"I dare not tell you the whole truth."
And she drooped to break it to him.
"You have nothing to fear, Nan."
"I don't know how to tell you...."
"I am ready for the worst."
"Then ... I am married."
CHAPTER XXVII
THE GREAT GULF
The words died away in the still air. They had been but faintly whispered, and now for many moments there was no sound at all in the quiet shelter of the trees. Then for a little the absolute silence was broken by short and laboured breathing through clenched teeth; then it became absolute as before. Denis was mastering himself as best he might; his whole being was as a knotted muscle; but by degrees that also relaxed, and he stood once more like a thing of flesh and blood, only swaying a little on his feet. But Nan had neither stirred nor made a sound. It was as though her dress supported her, as the dresses of those days almost might, yet there was never a rustle from its silken dome.
And in the narrow avenue it was almost dark.
"Devenish, of course?" he said at last, but so hoarsely that he had to say it twice.
It was worth the effort. It made Nan look up; it brought her back to life.
"Yes," she whispered in simple horror. "Yes--I am married to that villain!"
Their eyes met through the dusk, as in a lane of light. His face reflected the unmixed horror so remarkable in hers. Yet already some bell was ringing in his heart.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I loathe him!"
"Yet you are married?"
She spread out her hands in a gesture that was no answer to his incredulity. Quick as thought he caught her left.
"Where's the ring?"
"Yours is quite safe."
"But the wedding-ring--your wedding-ring?"
"I took it off the moment we met. It dropped in the porch. I couldn't let you find out that way."
Her hand also dropped out of his. He turned heavily away from her. It was as though for a moment he had cherished some mad hope; now he stood broken and aloof, shaken with sobs that never reached his throat; oblivious alike to the rustle of the silk dress behind him, to the fluttering featherweight of her hand upon his arm.
"Oh, Denis, Denis, if I could die ... if I could die! It is worse for me. You are not married; you are not tied for life. But I deserve it all, all, all.... There's no excuse for me, none. Yet there is some explanation--poor enough, God knows! Won't you listen to that? Won't you listen to me at all?"
He turned slowly round, and looked upon Nan with the unseeing fixity of the blind. "Go on," he said. "I am listening, and will listen."
"He cheated me!" she cried, passionately. "He took your letters, and he told me lies. But I allowed myself to be cheated," she added, miserably, "and I believed the lies; so I deserved not to find him out till it was too late; and I deserve this, Denis, I deserve it all. If only, only I could die!"
He soothed her as best he could, taking her hand in one of his, and stroking it mechanically with the other. The action might have reminded them of something long past; but the present absorbed both their minds.
It was all that they would ever have together. It was their life.
"Don't tell me unless it helps you," he said, gently. "I begin to understand. And it was my fault--mine--for leaving you as I did."
"Your fault! Yet if you had written--if you only had written!" she cried, loudly exonerating him in one breath, softly reproaching in the next.
"I know. That was pride," he said bitterly. "I was so desperately unsuccessful up to Christmas! I did write in November, but I was always afraid that letter never went."
"I never got it. Not a word of any sort, dear," she said, simply, "did I have from you till nearly May. And then----"
"And then?" he repeated as she paused.
"Have you no idea what I am going to tell you?" she asked, a new twinge in her tone. She could scarcely have explained her feeling, but the least inkling in him would have implied some slight excuse for her, would in any case have helped her to confess the climax of her late credulity.
"None whatever," said Denis.
"Yet it was your writing. I can show it you, for I have it still."
"What writing do you mean?" he inquired, quite in the dark.
"The address on the parcel."
"What sort of parcel?" he exclaimed, as the truth flashed across him.
"Quite small? Brown paper? Quick! Quick! I want to know!"
"Yes--yes--and you don't know what was in it! Oh, Denis!"
"I know what should have been," he said, grimly: "my first nugget--according to promise. But it was stolen, and afterward found."
"And you don't know what was put in instead? Did you lose nothing else?"
Denis stood stock-still in the deepening dusk. No, he had never thought of that; even now his simplicity could not credit it until he had drawn every detail from Nan's lips. The ring had possessed intrinsic value. He had always looked upon that as an ordinary theft. The discovery of the stolen nugget on Jewson's body had puzzled him, but it was partially accounted for by another strange fact which had come to light after the man's death, namely, that the nugget had been purchased by Jewson in the first instance, elsewhere on the diggings, and deliberately planted at the bottom of the shaft where Denis found it. And not till this moment, months afterward, had Denis penetrated the dead man's design.
"You have indeed been cheated," he said, bitterly. "Yet to believe me capable of behaving like that without a word! To have known me as little as all that! Why, there was trickery on the face of it. But how can I talk? They took me in, too--decent people don't dream of such villainy--so I was fair game at one end, and you at the other. I begin to see the whole thing. Do you remember when we said good-bye on board your ship?"
"Do I remember!"
"It was then you gave me what I wore night and day until it was stolen and sent back to you."
"Oh, Denis!"
"And it was then you made me promise to send it back to you if ever---- Oh, what a fool I was!"