_ PART III CHAPTER XIII. THE TRUTH
He went with careless tread as his fashion was, whistling the gay air to which all England was dancing that season. His swarthy countenance wore the half-mischievous, half-amused expression with which it was his custom to confront--and baffle--the world at large. No one knew what lay behind that facile mask. Only the very few suspected that it hid aught beyond a genial wickedness of a curiously attractive type.
His spurs rang upon the white stones, and Sheila Melrose, standing beside her father's car in the shadow of some buildings, turned sharply and saw him. Her face was pale; it had a strained expression. But it changed at sight of him. She regarded him with that look of frozen scorn which once she had flung him when they had met in the garish crowd at Valrosa.
Bunny was stooping over the car, but he became aware of Saltash almost in the same moment, and stood up straight to face him. Sheila was pale, but he was perfectly white, and there were heavy drops of perspiration on his forehead. He looked full at Saltash with eyes of blazing accusation.
Saltash's face never changed as he came up to the car. He ceased to whistle, but the old whimsical look remained. He seemed unaware of any tension.
"Car all right?" he asked smoothly. "Can I lend a hand? The general is beginning to move."
Sheila turned without a word and got into the car.
Bunny neither moved nor spoke. He stood like a man paralysed. It was Saltash who, with that royal air of amusing himself, stooped to the handle and started the engine.
The girl at the wheel did not even thank him. She looked beyond. Only as he stood aside and the car slid forward, she turned stiffly to Bunny.
"Good-bye!" she said.
He made a jerky movement. Their eyes met for a single second. "You will write?" he said.
His throat was working spasmodically, the words seemed to come with gigantic effort. She bent her head in answer and passed between them through the white gate into the drive that led round to the house.
Saltash turned with a lightning movement to Bunny. "Walk back with me and we can talk!" he said.
Bunny drew sharply back. The movement was one of instinctive recoil. But still no words came. He stood staring at Saltash, and he was trembling from head to foot.
"Don't be an ass now!" Saltash said, and his voice was oddly gentle, even compassionate. "You've stumbled on a mare's nest. It's all right. I can explain."
Bunny controlled himself with a jerk. His face was like death, but he found his voice. "You can keep your damned lies to yourself," he said. "I've no use for them."
The prod of a riding-switch against his shoulder made him start as a spirited animal starts at the touch of a spur. But Saltash only laughed.
"You'll fight me for that!" he said.
"I wouldn't touch you!" flung back Bunny.
"Oh, wouldn't you?" The odd eyes mocked him openly. "Then you withdraw the insult--with apologies?"
"Apologise--to you!" said Bunny.
"Or fight!" said Saltash. "I think that would do you more good than the other, but you shall decide."
"I will do neither," said Bunny, and turned his back with the words. "I've--done with you."
"You're wrong!" said Saltash. "You've got to face it, and you won't get the truth from anyone but me. That girl knows nothing, Bunny!" His voice was suddenly curt, with that in it which very few ever heard. "Turn around! Do you hear? Turn round--damn you! I'll kick you if you don't!"
Bunny turned. It was inevitable. They stood face to face. Then Saltash, the mockery gone from his eyes, reached out abruptly and gripped him by the arm. His touch was electric. For that moment--only for that moment--he was dangerous. There was something of the spring of a tiger in his action.
"You damn fool!" he said, and he spoke between his teeth. "Do you suppose even I would play such a blackguard's game as that?"
"Let me go!" Bunny said through white lips. "Facts are facts."
Saltash's hold did not slacken. "Where's Jake?" he said.
"Jake's away."
"Confound him! Just when he's wanted!" The ferocity died out of Saltash like the glow from cinders blown from a furnace. "Well, listen! I swear to you by all that is sacred that you're making a mistake. Sheila has told you a certain thing that is true, so far as it goes. But you've let your imagination run away with you. The rest is false."
He spoke with an emphasis that carried weight, and Bunny was moved in spite of himself. His own fire died down.
Saltash saw his advantage and pressed it. "If Jake were here, he'd tell you I was speaking the truth, and you'd believe him. You're on a wrong scent. So far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to follow it to blazes. I'm used to pleasantries of that sort from my friends. But I'm damned if I'll let that child be tripped for nothing. Do you hear, Bunny?" He shook the arm he gripped impatiently. "I'll see you in hell first!"
Bunny's mouth twisted with a painful effort to smile. "I'm in hell now," he said.
"Why the devil did you listen?" said Saltash. "Look here! We've got to have this thing out. Send a man along with my horse and walk across the park with me!"
He had gained his point by sheer insistence, and he knew it. Bunny knew it also and cursed himself for a weak fool as he moved to comply. With Saltash's blade through his heart, he yet could somehow find it possible to endure him.
He went with him in silence, hating the magnetism he found it impossible to resist. They passed through the shrubberies that skirted the house, and so to the open down.
Then in his sudden fashion, crudely and vehemently, Saltash began his defence.
"It's not my way," he said, "to give an answer to any man who questions; but you haven't stooped to question. So I tell you the truth. Sheila saw Toby working as a page at the Casino Hotel at Valrosa. That right? I thought so. It's the whole matter in a nutshell. I must have seen her too, but never noticed her till my last night in the place. Then I found Antonio hammering the poor little beggar out in the garden, and I stopped it. You'd have done the same. Afterwards, late that night, I went on board the yacht and found her down in the saloon--a stowaway. The yacht had started. I could have put back. I didn't. You wouldn't have done either. She took refuge with me. I sheltered her. She came to me as a boy. I treated her as such."
"You knew?" flung in Bunny.
Saltash's grin flashed across his dark features like a meteor through a cloudy sky and was gone. "I--suspected, _mon ami_. But--I did not even tell myself." That part of him that was French--a species of volatile sentimentality--sounded in the words like the echo of a laugh in a minor key. "I made a valet of her. I suffered her to clean my boots and brush my clothes. I kept her in order--with this--upon occasion."
He held up the switch he carried.
"I don't believe it," said Bunny bluntly.
Saltash's shoulders went up. "You please yourself, _mon cher_. I am telling you the truth. I treated her like a puppy. I was kind to her, but never extravagantly kind. But I decided--eventually I decided--that it was time to turn home. No game can last forever. So we returned, and on our last night at sea we were rammed and sunk. Naturally that spoilt--or shall I say somewhat precipitated?--my plans. We were saved, the two of us together. And then was started that scandalous report of the woman on the yacht." Again the laughter sounded in his voice. "You see, _mon ami_, how small a spark can start a conflagration. In self-defence I had to invent something, and I invented it quickly. I said she was Larpent's daughter. I wonder if you would have thought of that. You'd have done it if you had, I'll wager."
He turned upon the boy who strode in silence by his side with a gleam of triumph in his eyes, but there was no answering gleam in Bunny's. He moved heavily, staring straight before him, his face drawn in hard lines of misery.
"Well," Saltash said, "that's all I have done. You now know the truth, simple and unadorned, as Sheila Melrose in her simplicity does not know it and probably would not comprehend it if she did."
"Leave her out of it!" said Bunny, in a strangled voice. "It was--the obvious conclusion."
"Oh, the obvious!" Cynicism undisguised caught up the word. "Only the young and innocent can ever really say with any conviction what is the obvious way of blackguards. You don't know it--neither do I. A single decent impulse on the part of a blackguard can upset all the calculations of the virtuous. Oh, Bunny, you fool, what do you want to wreck things for at this stage? Can't you see you've got a gift from the gods? Take it, man, and be thankful that you're considered worthy of it!"
Bunny made a sharp movement of protest. Saltash was looking at him with half-humorous compassion as one looks at a child with a damaged toy, and he was keenly conscious of being at a disadvantage. But though checked, he was not defeated. Saltash had made out a case for himself. He had in a measure vindicated Toby. But that was not the end of the matter.
He stopped and faced him. "Why were you so anxious for me to marry her?" he said. "I've got to know that."
He was instantly aware that Saltash eluded him, even though he seemed to meet his look as he made reply. "You are quite welcome to know it, _mon ami_. I chance to take a fatherly interest in you both."
Bunny flinched a little. Something in the light reply had pierced him though he could not have said how. "That's all?" he asked rather thickly.
"That is quite all," said Saltash, and faintly smiled--the smile of the practised swordsman behind the blade.
Bunny stood for some moments regarding him, his boyish face stern and troubled. Up to that point, against his will, he had believed him; from it, he believed him no longer. But--he faced the truth however it might gall him--he was pitted against a skilled fencer, and he was powerless. Experience could baffle him at every turn.
"Do you tell me you have never realized that she cared for you?" he blurted forth abruptly, and there was something akin to agony in his utterance of the words. He knew that he was baring his breast for the stroke as he forced them out.
But Saltash did not strike. Just for an instant he showed surprise. Then--quite suddenly he lowered his weapon. He faced Bunny with a smile of comradeship.
"Quite honestly, Bunny," he said, "if I had realized it, it wouldn't have made any difference. I have no use for sentimental devotion at my age. She has never been more to me than--a puppy that plays with your hand."
"Ah," Bunny said, and swung away from him with the words. "I suppose that is how you treat them all. Women and dogs--they're very much alike."
"Not in every respect," said Saltash. "I should say that Toby is an exception anyway. She knows play from earnest."
"Does she?" said Bunny. He paused a moment, as if trying to concentrate his forces; then he turned to Saltash again. "I'm going back now. I can't dine with you--though I've no desire to quarrel. But you see--you must understand--that I can never--accept anything from you again. I'm sorry--but I can't."
"What are you going to do?" said Saltash.
Bunny hesitated, his boyish face a white mask of misery.
Saltash reached out a second time and touched him lightly, almost caressingly, with the point of his switch. "What's the matter with you, Bunny?" he said. "Think I've lied to you?"
Bunny met his look. "I don't want to quarrel with you," he said. "It isn't--somehow it isn't--worth it."
"Thanks!" said Saltash, and briefly laughed. "You place my friendship at a pretty high figure then. Tell me what you're going to do!"
"What is it to you what I do?" A quick gleam shone for an instant in Bunny's eyes, dispelling the look of stricken misery. "I'm not asking you to help me."
"I've grasped that," said Saltash. "But even so, I may be able to lend a hand. As you say, there is not much point in our quarrelling. There's nothing to quarrel about that I can see--except that you've called me a liar for no particular good reason!"
"Do you object to that?" said Bunny.
Saltash made a careless gesture. "Perhaps---as you say--it isn't worth it. All the same, I've a certain right to know what you propose to do, since, I gather, I have not managed to satisfy you."
"A right!" flashed Bunny.
"Yes, a right." Saltash's voice was suddenly and suavely confident. "You may forget--or possibly you may remember--that I gave my protection to Nonette on the day she came to me for it, and I have never withdrawn it since. What matters to her--matters to me."
"I see." Bunny stood stiffly facing him. "I am responsible to you, am I?"
"That is what I am trying to convey," said Saltash.
The fire in Bunny's eyes leapt high for a moment or two, then died down again. Had Jake been his opponent, he would have flung an open challenge, but somehow Saltash, with whom he had never before striven in his life, was less easy to resist. In some subtle fashion he seemed able to evade resistance and yet to gain his point.
He gained his point on this occasion. Almost before he knew it, Bunny had yielded.
"I am going to her," he said, "to ask her for the whole truth--about her past."
"Is any woman capable of telling the truth to that extent?" questioned Saltash.
"I shall know if she doesn't," said Bunny doggedly.
"And will that help?" The note of mockery that was never long absent from his voice sounded again. "Isn't it possible--sometime--to try to know too much? There is such a thing as looking too closely, _mon ami_. And then we pay the price."
"Do you imagine I could ever be satisfied not knowing?" said Bunny.
Saltash shrugged his shoulders. "I merely suggested that you are going the wrong way to satisfy yourself. But that is your affair, not mine. The gods have sent you a gift, and because you don't know what it is made of, you are going to pull it to pieces to find out. And presently you will fling it away because you cannot fit it together again. You don't realize--you never will realize--that the best things in life are the things we never see and only dimly understand."
A vein of sincerity mingled with the banter in his voice, and Bunny was aware of a curious quality of reverence, of something sacred in a waste place.
It affected him oddly. Convinced though he was that in one point at least Saltash had sought to deceive him it yet influenced him very strongly in Saltash's favour. Against his judgment, against his will even, he saw him as a friend.
"Do you mean to tell me," he said, speaking slowly, his eyes upon the swarthy, baffling countenance, "that you have never even tried to know where she came from--what she is?"
Saltash made a quick gesture as of remonstrance. "_Mon ami_, the last I have always known. The first I have never needed to know."
"Then," Bunny spoke with difficulty, but his look never wavered, "tell me--as before God--tell me what you believe her to be!"
"What I know her to be," corrected Saltash, "I will tell you--certainly. She is a child who has looked into hell, but she is still--a child."
"What do you mean?" questioned Bunny.
Saltash's eyes, one black, one grey, suddenly flashed a direct challenge into his own. "I mean," he said, "that the flame has scorched her, but it has never actually touched her."
"You know that?" Bunny's voice was hoarse. There was torture in his eyes. "Man--for God's sake--the truth!"
"It is the truth," Saltash said.
"How do you know it? You've no proof. How can you be sure?" He could not help the anguish of his voice. The words fell harsh and strained.
"How do I know it?" Saltash echoed the words sharply. "What proof? Bunny, you fool, do you know so little of the world--of women--as that? What proof do you need? Just--look into her eyes!"
A queer note of passion sounded in his own voice, and it told Bunny very clearly that he was grappling with the naked truth at last. It arrested him in a moment. He suddenly found that he could go no further. There was no need.
Impulsively, with an inarticulate word of apology, he thrust out his hand. Saltash's came to meet it in a swift, hard grip.
"Enough?" he asked, with that odd, smiling grimace of his that revealed so little.
And, "Yes, enough!" Bunny said, looking him straight in the face.
They parted almost without words a few minutes later. There was no more to be said. _