_ PART III CHAPTER VIII. THE TRUTH
In answer to her husband's low knock, Chris turned from her dressing-table. She had switched on the electric light, and had taken down her hair, preparatory to dressing for dinner. It hung all about her in magnificent ripples of ruddy light and shade. Her face, in the midst of it, looked very small and tired. She was clad in a plain white wrapper, that fell away from her neck and arms, giving her a very childish appearance.
"Yes, I'm getting up," she said, with the flicker of a smile. "I couldn't sleep."
He entered and closed the door behind him in silence.
"Has Aunt Philippa gone?" she asked.
He responded briefly, "Three hours ago."
"Ah!" She stretched out her arms with the gesture of one freed from an irksome burden, but they fell again immediately, almost as if a fresh burden had taken its place.
She stood for a few seconds motionless, looking straight before her. Finally, with a hint of nervousness, she turned her eyes upon her husband; they shone intensely blue in the strong light.
"We shall soon be quite alone," she said.
His eyes did not answer hers. They looked remote and cold. "Come and sit down," he said.
He seated himself on the couch from which she had just risen. Chris caught up a slide from the dressing-table, and fastened back her hair with fingers that trembled inexplicably.
Then she went to him. "Trevor," she said, and there was pleading in her voice, "do you know, I don't want to talk about anything. I think one gets over some troubles best that way. Do you mind?"
He took her wrists very quietly, and drew her down beside him. "What were you trying to tell me this afternoon?" he said.
She shivered and turned her face away. "Nothing, really nothing. I was foolish and upset. Please let me forget it."
She would have withdrawn from his hold, but his hands tightened upon her. "Won't you reconsider the matter?" he asked. "It would be better for us both if you told me of your own accord."
"Trevor!" She turned to him swiftly, flashing into his face a look of such wild alarm that he was touched, in spite of himself.
"My dear," he said, "I have no wish to frighten you. But you must see for yourself that it is utterly impossible for us to go on like this. You are keeping something from me. I want you to tell me quite quietly and without prevarication what it is."
She turned white to the lips. "There is nothing, Trevor. Indeed, there is nothing," she said.
His face changed, grew stern, grew implacable. He bent towards her, still holding her firmly by the wrists. He looked closely into her eyes, and in his own was neither accusation nor condemnation, only a deep and awful questioning that seemed to probe her through and through.
"For Heaven's sake," he said, "don't lie to me!"
And Chris shrank, shrank from that dread scrutiny as she would have shrunk from naked steel. She did not attempt to speak another word.
For seconds that seemed to her agonized senses like hours, he held her so, waiting, waiting for she knew not what. Her heart thumped within her like the heart of a terrified creature fleeing for its life. She began to pant audibly through the silence. The strain was more than she could bear.
"Chris!" he said.
She started violently; every pulse leaped, every nerve jarred. But she did not lift her eyes to his; she could not.
"Don't tremble," he said, his voice very cold and even. "Just tell me the truth. Begin with what happened at Valpre."
Her white lips quivered. "What--how much--do you know?"
"I will tell you that," he said, "when you have answered me quite fully and unreservedly."
She cast an imploring look at him that did not reach his eyes. "But, Trevor, nothing happened," she told him piteously. "That is to say, nothing beyond--" She broke off short. "I was only a child. I didn't know," she ended, in a confused murmur.
"What didn't you know?" Stern and pitiless came the question. His hands were holding her wrists tightly locked. There was compulsion in their grasp.
She answered him because she could not help it, but her words were wild and incoherent. "I didn't know what it meant. I didn't see the harm of it. I was too young. It all happened before I realized. And even then--even then--I didn't understand--that it was serious--until--until-- the duel. Trevor--Trevor, you are hurting me!"
His hold relaxed, but he did not set her free. "Was that duel fought on your account?" he asked.
"Yes," she whispered.
"In what way?"
She was silent.
"Answer me," he said.
She clenched her hands in sudden, strenuous rebellion. "I don't know. I never heard."
"Was it because you had compromised yourself with Bertrand de Montville?"
Very deliberately he asked the question, so deliberately that she could not evade it.
"It is not fair to--to put it like that," she said.
"I am waiting to hear your own version," he told her grimly.
"You have only heard Aunt Philippa's, so far?" she hazarded.
"I have heard nothing whatever about what happened at Valpre from your aunt," he answered. "But that is beside the point. Are you quite incapable of telling me the truth?"
She winced sharply. "Trevor! Why are you so cruel? I have done nothing wrong."
"Then look at me!" he said.
But she would not, for his eyes terrified her. Nor could she bring herself to speak of Valpre under their piercing scrutiny. Only close-locked in his arms could she have poured out the poor little secret that she had sacrificed so much to keep. Not the nature of the adventure itself, but the fact that she had given her love to the man who had shared it with her, held her silent. She could not spread her love before those pitiless eyes, and to disclose the one without the other had become impossible to her.
And so she remained silent, counting the seconds as she felt his forbearance ebb away.
When at last he moved and released her, she cowered almost as if she expected a blow. Yet when he spoke, though there was in his tone a subtle difference, his words came with absolute composure. She could almost have imagined that he was smiling.
"Since you refuse to be open with me," he said, "you compel me to draw my own conclusions. Now, with regard to this letter which you received a week ago from Captain Rodolphe--you have another letter from him somewhere in your possession?"
He took the missive from his pocket and opened it as if he would read it again. But the sight was too much for Chris. It tortured her beyond endurance, galvanizing her into sudden, unconsidered action. She snatched it from him and tore it passionately into fragments.
"You shall not!" she cried. "You shall not!"
With the words she sprang to her feet, and stood before him, goaded to frenzy, challenging his calm.
"Where did you find it?" she demanded.
"It was found on the terrace," he said.
She flung out a trembling hand. "Ah! Then I dropped it that night that my dress caught fire. I thought it was burnt. And you found it--you dared to read it!"
He did not attempt to explain his action. Perhaps he realized he was more likely to obtain the truth from her thus than by endless cross-questioning. "Yes, I have read it," he said.
She made a desperate gesture. "And because of this--because of this--you--you accuse me of--"
"I have accused you of nothing," he said sternly. "I have only asked you to tell me the truth. I hoped you would do so of your own free will, but since you will not--"
"Yes?" she cried back. "Since I will not--?"
"I shall find another means," he answered.
He rose abruptly. They stood face to face. There was no shrinking about Chris now. She was braced to defiance.
"Where is that other letter?" he said.
"I have destroyed it."
She uttered the words with quivering triumph, strung to a fever-pitch of excitement in which fear had no part.
His eyes went to her jewel-drawer.
"It is not there," she said. "The letter I hid there was the one you have just read."
She spoke rapidly, but she was no longer incoherent. Her words came without effort, and he knew that she was telling the truth as the victim in a torture-chamber might tell it, because she was goaded thereto and incapable at the moment of doing otherwise. He also knew that, notwithstanding this, she was scarcely aware of what she said. Out of the agony of her soul, because the pain was unbearable, she had yielded without knowing it.
"I only kept this letter," she said, "in case he ever asked for more. But it doesn't matter now--nothing will ever matter any more. You know the worst, and"--fiercely--"you are welcome to know it. I--I'm even glad! I've nothing left to be afraid of."
She drew in her breath hysterically. She was on the verge of dreadful laughter, but she caught it back, instinctively aware that she must keep her strength--this unwonted strength of desperation that had come to her--as long as possible.
He heard her without emotion. His face was grim and mask-like, frozen into hard, unyielding lines.
"It is certainly best that I should know it," he said. "But I have not yet heard all. How much did this Rodolphe charge for his silence?"
She had almost answered him before she remembered, and checked the words upon her lips. "No, I don't think I need tell you that," she said.
"That is better than telling me a lie," he rejoined. "As a matter of fact, there is no need, as you say, for you to tell me. I know what sum he asked for, and I know how he obtained it."
He spoke with steady conviction, his eyes unwaveringly upon her. For seconds now she had endured his look without flinching. As she had said, there was nothing left for her to fear. But at his words her face changed, and unmistakable apprehension took the place of despair.
"No, no!" she said quickly. "He did not obtain it in that way. At least--at least--Trevor, I swear to you that Bertrand knew nothing of that."
"You need not take that trouble," he said coldly.
She gripped her hands together. "You don't believe me--but it is the truth. Bertrand never knew that I had heard from Captain Rodolphe."
"You deceived him too, then?" Pitilessly he asked the question. He also had begun to feel that nothing could ever matter any more.
She wrung her hands in anguish. Her face was still raised to his, white and strained and desperate--the face of a woman who would never dissemble with him again. "Yes," she said, "I deceived him too."
"Then"--slowly he uttered the words--"it was you who forged my name upon that cheque? It actually was you whom he was shielding? And you tell me that he did not know what it was for?"
"He did not know," she said. She would not have given such an explanation of her own volition at that moment, but--since upon this point she could not tell him the truth--it was simpler to let it pass. What did it matter, after all? Let him think her a thief also if he would! She was past caring what he thought.
"And when do you expect to meet again?" Mordaunt asked, with great distinctness.
She flinched as if he had struck her. "Oh, haven't you tortured me enough?" she said.
His jaw hardened. He stepped suddenly to her and took her by the shoulders. His eyes appalled her. It was as if a devil looked out of them. She shrank away from him in sheer physical terror.
"Oh, you needn't be afraid," he said. "I shan't hurt you. Why should I? You are nothing to me. But--for the last time--let me hear you speak the truth. You love this man?"
The words, curt and cold, might have fallen from the lips of a stranger, so impersonal were they, so utterly devoid of any emotion.
Wide-eyed, she faced him, for she could not look away with his hands upon her, compelling her.
"You love this man?" he repeated, his speech still cold but incisive--a sharp weapon probing for the truth.
She caught her quivering nerves together, and valiantly answered him. "I do!" she said. "I do!" And as she spoke, the power within her surged upwards, defying constraint, dominating her with a mastery irresistible. She suddenly stripped her heart bare of all reserve and showed him the love that agonized there. "I have always loved him!" she said. "I shall love him till I die!"
It was a woman's confession, in which triumph and anguish were strangely mingled. In a calmer moment she would never have made it, but that moment was supreme, and she had no choice. Regardless of all consequences, she told the burning truth. She would have told it with his hands upon her throat.
In the silence that followed the avowal she even waited for violence. But she was unafraid. The greatness of the power that possessed her had lifted her above all fear. She trod the heights where fear is not. And all-unconsciously, in that moment she won a battle which she had deemed irrevocably lost.
Mordaunt's hands fell from her, setting her free. "In Heaven's name," he said, "why didn't you go with him?"
She did not understand his tone. It held neither anger nor contempt, and so quiet was it that she could still have fancied it almost indifferent. Yet, inexplicably, it cut her to the heart.
"I'll tell you the truth!" she said, a little wildly. "I--I would have gone with him. I offered--I begged--to go. But he--he sent me back."
"Why?" Again that deadly quietness of utterance, as though, indeed, a dead man spoke.
Her throat began to work spasmodically, though she had no desire to weep. She felt as if her heart were bleeding from a mortal wound.
With an effort that nearly choked her, she made reply.
"He said--it was--my duty."
"Your duty!" He repeated the word deliberately. Though the devil had gone out of his eyes, she could not meet them any longer. Not that she feared to do so; but the pain at her heart was intolerable, and it was his look, his voice, that made it so.
Almost as if he divined this, he turned quietly from her. He walked to the window and opened it wide, as if he felt suffocated. The wind was moaning desolately through the trees. There was the scent of coming rain in the air.
He spoke with his back to her, without apparent effort. "I release you from your duty," he said. "Go to him! Go to him--now!"
She gazed at him, dumbfounded, not breathing. But he remained motionless, his hands clenched, his face to the night.
"Go to him!" he repeated. "I shall set you free--at once. Go--and tell him so!"
Then, as still she neither moved nor spoke, he slowly turned and looked at her.
From head to foot she felt his eyes comprehend her, and from head to foot, under his look, she shuddered. She spoke no word; she was as one paralysed.
Very quietly he pulled the window to behind him, still with his eyes upon her. In that moment he was complete master of himself. He stood aloof, shrouded, as it were, in an icy calm. She had no clue to his thoughts. She only knew that by some means, inexplicable and irresistible, he bound her even as he set her free.
"You understand me?" he said, his voice cold, level, pitilessly distinct. "It is my last word upon the subject. You and I have done with each other. Go!"
It was literally his last word. As he uttered it, his eyes fell away from her. He crossed the room with even, unhurried tread, opened the intervening door that led into his own, passed through with no backward glance, and shut it steadily behind him.
As for Chris, she stood numbly gazing after him till only the panels of the door met her look. And then, her strength leaving her, without sound she sank downwards and lay crumpled, inanimate, broken, upon the floor. _