The Yellow Dove/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
EVIDENCE
INSIDE her own room she stood for a moment tremulously in the dark, fingering the guilty thing in her hands as she had fingered the other one—the one she had destroyed. Or hadn’t she destroyed it? For a moment the thought came to her that Cyril had practiced some trick upon her when they had knelt before the fire, substituting other papers for the ones that were to be burned. But that was impossible. The papers had not touched his fingers. He it was who had made a hole for them in the fire, but her fingers had thrust the original papers into the glowing coals. She turned the packet over and over in her fingers, glancing at the closed door that separated her from Cyril. Another message! It must be.
She pulled the curtains at the window and then moving quietly to the bed, lit the candle on the night-stand. Another packet of Riz-la-Croix, new like the other, with its tiny thin rubber band. She opened it quickly and scanned its pages, finding what she sought without difficulty. The writing was not in the same hand. It was rounder and less minute, covering in all seven pages, and it was written carelessly as if the writer had been in a hurry. Cyril’s own handwriting it seemed. The purport of its message was the same.
No. She remembered the dates. These were somewhat different. The names of the regiments were the same, but the dates instead of days in April and May gave days in the months of June and July. And the numerals which at first had puzzled her were smaller. For instance, among “Highland Regiments Foot” the numerals of which she remembered particularly, instead of 120,000 she saw the numerals 42,000. It was the same under other headings in the remainder of the items. Under “shrapnel” there were changes, and under “artillery”
She closed the packet in icy fingers, for the figures swam before her eyes. They were all true—all the horrible things that she had thought of Cyril! This was later and more accurate information—the exact reason for which she did not pretend to understand—and was intended to follow the previous message—perhaps to be used as a code in connection with it. Cyril was Oh, the dishonor of it! And she had gone to sleep almost ready to believe in him again—because he had let her burn the other papers. What did it matter to him whether she burned the papers when he had other messages to send and had committed to memory the facts he had let her destroy? He had lied to her. He was false as Judas and more dangerous, for now she knew that he was desperate as well as cunning, stooping to any means, no matter how ignoble, to gain his ends. She had been a mere bauble in his hands, a child upon whose credulity he had played without scruple. He had used her, the woman he had said he loved, for his own unworthy ends as he used Betty Heathcote and her house. She was filled with shame for him and for herself, who could love something shameful.
And John Rizzio! Rizzio, Cyril’s enemy, stood for England and right, and she had permitted herself to see through Cyril’s eyes just as Cyril had wanted her to see.
It seemed as she compared them that Rizzio’s nobility attained a firmer contour. He had come to her room to save her from her own ignorance and wilfulness, from committing a crime, the greatest of all crimes against England. Rizzio knew what Cyril was and on her account had refrained from giving Cyril up to the officers of the law, although they were within call—even when he felt himself yielding to the fury of Cyril’s superior physical strength. Not even the spirit of revenge for the punishment Cyril had given him, not even the humiliation he had suffered before her eyes had been enough to make him forget his intention to save, if he could, for the woman who loved him, a successful rival. And she, Doris, had stood by Cyril’s side warm in Cyril’s cause, against the one man who held Cyril’s fate as the bearer of treacherous messages, in his hand.
There was still danger in the air. The last words of the two men to each other had been hidden threats of “other agencies,” whatever they were, and she found herself praying in a whisper that the agency of England, even if it meant Cyril’s danger, might conquer. O God! It would have been better, it seemed, if the bullet at Saltham Rocks that had grazed Cyril’s arm had killed him. That death would at least have been free from the shame of that which awaited Captain Byfield.
She gazed with wide eyes at her guttering candle. She was wishing for Cyril’s death! She shivered with pity for herself and for him and huddled down in the bed, a very small, very miserable object, seeking in vain some hope, some rest for her mind amid the torture of her thoughts.
Suddenly she started up and sat clutching the yellow packet to her breast, her gaze fixed on the door into Cyril’s room. Had she heard a knock? Or was it only imagination? Yes. There it was again. She leaned over hurriedly and blew out the candle and lay very still, her teeth chattering with the cold, her body trembling. He was knocking again, a little louder this time, and she heard his voice through the keyhole whispering her name. She made no response and feigned sleep. He knocked again still louder and she heard her name spoken quite distinctly. He would awaken the house if this went on. When he knocked again she got up and went over to the door.
“Doris!” he was saying.
She answered him.
“Will you open the door—just a crack?”
“No,” she whispered.
“I want to speak to you.”
“You cannot.”
“Please.”
“I’m listening. What do you want to say?”
“I’ve lost something—something that must have fallen from my pocket.”
She was silent.
And then in quick anxious tones:
“You didn’t see—anythin’—on the floor by the door?”
“No,” she lied, trembling. “I didn’t.”
She heard him mutter.
“You’re sure?” came his voice again.
“Yes.”
And then in dubious tones:
“Oh, very well then. Sorry to have troubled you. Good night.”
She didn’t reply and stole back through the darkness to her bed, into which she crept, like some thin wraith of vengeance, biding her time.
Into bed, but not to sleep. She watched the moonlight grow pale into the west and saw the first gray streaks of dawn paint the wooded slopes of Ben Darrah across the valley of the Dorth. In pity for herself and Cyril she watched the new day born, a new day, bleak and cheerless, which seemed by its very aspect to pronounce a sentence upon them; the new day which was to mark the passing of all the things growing womanhood holds most dear, her first faith, her first tenderness, her first passion.
Doris kept to her room until Betty came in, awakening her from a heavy sleep into which she had fallen just before sunrise. Lady Heathcote rang for Wilson and then retired to the ministrations of her own maid, leaving Doris to dress for the morning at her leisure. And when the girl got downstairs to breakfast she found that the other guests had preceded her. But Betty Heathcote was still in the breakfast room picking with dainty fingers at the various dishes upon the sideboard and making sparkling comment as was her custom on men and things. She found the disappearance of John Rizzio, bag, baggage and man, from Kilmorack House without even a line to his hostess both unusual and surprising, since her guest was a man who made much of the amenities and forms of proper behavior. Doris commented in a desultory way, trying to put on an air of cheerfulness, aware of Cyril Hammersley somewhere in the background awaiting the chance to speak to her alone. She did not hurry, and when Betty arose sauntered into the library where the other guests were waiting for the horses to come around. Twice Cyril tried to speak to her, but she avoided him skillfully, contriving to be a part of a group where personal topics were not to be discussed. That kind of maneuvering she knew was a game at which any woman is more than a match for any man. But she saw by the cloud that was growing in Cyril’s eyes that he was not in the mood to be put off with excuses, and realized that the sooner the pain of their interview was over, the better it would be for both of them. She was dressed in the long coat and breeches which she wore in the hunting field, and in her waistcoat pocket was the yellow packet.
“I’ve got to see you for half an hour alone,” he said at last, taking the bull by the horns.
“I shall miss my ride.”
“They’re taking the long road to Ben-a-Chielt. I’ll take you there in the motor and send your mount on by a groom.”
She acquiesced with a cool shrug which put him at once upon his guard, but Doris had reached a pass when all she wanted was to bring their relations to an end as speedily and with as little pain as possible. So that when the others had gone she sank into a chair before the fire, coldly asking him what he wanted. He stood with his back to the hearth, his hands clasped behind him, in a long moment of silence as though trying to find the words to begin.
“Well?” she asked insolently.
“What has happened since last night to change you so, Doris?”
“I’ve had a chance to think.”
“Of what?”
“That it was time you and I had an understanding.”
“I don’t see”
“Wait!” she commanded, with a wave of the hand. “There isn’t anything that you can say that will make me change my mind. Therefore the sooner this talk is over the better for both of us. I’ve told you and you know already that my whole soul is wrapped in the cause of England in this war. I can have nothing but pity and contempt for any Englishman”
She paused, for at this moment, the parlor maid appeared and, gathering up some brasses on Lady Heathcote’s desk, went out of the room.
“I beg that you will be more careful, Doris,” Cyril whispered.
She was silent a moment, and then after a glance at the dining-room door, went on with more restraint.
“Pity and contempt are hardly the kind of ingredients that love can live on. They’ve poisoned mine. It’s dead. I don’t want to see you again,” she finished coldly—“ever. I hope you understand.”
He bowed his head and for a moment made no reply.
“I asked” he said slowly, “I hoped—that you would be willin’ to trust me—that you’d wait until I was able to speak to you—to explain the—the things you do not understand.”
“Unfortunately,” she put in distinctly, “there is nothing that I do not understand. I know—God help you!—what you are. I have done what I can to save you from the fate you’re courting—and I shall still do so, for the sake of—of what once was—was between us. But I do not want to see you again. I have put you out of my life—completely—as though you never had been in it. And now,” she rose, “will you let me go?”
“One moment, please,” he said calmly. “You found those papers last night?”
“Yes,” she said coolly. “And if I did?”
He seemed to breathe more freely.
“I have nothing to say,” he muttered.
“Oh,” she said quickly, “I’m glad of that. You don’t deny?”
“I deny nothing,” he said with a shrug. “I see that it would be useless.”
“I’m glad you give me credit for that much intelligence,” she said scathingly. “You haven’t done so before.”
“It was not your intelligence,” he said gently, “so much as your heart that I had relied upon.”
“Oh, you thought I was a fool that you could use—indefinitely”
“No. I thought you were a woman that I could count on indefinitely.”
Something in the tone of his own voice made her turn and look at him.
“A woman—yes, but not an enemy of England.”
He was silent again, and when he spoke it was not to argue. His voice was subdued—shamed even it seemed.
“And now—I suppose you will give the—the papers to Sandys,” he said.
She examined him closely and pity for him seemed even stronger than shame.
“It is a part of our misunderstanding,” she said coolly, “that you should think so little of me. I have told you that I shall protect you. My hands shall be clean, if my heart isn’t.”
“What will you do with the papers?” he asked.
“This,” and she turned toward him—“burn them.” She put her hand into her pocket, drew out the papers and went toward the hearth. Her hand was even extended toward the fire when, with a quick movement, he snatched the yellow packet from her fingers.
She fell away from him in dismay, as if she had been touched by something poisonous, touching her wrist and the fingers into which her rings had been driven. Then she hid her face in her hands and closed her eyes.
“Oh!” she gasped. “You’d pay my generosity—with this!”
He had examined the papers coolly and had put them into his pocket.
“I? I don’t count in a game like this—nor do you. I’m sorry. They were mine. You took them. I had to have them.”
“Then this” she stammered, “this was what you kept me here for?”
“I had to have them,” he repeated dully. That was all. Her wrist and fingers burned where he had hurt them. A brute—a coward—as well as a traitor. She straightened proudly and with a look at his bowed head, she went by him and out of the room.
Hammersley stood as she had left him for a moment and only raised his head when the parlor maid came in again and replaced the brasses on Lady Heathcote’s desk. In his eyes there came a keen look and he took a step forward.
“Do you always clean Lady Heathcote’s brasses on Friday?” he asked the maid.
She turned around with a startled air.
“Oh, yes, sir,” she replied demurely. “Friday, sir.”
“Oh!” said Hammersley. “Thanks.”
She stood a moment as if awaiting further questions and then went out.
Hammersley followed her with his gaze and then with a last look around the room went into the hall, put on his fur coat and cap and quickly made his way toward the garage.
Upstairs Doris paced her room in an agony of rage and humiliation. She had meant to give him his dismissal kindly, but it was his abjectness that had made her scornful—abjectness worn as she now knew with an object that was indifferent to scorn. It was only with the purpose of getting the papers from her that he had kept her there, and the contempt that she had shown for him seemed but a piteous thing beside the enormity of his brutality. He had not cared what she thought of him. He had not cared. He had said so himself. Their love was a trifle beside the greater matter that concerned him.
He had led her on under the guise of a shame he did not feel, from one revelation to another, playing upon her emotions, upon things, which should have been sacred even to him in such an hour until with infinite cunning he had made her bring out the papers—and then
Rage possessed her. She felt that she had been tricked—with weapons that he should have scorned to use. She hated him at that moment, not as she hated the secrecy and dishonor of his cause, but as a man who could take advantage of a woman, as a hypocrite, a coward, a bully.
She knew the fury of Dido, but she felt the pain of Ariadne too. She heard the sound of his roadster and ran to the window, peering dark-eyed through the muslin curtains, and saw him go by under her windows, low down in his seat, his gaze fixed on the road ahead, driving fast, Stryker beside him. He passed without even a glance upward or back—out of her life. It seemed to her that if he had turned his head just then and given one look at the house even, she could have forgiven him much, but she watched him until he turned the angle of the road and was gone.
Their interview had seemed so brief—in all it seemed scarcely more than a moment—to have made such a horrible change in her way of looking at things. If he had protested innocence, fought, if even so weakly, against her evidence, fought with a man’s strength against odds the danger of losing the woman he wanted, she could have seen him go with a calmness born of woman’s inherent right to dismiss. But this! Death surely was no worse than for a woman to be spurned by such a man.
After a while tears came, and they helped her, tears of anger, if you will, but tears, soft and humid, in which to a woman there is always a kind of bitter sweetness, too. She threw herself on her bed in her riding togs, her mannish coat and mannish boots, eloquent of their own pretensions. In spite of them and the things they typified she was merely a very tired little girl, weeping her heart out as other little girls had done before and will again, because her lover had gone away from her.
Toward luncheon time when the others were expected to return she got up, bathed her eyes and, summoning Wilson, changed into a dress for the afternoon. Pride came to her rescue now, and with the help of her maid and the mysterious process with which maids are familiar she managed to make herself presentable enough to avoid notice from so keen an observer as her hostess. Doris found herself smiling, and doing her share of conversation in a mechanical way which left a quesin her mind as to the depth of her own emotions. But the weight about her heart, the dull echo of reiterated thoughts pervaded all and she knew that it was merely that her spirit was dulled, her heart numb, like a nerve from the shock of a blow. She stole away when she could with a book to the gun-room, where she could sit alone and try to put her thoughts in order.