CHAPTER XXXV

CONFESSION

"Well, I have played and lost. But that is best. Where was my right to win and keep such glory? Now I will let the book of living rest. Closed is my story." --ALICE HERBERT.

Hubert's motor traversed the distance from the sports to Ilbersdale at a rate so far beyond the police limit as to make limits seem ridiculous.

On his way he encountered Mr. Cooper, pushing his bicycle up hill. The seething excitement which had gripped him that afternoon had not yet expended itself; and he pulled up.

"Good evening, Vicar. Just a word! I hope you have not been to the Burmesters with any of those awful lies about your niece that Otis was getting off his chest in that field?"

The vicar assumed his most stony aspect. His cold eye said eloquently, "Beware!" Aloud his reply was: "I fear I do not understand you, Captain Brooke."

"Sorry; it's my slang makes me difficult to follow. I drop into it when I'm excited. You see, I happen to know all about Otis, and I've just been enlightening the bystanders a bit. There isn't enough of him left to make a War Office clerk! They've hissed him off the ground, General Ayres has washed his hands of him, and I've given him twelve hours to choose between a libel action and a written apology."

"It is a--surely--a somewhat extraordinary proceeding on your part to talk of libel actions on behalf of a young lady who has her own relatives to protect her," said the vicar, fastening, in the whirl of his mind, upon a breach of conventionalities which he might legitimately resent.

"Her own relatives didn't seem to me to be doing much protecting this afternoon," observed Bert drily. "However, Mrs. Cooper and your daughters will be able to tell you all about it. They saw the brute knocked out of time."

The vicar began to be anxious to get home.

"I fancy you are under a misapprehension," he said. "I have just been to Ilbersdale to correct a misunderstanding. I own I was disturbed this afternoon to find that Mr. and Mrs. Helston had allowed the engagement between Mr. Burmester and my niece to take place, without informing the bridegroom's relatives of the serious family disabilities of the bride. I was anxious to assure Lady Burmester that, had the affair rested with me, I should have been quite frank; but that I naturally imagined that Miss Lutwyche's adopted parents had supplied all the facts."

"That was very thoughtful of you. But if you were, as you say, in possession of the facts, how is it that you did not contradict the horrible misstatements made by Otis up at the field?"

The vicar grew still more stony.

"I have never been made acquainted with the exact truth concerning my niece's injuries at the time of her father's death."

"Injuries?" echoed Bert. "Injuries, indeed! But I've seen her righted. She was the darling of the Dale before; she'll be its idol now! Did you hear them cheering her?"

The vicar stood amazed. "Cheering my niece?"

Hubert laughed mischievously.

"And who may you be, to have the intimate knowledge which I lack concerning this young lady?" inquired the vicar.

"Hubert Brooke, late Captain in Lacy's Brigade," laughed Bert, as he drove away.

Mr. Cooper pursued his road, in much wrath and discomfiture. His reception at Ilbersdale had affronted him, his encounter with Bert bewildered him. He remounted the bicycle which he was pushing at the time of his meeting, and rode home with what speed he might.

By the Vicarage gate two men were awaiting him--Otis and the unattractive Boer boy. Evidently they meant to speak with him.

Otis approached with the easy confidence and winning smile that he could assume at will. He begged pardon for troubling, but he had unthinkingly mixed himself up in what looked to him like a local scandal of formidable dimensions, and he had come to the vicar for advice. Mr. Cooper's anger was not altogether proof against the insidious appeal. He was used to being ignored and left out of things, and, to one whose own idea of his own importance, both socially and parochially, was enormous, the way this man approached him was a salve to a wound always more or less smarting.

After a short parley, understanding that Otis had material facts to communicate, he invited him in.

Mrs. Cooper and her daughters were at tea; and there was a flutter of consternation among them for they had seen the exit of Otis from the Fransdale sports. Mrs. Cooper became unspeakably coy, blushing like a girl, and dismissing her brood, with their tea half done, on the flimsiest of pretexts.

"This is not surprisin', Mrs. Cooper," said Otis sadly. "I was a stranger up there, and nobody knew me. It was my word against that of a bad and dangerous man, who is sailin' among you all under false colours. These young ladies heard him givin' me the lie up there. In justice, I should like to have them hear what I want to tell you now. You may have heard Mr. Mayne or Miss Lutwyche talk of the man Mestaer?"

"Yes, yes," gasped Madeline, at the door. "She had one letter from him after she got here--you remember, mother, the letter she would not show you. She said he wanted to marry her!"

"She wouldn't show you his letter?" slowly said Otis, standing by the table, and turning his hat round in his hand as if on the point of taking leave. "Has she ever told you that he goes now under the name of Brooke?"

"What's that you say?" sharply asked the vicar.

"He's well disguised," replied Otis. "He bluffed me, I own it. But Arnie here, he knew him from the first; didn't you, boy?"

Arnold looked at the three tall, full-blown girls, blushed admiringly and assented.

Surprise deprived them all of speech.

"Now, I'm told," said Otis, "that this fine Captain Brooke is buildin' himself a house, and that Miss Lutwyche is his--architect." He gave a little chuckle, "Excuse me: I really got to laff," he drawled humorously. "The idea of him an' his architect is a bit too thick--eh?"

"Miss Lutwyche is duly qualified," began the vicar, in his stateliest manner.

"Do I doubt it? No, sir! But I hear she has been stayin' down in the shires with him pretty near all summer, gettin' this house ready while her lover's in Russia. Now, I couldn't help just wonderin'--we really couldn't help it, Arnie and me--whether young Burmester knows that Brooke's her old lover."

"Why, do you think _she_ knows?" cried Theo excitedly.

Otis bent on her the sliest, most waggish look, and slowly closed one eye.

"Dear young ladies, you live in Arcadia," he said. "You remind me of three hedge-roses; an' you're doubtless as simple as you're sweet. But your cousin, Miss Lutwyche, she wasn't born yesterday, you know. She knows a thing or two, you may take my word for that."

The vicar was silent, struggling with mortification. That day he had broken through his lifelong rule to do nothing hurriedly. He had gone straight from hearing Otis's revelations to be first with Lady Burmester. He felt sure that what was said must ultimately come to her ears. He thought his duty was plain.

But if he had only waited! If he had only gone to Millie, armed with this fact! If he could have charged her with knowing who Bert was, and concealing her knowledge, how differently things might have gone!

He looked at his wife, who seemed to be still blushing. She rose from table.

"As you say, Mr. Otis," said she, with archness which was unutterably comic upon her middle-aged, substantial personality, "my dear girls are very unsophisticated. They have been carefully brought up, as English girls usually are. I will leave you to discuss this serious matter with Mr. Cooper, and take them away. Come, my darlings."

* * * * * * * *

Meanwhile Bert drove straight to the Grange, inquired for Lance, and found him alone in the smoking-room, sunk in profound gloom and a large arm-chair.

"Burmester," he said abruptly, "I've come to talk to you--to tell you something that will perhaps sever our friendship for ever. Confession is good, they say; but I funk mine." He sank down in the opposite chair, drawing out his cigar-case. "I funk it; make it as easy as you can, old man."

Lance was not smoking. He lifted a haggard young face from the depths of his chair.

"Sorry," he said nervously, "but fact is, I'm feeling a bit off--preoccupied. I must own I'm not in a sympathetic mood."

"It's about that--same thing. My confession touches the spot," said Hubert.

"What are you talking about?"

"You are upset because you find scandal busy with the name of ... your ... the girl you love. And because you feel she hasn't been open with you. You don't doubt her, but you feel there are things you should have known, which she has kept back. Is that so?"

"That's precisely it," said Lance hurriedly. "I oughtn't to talk to you about it--about her. But there must be some kind of understanding between me and her if--if things are to go on. I feel a brute, to talk like this, but I am all abroad, so to speak. We have had a very unpleasant scene here. Old Cooper turned up, and said there were wild rumours flying about, on the authority of those who claimed to have known her in Africa, to the effect that she, Melicent, had got out of her bedroom window and gone with a man called Mestaer, and that she had been in his house three or four weeks. He said he came to Melicent for an authoritative contradiction. He wished to be able to refute the story; thought he had a right to ask for the exact facts."

He leaned forward, running his hands up through his hair.

Hubert sat very still. "And what did she say?"

"... Said it was true."

There was a pause. "Not as if she meant it?" asked Hubert tentatively.

"She was very angry. She looked splendid. She said that it was at her uncle's own request that she had kept silence--that when she first came to England she was anxious to tell him everything, but was forbidden to mention the subject. If we wanted to know the truth we could write to the Bishop: he knew. Then she got up and took her leave, and went off with the Helstons. Of course I know this is a cock-and-bull story; but I feel ... I ought to have been told."

"Yes," agreed his friend, "you ought to have been told."

"One thing I do wish," said Lance, clenching his fists, "that I had that man Mestaer here to strangle."

"Well, if all our wishes could be as easily granted," said Hubert. "I'm Mestaer."

Lance bounded from his seat, then sank back, as red as fire.

"Is this a time for your rotting?"

"No rotting here. I told you it would mean the breaking of our friendship very likely. I am Hubert Mestaer. I took the name of Brooke because it was English, and my mother's, and I wished to live in England and be English. May I go on, or are you too angry to hear me?"

Lance rose to his feet again. He stared blankly for a minute or two, then his eyes suddenly blazed.

"You're Mestaer! Good God! _Then you're the man that knows!_ You can tell me ... what happened that night!"

"Yes; I can tell you: and I will. Mayne knows, she knows, I know. Nobody else."

A shiver ran through Lancelot; he seemed on the brink of a hundred questions; he choked them back.

"Speak, can't you?" he said.

Hubert spoke. He told his story from the beginning, making Melicent's attitude towards himself throughout quite clear. He did not dwell on his own feelings, but made it no secret that he had come to England solely in the hope of being able to obtain her regard.

Lancelot listened to it all, as to information respecting some girl whom he had never known.

"That she should have undergone all this, and never told me a word!"

"I can see where her difficulty came in," said Bert "Before she engaged herself to you, she had guessed who I am. That altered everything. If you can see what I mean, it turned the past into the present. She could not speak to you of Mestaer without adding that he was here, in England, under another name. That would have been giving me away--"

"Why couldn't she warn you that she should speak?"

"She never confessed to me that she knew. She tried to avoid intimacy."

"You ought to have told me yourself!" cried Lance.

"Well, until she engaged herself to you, it was certainly no concern of yours," said Hubert bluntly. "Do you suppose that what you are feeling now is anything like as bad as what I felt about you, when I heard you had carried off the only thing that made life worth living to me?"

Lance paced the room restlessly.

"Is that still the same?" he cried. "Do you still care about her?"

"It's chronic," said Bert calmly. "There's only one woman in my world. She might have Boer relations on every bush for aught I should care. Nothing she could do, nothing anybody could say of her, would make any difference to me."

"But--then--when she's my wife?" stammered Lance.

"When she's--your wife I shall never see her any more," said Bert quietly. "It wouldn't be safe."

"Safe? No! But am I safe now?" cried the young man bitterly. "I don't understand. What is the situation at this moment between you and her?"

Bert folded his arms tight, hunching himself together as if to keep control over his temper.

"That's a question, surely, that you must ask her to answer," he said, in a colourless voice.

Lance uttered an exclamation of rage.

"You ought to know without asking," went on Hubert presently. "Does she love you? Surely you must know that, If she does ... I'm out of it, you see."

Lancelot paused in his pacing. He leaned against the window-frame staring out Hubert had touched the weak spot. He knew that he had persuaded Millie into the engagement, had ever since continued to assure her that she was happy, or that, if not, she certainly would be. He knew that, were he sure of her love, distrust would be impossible to him. He was not sure. He did distrust her. He was madly, wildly jealous of Hubert. Crossing to where he sat, he seized his shoulder, shaking him violently.

"When she promised to marry me, did she know who you are?"

"Yes."

"Then it's all right! It must be! She said she liked me better than anybody else."

"If she said so, it was true."

"She's--she's not like most girls, you see. She's a cold nature--"

"Is she?"

Hubert closed his eyes, thinking of the lips that had clung to his, the eyes that had looked into his, the hands that had trembled beneath his, as they stood together in the chalky pit He got up suddenly: he had had about as much as he could stand.

At the moment a footman entered, with a note on a salver.

"From her," said Lance, very white, as the man left the room.

"Breaking it off," said Hubert, relighting his cold cigar with a shaking hand.

Lance read it

"Just so. She declines to give any kind of explanation of the statements made by Mr. Cooper. She prefers to consider the engagement at an end." He stood silent a moment, the note crumpled in his hand. "I'll go to her," he said unsteadily. "I've simply got to have it out with her! When she hears that I know--that you have told me"--he was half-way to the door. Then he stopped, as if choked. "When I think that I have never known all this! When I think that I have been shut out from her confidence, and that you--you--have known all the time! When I think that I've been away in Russia and you two, with this common memory between you, have been together! Day after day! Over that confounded house-building! I feel that I have good ground to consider myself hardly used."

Hubert turned slowly round. He was so white that Lance considered him attentively.

"Why have you told me now?" he cried. "Why?"

"Only because it couldn't be helped," returned Hubert, in a hard voice.

"And, but for this scoundrel turning up, she would have married me without a word! Brooke, I can't stand it! No man could! She's right, it had better be broken off."

"Steady on!" said Bert, getting out his words with difficulty. "Listen a moment! She may be offering you your freedom because she believes you desire it. She is--very proud. She may think this miserable tittle-tattle has shaken your faith in her, and she offers you your way out. What you have to discover, or so it seems to me, is _the cost to herself_. Does she want to be free?" He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "Everyone round here will say you have treated her badly if it's broken off now. That doesn't matter if it isn't true. But make sure--make sure, for God's sake!"

Lance stared at him.

"You're a queer chap. You must want the engagement to be off--that would give you your chance. Yet you send me to her!"

Bert shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," he said, with a half laugh, "I've discovered to-day that I've been mistaken all these years. Ever since I was four-and-twenty I have believed that most of everything on this earth I desired--her. Now I find there is something that I desire more--her happiness. If you're the man to make her happy, in God's name go and do it."