“Sylvia,” he said, “I had no thought, no wish, that what I said should stay with you.”
“Yet it did,” she answered, “and I was thankful. I am thankful even now. For though I would gladly give up all the struggle now, if I had you instead; since I have not you, I am thankful for the law. It was your voice which spoke it, it came from you. It will keep you near to me all through the black months until you come back. Oh, Hilary!” and the brave argument spoken to enhearten herself and him ended suddenly in a most wistful cry. Chayne caught her to him.
“Oh, Sylvia!” and he added: “The life is not yet saved!”
“Perhaps I am given to the summer,” she answered, and then, with a whimsical change of humor, she laughed tenderly. “Oh, but I wish I wasn’t. You will write? Letters will come from you.”
“As often as possible, my dear. But they won’t come often.”
“Let them be long, then,” she whispered, “very long,” and she leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Lie close, my dear,” said he. “Lie close!”
For a while longer they talked in low voices to one another, the words which lovers know and keep fragrant in their memories. The night, warm and clear, drew on toward morning, and the passage of the hours was unremarked. For both of them there was a glory upon the moonlit land and sea which made of it a new world. And into this new world both walked for the first time — walked in their youth and hand in hand. Each for the first time knew the double pride of loving and being loved. In spite of their troubles they were not to be pitied, and they knew it. The gray morning light flooded the sky and turned the moon into a pale white disk.
“Lie close, my dear,” said he. “It is not time.”
In the trees in the garden below the blackbirds began to bustle amongst the leaves, and all at once their clear, sweet music thrilled upward to the lovers in the hollow of the down.
“Lie close, my dear,” he repeated.
They watched the sun leap into the heavens and flash down the Channel in golden light.
“The night has gone,” said Chayne.
“Nothing can take it from us while we live,” answered Sylvia, very softly. She raised herself from her couch of leaves.
Then from one of the cottages in the tiny village a blue coil of smoke rose into the air.
“It is time,” said Chayne, and they rose and hand in hand walked down the slope of the hill to the house. Sylvia unlatched the door noiselessly and went in. Chayne stepped in after her; and in the silent hall they took farewell of one another.
“Good-by, my dear,” she whispered, with the tears in her eyes and in her voice, and she clung to him a little and so let him go. She held the door ajar until the sound of his footsteps had died away — and after that. For she fancied that she heard them still, since, she so deeply wished to hear them. Then with a breaking heart she went up the stairs to her room.
CHAPTER XXI
CHAYNE COMES TO CONCLUSIONS
“SIX WEEKS AGO I said good-by to the French Commission on the borders of a great lake in Africa. A month ago I was still walking to the rail head through the tangle of a forest’s undergrowth,” said Chayne, and he looked about the little restaurant in King Street, St. James’, as though to make sure that the words he spoke were true. The bright lights, the red benches against the walls, the women in their delicate gowns of lace, and the jingle of harness in the streets without, made their appeal to one who for the best part of a year had lived within the dark walls of a forest. June had come round again, and Sylvia sat at his side.
“You shall tell me how these months have gone with you while we dine,” said he. “Your letters told me nothing of your troubles.”
“I did not mean them to,” replied Sylvia.
“I guessed that, my dear. It was like you. Yet I would rather have known.”
Only a few hours before he had stood upon the deck of the Channel packet and had seen the bows swing westward of Dover Castle and head toward the pier. Would Sylvia be there, he had wondered, as he watched the cluster of atoms on the quay, and in a little while he had seen her, standing quite alone, at the very end of the breakwater that she might catch the first glimpse of her lover. Others had traveled with them in the carriage to London and there had been no opportunity of speech. All that he knew was that she had been alone now for some weeks in the little house in Hobart Place.
“One thing I see,” he said. “You are not as troubled as you were. The look of fear — that has gone from your eyes. Sylvia, I am glad!”
“There, were times,” she answered — and as she thought upon them, terror once more leapt into her face— “times when I feared more than ever, when I needed you very much. But they are past now, Hilary,” and her hand dropped for a moment upon his, and her eyes brightened with a smile. As they dined she told the story of those months.
“We returned to London very suddenly after you had gone away,” she began. “We were to have stayed through September. But my father said that business called him back, and I noticed that he was deeply troubled.”
“When did you notice that?” asked Chayne, quickly. “When did you first notice it?”
Sylvia reflected for a moment.
“The day after you had gone.”
“Are you sure?” asked Chayne, with a certain intensity.
“Quite.”
Chayne nodded his head.
“I did not understand the reason of the hurry. And I was perplexed — and also a little alarmed. Everything which I did not understand frightened me in those days.” She spoke as if “those days” and all their dark events belonged to some dim period of which no consequence could reach her now. “Our departure had almost the look of a flight.”
“Yes,” said Chayne. For his part he was not surprised at their flight. He had passed more than one wakeful night during the last few months arguing and arguing again whether or no he should have disclosed to Sylvia the meaning of that softly opening door and the shadow on the ceiling as he read it. He might have been wrong; if so, he would have added to Sylvia’s burden of troubles yet another, and one more terrible than all the rest. He might have been right; and if so, he might have enabled Sylvia to avert a tragedy. Thus the argument had revolved in a circle and left him always in the same doubt. Now he understood that his explanation of the incident had been confirmed. The loud whistle from the darkness of the road, the yokel’s cry, which had driven Garratt Skinner from the room, as noiselessly as he had entered it, had done more than that — they had driven him from the neighborhood altogether. Some one had seen him — had seen him standing just behind Walter Hine in the lighted room — and on the next day he had fled!
“I was right,” he said, absently, “right to keep silent.” For here was Sylvia at his side and the dreaded peril unfulfilled. “Well, you returned to London?” he added, hastily.
“Yes. There is something of which I did not tell you, that night when we were together on the downs. Walter Hine had begun to take cocaine.”
Chayne started.
“Cocaine!” he cried.
“Yes. My father taught him to take it.”
“Your father,” said Chayne, slowly, trying to fit this new and astounding fact in with the rest. “But why?”
“I think I can tell you,” said Sylvia. “My father knew quite well that he had me working against him, trying to rescue Walter Hine out of his hands. And I was beginning to get some power. He understood that, and destroyed it. I was no match for him. I thought that I knew something of the under side of life. But he knew more, ever so much more, and my knowledge was of no avail. He taught Walter Hine the craving for cocaine, and he satisfied the craving — there was his power. He provided the drug. I do not know — I might perhaps have fought against my father and won. But against my father and a drug I was helpless. My father obtained it in sufficient quantity, withheld it at times, gave it at other times, played with him, tantalized him, gratified him. You can understand there was only one possible resu
lt. Walter Hine became my father’s slave, his dog. I no longer counted in his thoughts at all. I was nothing.”
“Yes,” said Chayne.
The device was subtle, diabolically subtle. But he wondered whether it was only to counterbalance and destroy Sylvia’s influence that Garratt Skinner had introduced cocaine to Hine’s notice; whether he had not had in view some other end, even still more sinister.
“I saw very little of Mr. Hine after our return to London,” she continued. “He did not come often to the house, but when he did come, each time I saw that he had changed. He had grown nervous and violent of temper. Even before we left Dorsetshire the violence had become noticeable.”
“Oh!” said Chayne, looking quickly at Sylvia. “Before you left Dorsetshire?”
“Yes; and my father seemed to me to provoke it, though I could not guess why. For instance—”
“Yes?” said Chayne. “Tell me!”
He spoke quietly enough, but once again there was audible a certain intensity in his voice. There had been an occasion when Sylvia had given to him more news of Garratt Skinner than she had herself. Was she to do so once more? He leaned forward with his eyes on hers.
“The night when you came back to me. Do you remember, Hilary?” and a smile lightened his face.
“I shall forget no moment of that night, sweetheart, while I live,” he whispered; and blushes swept prettily over her face, and in a sweet confusion she smiled back at him.
“Oh, Hilary!” she said.
“Oh, Sylvia!” he mimicked; and as they laughed together, it seemed there was a danger that the story of the months of separation would never be completed. But Chayne brought her back to it.
“Well? On that night when I came back?”
“I saw you in the road from my window, and then motioning you to be silent, I disappeared from the window.”
“Yes, I remember,” said Chayne, eagerly. He began to think that the cocaine was after all going to fit in with the incidents of that night.
“Walter Hine and my father were going up to bed. I heard them on the stairs. They were going earlier than usual.”
“You are sure?” interrupted Chayne. “Think well!”
“Much earlier than usual, and they were quarreling. At least, Walter Hine was quarreling; and my father was speaking to him as if he were a child. That hurt his vanity and made him worse.”
“Your father was provoking him?”
Sylvia’s forehead puckered.
“I could not say that, and be sure of it. But I can say this. If my father had wished to provoke him to a greater anger, it’s in that way that he would have done it.”
“Yes. I see.”
“They were speaking loudly — even my father was — more loudly than usual — especially at that time. For when they went up-stairs, they usually went very quietly”; and again Chayne interrupted her.
“Your father might have wanted you to hear the quarrel?” he suggested.
Sylvia turned to him curiously.
“Why should he wish that?” she asked, and considered the point. “He might have. Only, on the other hand, they were earlier than usual. They would not be so careful to go quietly; I was likely to be still awake.”
“Exactly,” said Chayne.
For in the probability that Sylvia would be still awake, would hear the violent words of Hine, and would therefore be an available witness afterward, Chayne found the reason both of the loudness of Garratt Skinner’s tones and his early retirement for the night.
“Did you hear what was said? Can you repeat the words?” he asked.
“Yes. My father was keeping something from Mr. Hine which he wanted. I have no doubt it was the cocaine,” and she repeated the words.
“Yes,” said Chayne. “Yes,” in the tone of one who is satisfied. The incident of the lighted room and the shadow on the ceiling were clear to him now. A quarrel of which there was a witness, a quarrel all to the credit of Garratt Skinner since it arose from his determination to hinder Walter Hine from poisoning himself with drugs — at least, that is how the evidence would work out; the quarrel continued in Walter Hine’s bedroom, whither Garratt Skinner had accompanied his visitor, a struggle begun for the possession of the drug, begun by a man half crazy for want of it, a blow in self-defence delivered by Garratt Skinner, perhaps a fall from the window — that is how Chayne read the story of that night, as fashioned by the ingenuity of Garratt Skinner.
But on one point he was still perplexed. The story had not been told out to its end that night: there had come an unexpected shout, which had interrupted it, and indeed forever had prevented its completion on that spot. But why had it not been completed afterward, during the next few months, somewhere else? It had not been completed. For here was Sylvia with all her fears allayed, continuing the story of those months.
“But violence was not the only change in Walter Hine. There were some physical alterations which frightened me. Mr. Hine, as I say, came very seldom to our house, though my father saw a great deal of him. Otherwise I should have noticed them before. But early this year he came and — you remember he was fair — well, his skin had grown dark, quite dark, his complexion had changed altogether. And there was something else which shocked me. His tongue was black, really black. I asked him what was the matter? He grew restless and angry and lied to me, and then he broke down and told me he could not sleep. He slept for a few minutes only at a time. He really was ill — very ill.”
Was this the explanation, Chayne asked himself? Having failed at the quick process, the process of the lighted room and the open window, had Garratt Skinner left the drug to do its work slowly and surely?
“He was so weak, so broken in appearance, that I was alarmed. My father was not in the house. I sent for a cab and I took Mr. Hine myself to a doctor. The doctor knew at once what was amiss. For a time Mr. Hine said ‘No,’ but he gave in at the last. He was in the habit of taking thirty grains of cocaine a day.”
“Thirty grains!” exclaimed Chayne.
“Yes. Of course it could not go on. Death or insanity would surely follow. He was warned of it, and for a while he went into a home. Then he got better, and he determined to go abroad and travel.”
“Who suggested that?” asked Chayne.
“I do not know. I know only that he refused to go without my father, and that my father consented to accompany him.”
Chayne was startled.
“They are away together now?” he cried. A look of horror in his eyes betrayed his fear. He stared at Sylvia. Had she no suspicion — she who knew something of the under side of life? But she quietly returned his look.
“I took precautions. I told my father what I knew — not merely that Mr. Hine had acquired the habit of taking cocaine, but who had taught him the habit. Yes, I did that,” she said simply, answering his look of astonishment. “It was difficult, my dear, and I would very much have liked to have had you there to help me through with it. But since you were not there, since I was alone, I did it alone. I thought of you, Hilary, while I was saying what I had to say. I tried to hear your voice speaking again outside the Chalet de Lognan. ‘What you know, that you must do.’ I warned my father that if any harm came to Walter Hine from taking the drug again, any harm at all which I traced to my father, I would not keep silent.”
Chayne leaned back in his seat.
“You said that — to Garratt Skinner, Sylvia!” and the warmth of pride and admiration in his voice brought the color to her cheeks and compensated her for that bad hour. “You stood up alone and braved him out! My dear, if I had only been there! And you never wrote to me a word of it!”
“It would only have troubled you,” she answered. “It would not have helped me to know that you were troubled!”
“And he — your father?” he asked. “How did he receive it?”
Sylvia’s face grew pale, and she stared at the table-cloth as though she could not for the moment trust her voice. Then she shuddered and said in a low and shaki
ng voice — so vivid was still the memory of that hour:
“I thought that I should never see you again.”
She said no more. From those few words, and from the manner in which she uttered them, Chayne had to build up the terrible scene which had taken place between Sylvia and her father in the little back room of the house in Hobart Place. He looked round the lighted room, listened to the ripple of light voices, and watched the play of lively faces and bright eyes. There was an incongruity between these surroundings and the words which he had heard which shocked him.
“My dear, I’ll make it up to you,” he said. “Trust me, I will! There shall be good hours, now. I’ll watch you, till I know surely without a word from you what you are thinking and feeling and wanting. Trust me, dearest!”
“With all my heart and the rest of my life,” she answered, a smile responding to his words, and she resumed her story:
“I extracted from my father a promise that every week he should write to me and tell me how Mr. Hine was and where they both were. And to that — at last — he consented. They have been away together for two months, and every week I have heard. So I think there is no danger.”
Chayne did not disagree. But, on the other hand, he did not assent.
“I suppose Mr. Hine is very rich?” he said, doubtfully.
“No,” replied Sylvia. “That’s another reason why — I am not afraid.” She chose the words rather carefully, unwilling to express a deliberate charge against her father. “I used to think that he was — in the beginning when Captain Barstow won so much from him. But when the bets ceased and no more cards were played — I used to puzzle over why they ceased last year. But I think I have hit upon the explanation. My father discovered then what I only found out a few weeks ago. I wrote to Mr. Hine’s grandfather, telling him that his grandson was ill, and asking him whether he would not send for him. I thought that would be the best plan.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 442