she kept fixed on Lingard's face were tearless and very bright. Lingard, moving a little uneasily under their fixed scrutiny, asked himself whether she really heard and understood what he was saying? So far, she had not asked him to sit down.

He remembered a long interview of this kind he had had with another mother. That poor lady had received him surrounded by mementoes of a son who had been a trusty and sure comrade to himself. He recalled the photographs which had been brought out for his inspection, the floods of tears which had punctuated each of his words. But Mrs. Kaye was far more truly stricken than that other mother had been--Mrs. Kaye required no photograph of her son to remind her of his face. She had not yet been granted the relief of tears. Hers was evidently grief of a terrible, a pa.s.sionate intensity.

”It is good of you to say these things to me, General Lingard--and to spare the time to come and see me,” she said at last. ”But I should not have troubled you--I should not have presumed to trouble you, were it not that I wish to consult you about what is to me a very important matter.”

He bowed his head gravely, and sat down in the shabby armchair to which she rather imperiously motioned him.

”I am entirely at your service,” he said quietly. No doubt she wanted some message transmitted to the War Office.

”I have no one else to ask or to consult,” she said in low, rapid tones.

”It is not a matter about which I desire to trouble my husband, and I am glad to think that he knows, as yet, nothing of what I am going to say to you. Whether he has to learn it or not will depend, General Lingard, on your advice.”

Lingard looked at her attentively. He was puzzled and rather disturbed by her words.

”When they told my son he was not likely to live,” she said, ”he persuaded the doctor to allow him to write a letter to me, his mother.”

She stopped a moment, then went on steadily: ”In it he made a certain request. It is about that request I wish to consult you, General Lingard. I wish to know whether you consider that I ought to be bound by his wishes. My son desired that his Victoria Cross and one or two other things which he greatly valued, and which we, his parents, naturally value even more than he valued them, should be handed over, given by us to--to a lady.”

Lingard felt a sudden feeling of recoil from the woman who sat opposite to him, watching for his answer. Then it was jealousy, pathetic but rather ign.o.ble jealousy, that was making poor Mrs. Kaye look as she looked now--jealousy rather than grief....

There came the sound of a motor-car in the road which was above the level of the rectory garden.

It stopped, and Lingard saw through the window Wantele jump out and cross over to where Jane Oglander was walking up and down.

They spoke together for some moments, and Lingard felt a great lightening of his heart. Wantele must be telling Jane the awful thing which had happened, and he, Lingard, would be spared the dreadful task.

Jane came up close to the car. Lingard could not see the expression on her face. At last, or so it seemed to him, they both got in under the hood.

So Jane, breaking her promise to wait for him, had gone on to the house?

Making a determined effort over himself, Lingard forced himself to return to the matter--the painful, the rather absurd matter--in hand.

”I suppose you know all the circ.u.mstances,” he began awkwardly.

”The circ.u.mstances, General Lingard, are perfectly simple.” The fingers of Mrs. Kaye's thin right hand plucked nervously at the b.u.t.tons which fastened her black woollen bodice. ”The lady in question is a married woman. She got hold of my boy, and she bewitched him into forgetting the meaning of what I thought he valued more than life itself--his honour.”

She rose up and stared down at Lingard, and there was a terrible look on her face.

”Having amused herself for the best part of a year--having got from him all she wanted--she threw my son aside like a squeezed orange. His heart was broken, General Lingard. I cannot doubt he allowed himself to die.