Yes, I knew the rest. The woman he had left to drown had been ever before his eyes; the avenging Furies in pursuit. This was the torture in his soul that had led him to many a mad challenge of Death, who always scorned his defiance. Yes, I knew all that he could tell me.
But we went on talking. There were a few points I wanted cleared up.
Why should he have kept up a correspondence with Gedge?
"I only wrote one foolish angry letter," he replied.
And I told him how Sir Anthony had thrown it unread into the fire.
Gedge's nocturnal waylaying of him in my front garden was another unsuccessful attempt to tighten the screw. Like Randall and myself, he had no fear of Gedge.
Of Sir Anthony he could not speak. He seemed to be crushed by the heroic achievement. It was the only phase of our interview during which, by voice and manner and attitude, he appeared to me like a beaten man. His own bravery at the reception had gone for naught. He was overwhelmed by the hideous insolence of it.
"I shall never get that man's voice out of my ears as long as I live,"
he said hoarsely.
After a while he added: "I wonder whether there is any rest or purification for me this side of the grave."
I said tentatively, for we had never discussed matters of religion: "If you believe in Christ, you must believe in the promise regarding the sins that be as scarlet."
But he turned it aside. "In the olden days, men like me turned monk and found salvation in fasting and penance. The times in which we live have changed and we with them, my friend. Nos mulamur in illis, as the tag goes."
We went on talking--or rather he talked and I listened. Now and again he would help himself to a drink or a cigarette, and I marvelled at the clear assurance with which he performed the various little operations.
I, lying in bed, lost all sense of pain, almost of personality. My little ailments, my little selfish love of Betty, my little humdrum life itself dwindled insignificant before the tragic intensity of this strange, curse-ridden being.
And all the tune we had not spoken of Betty--except the Betty of long ago. It was I, finally, who gave him the lead.
"And Betty?" said I.
He held out his hand in a gesture that was almost piteous.
"I could tear her from my life. I had no alternative. In the tearing I hurt her cruelly. To know it was not the least of the burning hell I lit for myself. But I couldn't tear her from my heart. When a brute beast like me does love a woman purely and ideally, it's a desperate business. It means God's Heaven to him, while it means only an earthly paradise to the ordinary man. It clutches hold of the one bit of immortal soul he has left, and nothing in this world can make it let go. That's why I say it's a desperate business."
"Yes, I can understand," said I.
"I schooled myself to the loss of her. It was part of my punishment.
But now she has come back into my life. Fate has willed it so. Does it mean that I am forgiven?"
"By whom?" I asked. "By God?"
"By whom else?"
"How dare man," said I, "speak for the Almighty?"
"How is man to know?"
"That's a hard question," said I. "I can only think of answering it by saying that a man knows of God's forgiveness by the measure of the Peace of God in his soul."
"There's none of it in mine, my dear chap, and never will be," said Boyce.
I strove to help him. For what other purpose had he come to me?
"You think then that the sending of Betty is a sign and a promise? Yes.
Perhaps it is. What then?"
"I must accept it as such," said he. "If there is a God, He would not give me back the woman I love, only to take her away again. What shall I do?"
"In what way?" I asked.
"She offered to marry me. I am to give her my answer to-morrow. If I were the callous, murdering brute that everyone would have the right to believe I am, I shouldn't have hesitated. If I hadn't been a tortured, damned soul," he cried, bringing his great fist down on the bed, "I shouldn't have come here to ask you what my answer can be. My whole being is infected with horror." He rose and stood over the bed and, with clenched hands, gesticulated to the wall in front of him. "I'm incapable of judging. I only know that I crave her with everything in me. I've got it in my brain that she's my soul's salvation. Is my brain right? I don't know. I come to you--a clean, sweet man who knows everything--I don't think there's a crime on my conscience or a foulness in my nature which I haven't confessed to you. You can judge straight as I can't. What answer shall I give to-morrow?"
Did ever man, in a case of conscience, have a greater responsibility?
God forgive me if I solved it wrongly. At any rate, He knows that I was uninfluenced by mean personal considerations. All my life I have tried to have an honourable gentleman and a Christian man. According to my lights I saw only one clear course.
"Sit down, old man," said I. "You're a bit too big for me like that."
He felt for his chair, sat down and leaned back. "You've done almost everything," I continued, "that a man can do in expiation of offences.
But there is one thing more that you must do in order to find peace.
You couldn't find peace if you married Betty and left her in ignorance.
You must tell Betty everything--everything that you have told me.
Otherwise you would still be hag-ridden. If she learned the horror of the thing afterwards, what would be your position? Acquit your conscience now before God and a splendid woman, and I stake my faith in each that neither will fail you."
After a few minutes, during which the man's face was like a mask, he said:
"That's what I wanted to know. That's what I wanted to be sure of. Do you mind ringing your bell for Marigold to take me away? I've kept you up abominably." He rose and held out his hand and I had to direct him how it could reach mine. When it did, he gripped it firmly.
"It's impossible," said he, "for you to realise what you've done for me to-night. You've made my way absolutely clear to me--for the first time for two years. You're the truest comrade I've ever had, Meredyth. God bless you."
Marigold appeared, answering my summons, and led Boyce away. Presently he returned.
"Do you know what time it is, sir?" he asked serenely.
"No," said I.
"It's half-past one."
He busied himself with my arrangements for the night, and administered what I learned afterwards was a double dose of a sleeping draught which Cliffe had prescribed for special occasions. I just remember surprise at feeling so drowsy after the intense excitement of the evening, and then I fell asleep.
When I awoke in the morning I gathered my wits together and recalled what had taken place. Marigold entered on tiptoe and found me already aroused.
"I'm sorry to tell you, sir," said he, "that an accident happened to Colonel Boyce after he left last night."
"An accident?"
"I suppose so, sir," said Marigold. "That's what his chauffeur says. He got out of the car in order to sit by the side of the canal--by the lock gates. He fell in, sir. He's drowned."
CHAPTER XXIV