CHAPTER X

In the Towers four desperate souls fought their battle, and to none of them did the dawn bring comfort. In her room Lady Elizabeth sat motionless before her open window, and, like Agrippina, saw the long line of destruction that the child she had borne had brought to her and to her house. Shortly before the end of the evening's entertainment, she had received a message from Henry, begging to be excused, as a matter of great importance had arisen which prevented him from remaining with his guests.

Once she thought of venturing to go to him, as she listened to his restless pacing above her, but fear of his displeasure and a physical shrinking from a painful scene forced her to keep her watch alone. To-night's confession of his use of the Fund was the gravest of his many offences; she could not shake herself free of its grave consequences. Along with it came the memory of the faces of Jim and Diana as she had last seen them at midnight. The guests had departed; Diana was entering her own apartments, while from the landing Lady Elizabeth could see Jim below her as he started for the garden. Both their faces were stamped with a new, vital truth which, in its immensity, they seemed to find difficult to grasp. She recalled the wistful, inquiring expression of Diana's look as she turned to call her good-night to Jim. Even more vividly she recalled the answer of his eyes. The mute, unspoken thoughts that lay there were haunting her now with their tragic possibilities. A numb fear possessed her.

Above her, Henry's monotonous steps continued; her imagination began to play tricks with her. The steady tread above seemed to change into the tentative, faltering toddle of a baby boy; she remembered that the room over her was the old nursery, now used by Henry for his own apartment. How often she and his father had listened and rejoiced at the stumbling efforts which they could hear in the early morning! The terrible sympathy of a mother's sorrowing womb, that can reach the most poignant of all human anguish, caused her suddenly to start to her feet; a physical craving to hold again the tiny body firm against her own, and ease this suffering, overpowered her. She could hear the broken steps of the long ago; she could see only the naked, mottled body of the sturdy chap that she had so often clasped close and smothered with her kisses. She stretched out her arms as if in search of it. The longing to touch again the soft warm flesh of her own creation became intense, from her wildly beating heart to the tightly contracted throat there grew a spasm of pain that ended in a long, broken sob. She forgot all the years of suffering, the disappointments, and to-night's crowning tragedy of Henry's wilful treachery to her and his house.

She was the young mother again. The half shy, inquiring face of the babe with its tight corkscrew curls, as she had seen him first walk across the long nursery to fall into her arms at the open doorway, was all that she could remember. Other ghosts crowded into the room; the husband of her love-days—for Elizabeth Kerhill had passionately loved her boy's father—stood, as he often had stood, close behind her at the nursery door and joyed with her at the beauty of its tiny occupant. The old wound, which nature mercifully in the passage of years had alleviated, again ached as it had in the first hours of her great sorrow at his death.

Suddenly the pacing above ceased. She became conscious of a terrible anxiety to know why; she feared the stillness; the steady beat had been an unconscious comfort. Her tired brain grew more fanciful. Did she imagine or did she really see the pale spectre of her husband at the farther end of the room beckoning her to follow him? He seemed to open the door into the corridor and disappear into the gloom. There was a slight movement from above, significant in its abruptness; it was as though a quick decision had been made by Henry. Down the corridor she fled, obeying a compelling instinct. The pale mist of the first streaks of dawn was struggling through the distant windows. She remembered a similar hurried rush to the nursery, when the tiny, twisted body was attacked with writhing convulsions. Quickly she sped along the hallway, around a twisted enclosure, and up the broad staircase until she reached the nursery. Without a pause she swung open the heavy oak door; then she knew why the warning had come to her.

At the creaking of the door, Henry started; he was unaware that it had remained unlocked. For a moment he stared at his mother as though she were an apparition. He was standing near the open drawer of a huge desk; the glint of fire-arms in it shone clear against the flicker of the spluttering candles. He made no attempt to move. His eyes were held by the figure at the door, but no words came from the moving lips of Lady Elizabeth. Instinctively, both their glances went to the open drawer with its certain means of death. Henry turned away; he tried to close the case. Through the silent room came the sobbed name of his childhood days.

"Ba-ba! Ba-ba!"

He felt her strong arms fasten tight around him; unresisting, he was gathered up close against the trembling body of his mother, as she drew him down into a big settle. He made no attempt to speak. He heard only the name of his babyhood in his mother's moans, as she pressed his tense face to hers, kissed the faunlike ears, while her hands strayed, as they used to do, over the long limbs that, relaxed, lay helpless against hers. The old nursery again held her treasure, and mechanically the tremulous lips fell to crooning a long-forgotten lullaby.

Gradually he slept with his head on her breast. Straight and stiff the early shadows found her, while the bitter tears furrowed her face, as she held her child, warm and alive, against her heart. During the long hours of her vigil she heard distinctly the crunching of footsteps on the gravel-walk outside as some one passed and repassed the east wing. But she was little concerned with the world without.

Below, unconscious of the tragedy so close to him, Jim, whose step it was Lady Kerhill had heard on the gravel-path, fought through the long night for his right to happiness. His entire horizon seemed blocked by the unyielding figures of Lady Elizabeth and Henry; behind them, tantalizing him with the sweetness of the vision, he could see Diana's face illumined with its new light of wonder. The heavy dews, which gave to the old garden its fragrant, green, sweet odors, drenched him as he paced along the path under the giant trees. He was insensible to his wet clothes—to the tumbled hair which the dampness knotted about his head in kinky curls. The tangle of his thoughts proved too difficult for him to unravel; the night had been so charged with emotions that he could hardly look truthfully into his own heart. The hours passed as he paced restlessly, dazed and overwhelmed by the chaotic uprooting of all his being. Aimlessly he at last wandered towards the Fairies' Corner, and sought rest on the rudely fashioned seat, dented and marked with his boyish carvings. There he lay haunted by intangible dreams until, overcome by weariness, he crept close into his old corner and slept.

The strong orange shafts of sunrise were lighting up the hill-side opposite Diana's window as she stealthily crept down and let herself out of the silent house into the garden. The mounds close to the Towers were covered with great splashes of heather, while the moor beyond dipped and stretched far away like a trailing, purple, overblown, monster flower, which seemed, mushroom-like, to have sprung up during the night. Diana's first sight of the brilliant coloring that came every July to the heather-covered hill-side, brought now as always bitter memories of her first summer in Scotland, where as a young bride the illusions of her virgin mind and heart had been shattered by Henry.

She turned away from its flaunting beauty with a shudder. No memories of the past had been hers during the night; why should she allow the old pain and heartache to come back? She alone in the great house had given herself up to delicious reveries that tempted her; every thought of Henry, her father, and the ties that bound her, she ignored. She never questioned what had changed her since she had left Henry, outraged at his vile suspicions. Why probe into the cause of her happiness? Enough that she could rejoice, silently, if need be, without a reason acknowledged even to herself, for her joy. But the dawn brought with it only feverish longing to reach the cool of the hill-side, and now the blooming riot of purple tones had struck at her like a menacing ghost. She plunged into a thicket, and, sinking knee-deep in its luxuriant growth, made her way across a yellow meadow. Finally she reached the copse of trees through which she could see the Elizabethan gables of the back of the house.

Oh, the beauty of the unstained day! Like every weary wayfarer exploring for the first time since childhood the fresh virgin country-side, her soul cried aloud its appreciation of this beauty of soft green, wet glistening flowers, crystal clear air, and what is utterly unknown save to the frequenters of the first hours of dawn in forests and glades, the ecstatic perfume of the early breezes. Across the hedges from their kingdom, the flower-garden, came these ripples of scented air, heavy with the breath of honeysuckle, rose, phlox, and heliotrope.

Like Jim, she unconsciously turned to the Fairies' Corner. As she reached the narrow aperture, and its wet earthy smell drowned the sweet, sensuous odors of the garden blossoms, she espied the sleeping figure on the old bench. At the unexpected discovery she gave an involuntary exclamation. Jim was lying on his back, with his head on his arm, all the wet stain of the night passed in the garden showing on his unchanged evening clothes, while the unkempt hair gave a curious boyishness to his face.

Diana waited for him to move, but her surprised ejaculation had failed to awaken him. How big and wonderful he was! The thick lashes swept his brown face with its dull touch of red showing under the olive skin. As she bent over him and was about to touch his hand to arouse him he opened his eyes.

He had been dreaming that he was in the hospital in the Hills after the fight, and in his delirium he was back at the Fairies' Corner with Diana—and there she stood looking at him, but his eyes seemed unable to grasp the reality of the moment.

"Jim, Jim," she said.

It was no dream. With a rush of memory it all came back to him. He quickly rose to his feet and came towards her, impelled by an uncontrollable force. Cobwebs of sunlight were making glinting spaces against the gray-and-green enclosure; a movement began in the tree-tops that brought back the childish reminiscence of the rustling fairy wings. He forgot everything. He only knew that she stood there like an essence of delight to ease his aching being. The still wonder of the evening before was again shining in her luminous face.

He lifted her hands to his shoulders, and held them fast there. To her awakening womanhood he seemed like a young god of nature, who had bathed in the primeval springs and had arisen glorified and overwhelming in his forcefulness. They stood speechless, their gaze fastened each on the other's face, while the moments slipped away. How long they stood there neither realized: the burning intensity of the moments told them more than any words could have conveyed. Both now knew the truth—it downed them with its unflinching eyes; they knew that they were peering close into the core of life, that they had touched at the vital springs of the Great Game. Strong and incessant as the beat of the swaying tree-tops, the bitter knowledge was forced upon them that they could no longer, even to themselves, play a part. Their months of unconscious self-deception had that night been slain; each knew that love triumphant had come into his own.

From the camp in the park beyond came the sound of the bugle calling the men to their early morning duties. It roused Jim and Diana to the consciousness of the workaday world. Diana was the first to move; she slipped her hands away from his shoulders, while she still had the strength to do so. Jim silently started towards her, his eyes showing the surrender of his love. She could read all that they asked; her name broke from his lips in tender reiteration.

"Di, dear—dear Di!"

But this time the out-stretched hands waved him back.

"No, no!" she cried, and down the long copse she fled from him.

Alone, Jim realized that they had been on the edge of a great precipice. Gradually it came upon him that there was only one way to save himself—to save Diana; he must go away. When, how—it all mattered little—later he would decide that. He managed to reach his room unobserved. How could he face the day's responsibilities, he asked himself, as he heard rising from below the sounds of the life of the house, and knew that the duties of the camp were awaiting him.

Towards noon in his tent a letter was brought to him. It was from Diana. Trembling he tore it open and read:

"DEAR JIM—Our meeting this morning has revealed me to myself. If you can find it in your interest, I hope you will leave England. I cannot trust myself to say anything more but good-bye. DIANA."

"Revealed me to myself," he repeated. "Oh, Diana, Diana," he whispered.

Yes, he must go.