Sometimes, when he re-fought old battles and planned new ones, forecast the strategy of the Great Advance, word-painted scenes and places, drew character sketches of great leaders and quaint men, I forgot the tragedy of Althea Fenimore. And when the memory came swiftly back, I wondered whether, after all, Gedge's story from first to last had not been a malevolent invention. The man seemed so happy. Of course you will say it was my duty to give a hint of Gedge's revelation. It was.
To my shame, I shirked it. I could not find it in my heart suddenly to dash into his happiness. I awaited an opportunity, a change of mood in him, an allusion to confidences of which I alone of human beings had been the recipient.
Betty visited me as usual. We talked war and hospital and local gossip for a while and then she seemed to take refuge at the piano. We had one red-letter day, when a sailor cousin of hers, fresh from the North Sea, came to luncheon and told us wonders of the Navy which we had barely imagined and did not dare to hope for. His tidings gave subject for many a talk.
I knew that she was seeing Boyce constantly. The former acquaintance of the elders of the two houses flamed into sudden friendship. From a remark artlessly let fall by Mrs. Boyce, I gathered that the old ladies were deliberately contriving such meetings. Boyce and Betty referred to each other rarely and casually, but enough to show me that the old feud was at an end. And of what save one thing could the end of a feud between lovers be the beginning? What did she know? Knowing all, how could she be drawn back under the man's fascination? The question maddened me. I suffered terribly.
At last, one evening, I could bear it no longer. She was playing Chopin. The music grated on me. I called out to her:
"Betty!"
She broke off and turned round, with a smile of surprise. Again she was wearing the old black evening dress, in which I have told you she looked so beautiful.
"No more music, dear. Come and talk to me."
She crossed the room with her free step and sat near my chair.
"What shall I talk about?" she laughed.
"Leonard Boyce."
The laughter left her face and she gave me a swift glance.
"Majy dear, I'd rather not," she said with a little air of finality.
"I know that," said I. "I also know that in your eyes I am committing an unwarrantable impertinence."
"Not at all," she replied politely. "You have the right to talk to me for my good. It's impertinence in me not to wish to hear it."
"Betty dear," said I, "will you tell me what was the cause of your estrangement?"
She stiffened. "No one has the right to ask me that."
"A man who loves you very, very dearly," said I, "will claim it. Was the cause Althea Fenimore?"
She looked at me almost in frightened amazement.
"Is that mere guesswork?"
"No, dear," said I quietly.
"I thought no one knew--except one person. I was not even sure that Leonard Boyce was aware that I knew."
Another bow at a venture. "That one person is Gedge."
"You're right. I suppose he has been talking," she said, greatly agitated. "He has been putting it about all over the place. I've been dreading it." Then she sprang to her feet and drew herself up and snapped her fingers in an heroical way. "And if he has said that Althea Fenimore drowned herself for love of Leonard Boyce, what is there in it? After all, what has Leonard Boyce done that he can't be forgiven?
Men are men and women are women. We've tried for tens of thousands of years to lay down hard and fast lines for the sexes to walk upon, and we've failed miserably. Suppose Leonard Boyce did make love to Althea Fenimore--trifle with her affections, in the old-fashioned phrase. What then? I'm greatly to blame. It has only lately been brought home to me.
Instead of staying here while we were engaged, I would have my last fling as an emancipated young woman in London. He consoled himself with Althea. When she found he meant nothing, she threw herself into the canal. It was dreadful. It was tragic. He went away and broke with me.
I didn't discover the reason till months afterwards. She drowned herself for love of him, it's true. But what was his share in it that he can't be forgiven for? Millions of men have been forgiven by women for passing loves. Why not he? Why not a tremendous man like him? A man who has paid every penalty for wrong, if wrong there was? Blind!"
She walked about and threw up her hands and halted in front of my chair. "I'll own that until lately I accused him of unforgivable sin--deceiving me and making love to another girl and driving her to suicide. I tore him out of my heart and married Willie. We won't speak of that .... But since he has come back, things seem different. His mother has told me that one day when he was asleep she found he was still wearing his identification disc ... there was an old faded photograph of me on the other side ... it had been there all through the war .... You see," she added, after a pause during which her heaving bosom and quivering lip made her maddeningly lovely, "I don't care a brass button for anything that Gedge may say."
And that was all my clean-souled Betty knew about it! She had no idea of deeper faithlessness; no suspicion of Boyce's presence with Althea on the bank of the canal. She stood pathetic in her half knowledge. My heart ached.
From her pure woman's point of view she had been justified in her denunciation of Boyce. He had left her without a word. A wall of silence came between them. Then she learned the reason. He had trifled with a young girl's affections and out of despair she had drowned herself .... But how had she learned? I had to question her. And it was then that she told me the story of Phyllis and her father to which I have made previous allusion: how Phyllis, as her father's secretary, had opened a letter which had frightened her; how her father's crafty face had frightened her still more; how she had run to Betty for the easing of her heart. And this letter was from Leonard Boyce. "I cannot afford one penny more," so the letter ran, according to Betty's recollection of Phyllis's recollection, "but if you remain loyal to our agreement, you will not regret it. If ever I hear of your coupling my name with that of Miss Fenimore, I'll kill you. I am a man of my word."
I think Betty crystallised Phyllis's looser statement. But the exact wording was immaterial. Here was Boyce branding himself with complicity in the tragedy of Althea, and paying Gedge to keep it dark. Like Sir Anthony, Betty remembered trivial things that assumed grave significance. There was no room for doubt. Catastrophe following on his villainy had kept Boyce away from Wellingsford, had terrified him out of his engagement. And so her heart had grown bitter against him. You may ask why her knowledge of the world had not led her to suspect blacker wrong; for a man does not pay blackmail because he has led a romantic girl into a wrong notion of the extent of his affection. My only answer is that Betty was Betty, clean-hearted and clean-souled like the young Artemis she resembled.
And now she proclaimed that he had expiated his offence. She proclaimed her renewed and passionate interest in the man. I saw that deep down in her heart she had always loved him.
After telling me about Phyllis, she returned to the point where she had broken off. She supposed that Gedge had been talking all over the place.
"I don't think so, dear," said I. "So far as I know he has only spoken, first to Randall Holmes--that was what made him break away from Gedge, whose society he had been cultivating for other reasons than those I imagined (you remember telling me Phyllis's sorrowful little tale last year?)." She nodded. "And secondly to Sir Anthony and myself, a few hours before the Reception."
She clenched her fists and broke out again. "The devil! The incarnate devil! And Sir Anthony?"
"Pretended to treat Gedge's story as a lie, threw into the fire without reading it an incriminating letter--possibly the letter that Phyllis saw, ordered Gedge out of the house and, like a great gentleman, went through the ceremony."
"Does Leonard know?"
"Not that I'm aware of," said I.
"He must be told. It's terrible to have an enemy waiting to stab you in the dark--and you blind to boot. Why haven't you told him?"
Why? Why? Why?
It was so hard to keep to the lower key of her conception of things. I made a little gesture signifying I know not what: that it was not my business, that I was not on sufficient terms of intimacy with Boyce, that it didn't seem important enough .... My helpless shrug suggested, I suppose, all of these excuses. Why hadn't I warned him? Cowardice, I suppose.
"Either you or I must do it," she went on. "You're his friend. He thinks more of you than of any other man in the world. And he's right, dear--" she flashed me a proud glance, sweet and stabbing--"Don't I know it?"
Then suddenly a new idea seemed to pass through her brain. She bent forward and touched the light shawl covering my knees.
"For the last month or two you've known what he has done. It hasn't made any difference in your friendship. You must think with me that the past is past, that he has purged his sins, or whatever you like to call them; that he is a man greatly to be forgiven."
"Yes, dear," said I, with a show of bravery, though I dreaded lest my voice should break, "I think he is a man to be forgiven."
Her logic was remorseless.
With her frank grace she threw herself, in her old attitude, by the side of my chair.
"I'm so glad we have had this talk, Majy darling. It has made everything between us so clear and beautiful. It is always such a grief to me to think you may not understand. I shall always be the little girl that looked upon you as a wonderful hero and divine dispenser of chocolates. Only now the chocolates stand for love and forbearance and sympathy, and all kinds of spiritual goodies."
I passed my hand over her hair. "Silly child!"
"I got it into my head," she continued, "that you were blaming me for--for my reconciliation with Leonard. But, my dear, my dear, what woman's heart wouldn't be turned to water at the sight of him? It makes me so happy that you understand. I can't tell you how happy."
"Are you going to marry him?" I think my voice was steady and kind enough.
"Possibly. Some day. If he asks me."