CHAPTER VIII

Bethune went off in the cart, at the best speed of Aspasia's pony, carrying a second telegram, more weighty than that concerning M. Chatelard's luggage. This was a summons for a London specialist.

Although unaware that the Frenchman had himself a world-wide reputation for such cases, English, with his habit of quick judgment, had decided to trust the proffered skill. But, in the course of their conversation, he had tentatively touched upon the advantage of a consultation; and the suggestion was accepted; with so much alacrity, indeed, that a more livid pallor spread over the husband's countenance.

M. Chatelard saw the impression he had unwittingly produced. With fat forefinger thrown out in emphasis, he promptly endeavoured to remove it.

"In cases of obscure diagnosis, two heads are always better than one," said he, kindly. "Yet your great Farrar will, I have no doubt—so much confidence have I in myself, my dear sir—merely confirm my treatment—a treatment, in parenthesis, purely negative. Paradoxical, yet true, sir, the slower our fair patient recovers the better."

To himself, as he sat down to his coffee, the genial physician remarked complacently, that it would be du dernier intérét to see ce fameux Farrar at work.

M. Chatelard was entirely satisfied with the situation, as far as it concerned himself. He kept Harry English at his elbow, and, while enjoying the excellent fare (les émotions, ?a creuse!), discoursed learnedly upon the brain, that terrible and fragile organism which he had made his own especial study. His insatiable curiosity the while was anticipating with gusto the moment when it could gratify itself upon the enigmatic personality of his new-found host.

Fate played into his hand. For, ere he could insinuate the first leading question, there entered upon them Sir Arthur. M. Chatelard was forthwith made witness to a scene between the "two husbands" which was to give him, in the most dramatic manner, all the information he desired.

There they stood opposite each other—the old and the young. The most complete contrast, perhaps, that it was possible to imagine. Harry English, erect, square-shouldered, extraordinarily quiet, with head held high and pendant arms, in an attitude not unlike that of the soldier in the orderly-room, the oriental composure of his countenance occasionally contradicted by a flash of the eye and a twist of the lip. Sir Arthur, swinging between bluster and authority, both equally futile, painfully conscious of a hopelessly ungraceful position. It is only the young that the stress of passion becomes. When a man is past the prime of life, every emotion that shakes him from the dignified self-control of his years betrays him on to senility.

"Here, then, do we behold his Excellency as he is," thought the judicial looker-on. "Without toilet, without what milady Aspasia so brutally calls 'grooming'; without the support of a commanding position—here stands the natural man. And he is an old man, impotently angry—a sorry spectacle, while the rival—ah, belle jeunesse!"

To the elderly Frenchman Harry English, still in the thirties, was to be reckoned among the youthful. Sir Arthur began the interview by a renewal of his last night's threat of the police. Harry English smiled, and the smile instantly worked havoc upon the Governor's assumption of confident authority. Rage broke forth.

"Look at him, Chatelard! There's a pretty fellow to call himself an Englishman. Look at the colour of his skin; look at his hair! By God, man," he yelled, "look at his teeth! The trick's been done before, sir. The wily servant, with his thieving knowledge of family secrets, playing the part of his dead master. This is a new Tichborne case, and the babu Muhammed will find what comes of such tricks."

"Muhammed!" interrupted M. Chatelard, rising from his seat, "Muhammed! dites-vous? Ma parole!"

His fingers flew up to steady his spectacles; his shrewd eyes fixed themselves upon English with a gaze in which admiration contended with amazement.

"Muhammed! ... Ah, what the devil—a wonderful disguise! Even now I hardly recognise, save, indeed, that he has worn a beard recently, as is revealed by that pallid chin and throat—I protest I do not even recognise Muhammed now in Captain English. No wonder," thought the Frenchman, in a rapid parenthesis, "that we French were as children in India compared to these English. English he remains," he chuckled, playing on the name, "and yet, to suit his purpose, he can assimilate himself to the black devil."

"Ha, we've had a Tichborne case!" repeated Sir Arthur.

The silent man opposite looked at him, still silent, still smiling; but into his eyes there crept a shade of pity. There was, indeed, something pitiable in this pomposity so fallen, in this tyranny so powerless—in Sir Arthur, brandishing his rag of defiance, standing the while in all the nakedness of his cause.

"You are witness, Chatelard," he was insisting.

M. Chatelard, pinching the wire of his glasses, lifted his gaze to inspect the portrait which hung in the panel over the mantelpiece; then brought it solemnly back to Harry English's countenance. He turned and spoke, not without enjoying the consciousness of the weight of his own adverse verdict.—Expect no bowels of mercy from one whose life-work is the study of other people's brains.

"Alas! my excellent Sir Gerardine; I fear there above hangs a witness with a testimony more emphatic than ever mine could be."

Sir Arthur rolled his bloodshot eye towards the picture—another of those infernal daubs! From the first instant he had set eyes on them, all over the place, he had thought it in bad taste—in confoundedly bad taste. Last night, in the bedroom, the sight of one of them had put him off his balance altogether. But he had been, then, in a nervous state. He knew better now.

"Pooh!" He tried to laugh, but his mouth twitched down at the corners, with a childish tremble. "If every black-haired man is going to claim to be my wife's first husband——"

But everything was against Sir Arthur this morning. Who knows how far he might have gone in convincing the inconvenient English that he could not possibly be himself, if that objectionable person, Bethune—it was most reprehensible of Rosamond to have received the fellow in her husband's absence—had not marched in upon them.

The Major of Guides stood a second, with beetling brows, measuring the situation. Then, without a word, he strode across the room and took up his post beside his comrade, so close that their shoulders touched. It was mute testimony, but more convincing than spoken phrase.

M. Chatelard experienced one of those spasms of satisfaction which the discovery of some fresh trait characteristic of the race under his microscope never failed to cause him.

Those two silent ones, with what force they imposed themselves! "Voila bien, l'Angleterre—sa morgue, son arrogance! She steps in—her mere presence is enough. She disdains argument, she stands passive, massive, she smiles—she remains. As for my poor Sir Gerardine, he represents here the enemy. Ah, sapristi, it is not astonishing if it makes him enraged."

Sir Arthur, in truth, turned to an apoplectic purple, stammered wildly, shook his balled hand—the telling retort failed him. Upon this, at last, Captain English spoke:

"Sir Arthur," said he, "believe me, you will, in due time, be furnished with every proof of my identity that you can desire to see. Meanwhile you will be wise if you accept the evidence of"—he paused, and there was a subtle alteration in the clear steady voice—"the evidence of all that has occurred this night—of my friend here, Major Bethune, and of the old servant of my house."

Sir Arthur turned sharply and met the vindictive stare of Bethune's pale eyes.

"I have recognised my friend, Captain English," said Bethune, with harsh decision.

Sir Arthur's glance went quickly from one to the other. It was typical of the man that, for the moment, the secondary irritation of having a pair of twopenny-halfpenny Indian officers brow-beating him—browbeating him, egad! the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province—for the moment, almost outweighed the fact that his own huge personal tragedy was being irremediably established.

"You are a witness, are you?" he snarled.

Bethune nodded.

"Then," cried Sir Arthur, springing to his feet and thumping the table so that all the china rattled, "you are a witness, sir, to as peculiar a business as I think has ever been heard of in his Majesty's service. Captain English, I think—since it is agreed that this man is Captain English—will find some little difficulty in explaining his proceedings all these years."

"You have heard of people being held prisoners," said English, quietly.

"Yes," screamed Sir Arthur, "but what about this disguise—this Muhammed business?"

"I don't expect you to understand my reasons," pursued the other, in the same manner; while, beside him, Bethune kept his taciturn watch. "But you have, I recognise, the right to be told of them. I had to find out if my wife was happy."

"You had to find out if——" Sir Arthur pouncing upon the new suggestion, to lay bare its folly, was suddenly arrested midway by a glimmer of the other's meaning and its extraordinary bearing upon himself.

"If you wish, I shall put the matter clearer," said the first husband, incisively. "I had to find out if your wife was happy."

"If my wife was happy!"

A vision rose before Sir Arthur—his wife, the wife of Sir Arthur Gerardine, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor, her Excellency, Lady Gerardine, queen of her world, flashing in the glory of his diamonds and emeralds, treading palace rooms, herself the centre of a court—his wife petted, adulated, envied, the object of his chivalrous attention, of his lavish indulgence, his constant solicitude—not happy! He broke into boisterous laughter.

"Not happy! For that was your conclusion, I suppose?"

Still laughing, he flung a glance at M. Chatelard—eloquent. "Did you ever hear such an absurdity in your life?" it said, in all languages.

M. Chatelard unaccountably dropped his eyes before that triumphant appeal; and a dry cough of unwonted embarrassment escaped him. Sir Arthur's mirth changed from its first genuine note of sarcastic fury to something that rang hollow and forced. Abruptly withdrawing his eyes from the unresponsive Frenchman, he caught sight of his own countenance reflected, in all the cruel morning light, by a mirror that hung between the two windows. He stood staring. For a second he could not recognise himself—an unkempt old man, with yellow trembling cheeks and vacant mouth.

In such moments the body works unconsciously. Had Sir Arthur had proper control over himself, the swift look at his rival, the immediate comparison, was the last thing his vanity would have condescended to. But his treacherous eyes had done their work before self-esteem could intervene. And, for once, Sir Arthur Gerardine saw.

The braced figure of Henry English, with its noble lines of still young manhood; the romantic head, refined, not aged, by suffering and endurance, the vital flame in the eye. What a contrast! Sir Arthur swayed, fell into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. Acrid tears of self-pity were burning his lids. This is what they have brought me to!

Of the other three in the room, there was not one who could find a word. To see the strong suffer may be a painful yet inspiring sight, but there are tragedies of the weak, before the sordid pity of which the mind instinctively recoils.

"And you thought it honourable and gentlemanly to come into my house and eat my bread and—and spy?" said the Lieutenant-Governor, raising his head at last, turning dull orbs upon his whilom secretary.

The blood raced into Harry English's face.

"Here," thought Chatelard, scarcely breathing in his quiet corner of observation, "here it is the old one scores at last."

"I could not choose my methods, Sir Arthur."

The ancient Chippendale clock, with a sigh between its ticks, measured half a minute of heavy waiting. Then English spoke again, decisively, vigorously, stepping to the table with the air of one determined to put an end to an unbearable situation.

"Useless, all this. You shall have full evidence, as I said, in due time. Meanwhile, here is a house of sorrow, and your presence in it adds grievously to its burdens."

A gleam lit the watery depths of Sir Arthur's eyes.

"Here is a house of sorrow." He was suddenly reminded of what, in the absorption of his own misery, he had well-nigh forgotten—that the woman lay in danger of death.

Were she to die now—who had committed this inconceivable indiscretion—the situation might yet be saved. If she were to die, the affair could be hushed up. He jumped to his feet.

"Well, and what do you think of her state, doctor?" cried he.

The greedy glance was a revelation. The whole mind of the man was laid bare in its odious pettiness. With a dignified gesture the physician refused answer.

But the soul of Harry English leaped forth in wrath, as the blade leaps from the scabbard.

"Out of my house!" said he, his arm flung wide, pointing to the door. Voice, gesture, look, spoke of a passion so intense that for a second Sir Arthur quailed before it as one may before an unexpected flash of lightning.

He retreated hurriedly a few steps, then wheeled round, his natural combativeness reasserting itself.

"Your story is strange, singularly strange, Captain English," he sneered. "I shall consider it my duty to report it in proper quarters without delay. You will have to produce some better explanations there, sir, I fancy, than those which seem to satisfy a couple of silly women and an ignorant foreigner—I mean," his old habit of courtesy tugging against the impulsiveness of his irritation—"I mean a foreigner ignorant of our customs." (M. Chatelard had an indulgent smile for the correction.) "I shall report you, sir, and your accomplice there."

A withering look included the stolid Bethune in this last indictment.

"Raymond, see that he goes," said English, "that he goes at once—and quietly."

"Ah, yes, I beg," interposed the doctor, with gravity. "Quiet is imperative, Sir Gerardine."

English walked over to the window and began to drum on the pane. Dr. Chatelard removed his spectacles, and put them into his pocket.

"One is reminded of the history of the judgment of Solomon," he remarked genially, as he followed Bethune to the door. "Permettez, cher capitaine? I return to your wife."