The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 39

Why did you ask me to become your wife?"

He moved uneasily.

"Why do you ask? Surely we understand each other."

"We did, perhaps, but I have told you that things have changed. Won't you answer me?"

"I asked you--because I wished you to be my wife," he returned stubbornly.

"John, isn't that rather a lame equivocation?"

He stared at her with heavy, troubled eyes.

"Yes, it was. But the truth might hurt you, Beatrice."

"No, it wouldn't. Nothing can hurt so much in the end as lies and humbug."

"Well, then, I asked you to become my wife because I believed that my conduct had put you into a wrong and painful situation in the eyes of the world."

"Nothing else?"

"I wished to prove to Lois that I could never be her husband."

"You were afraid that she would see through your pretense to your unchanged affection for her?"

He started.

"Beatrice, how do you know?"

"Look in your own gla.s.s, John. Yours isn't the face of a man who has shaken off an old attachment."

He rose and stood with his back half turned to her, playing idly with the papers on the table.

"You are partly right," he said, after a moment's silence, "but not quite. I have more on my shoulders than that; I have a heavy responsibility--a debt to pay."

"You, too?" she asked, with a return of the half-melancholy, half-bitter smile. "Have you also a debt?"

"Not of my making," was the answer. The voice rang suddenly stern and harsh, and Beatrice saw him look up suddenly, as though instinctively seeking something on the wall. "Beatrice, you must know that my actions are dictated by motives which I can not for many reasons give to the world. For one thing, I have given my promise; for another, my own judgment tells me that it is better for every one that I should be silent. But I am free to say this much to you--I am not a dishonorable man who has played lightly with the affections of an innocent girl. I have acted toward Lois as I believe will be for her ultimate happiness--I have s.h.i.+elded her from a misfortune, a punishment I might say, which would have fallen unjustly on her shoulders. I have taken a burden upon my shoulders because I love her--and I have the right to love her--but chiefly because it is my duty to do so. Where there is sin, Beatrice, there must also be atonement, otherwise its consequences can never be wiped out. I have chosen to atone."

Beatrice made no attempt to question him. Her eyes fell thoughtfully on the gaunt face, and for the first time she appreciated to the full what was great and generous in the nature she had condemned all too often as narrow and unbending. Whatever else he was, this man was no Pharisee. If he was narrow, he allowed himself no license; if unbending, he was at least least of all relenting toward his own conduct. She pitied him and she respected him, even though she could not understand his motives nor guess the weight of the responsibility which he had taken upon himself.

"I can not reproach you with deception," she said at last. "You never pretended that you loved me, and on my side I think the matter was pretty clear. I intended to marry you for your position. Afterward money added a further incentive. I saw the loss of our own fortune coming. Travers warned me on the same day that we became engaged."

A dark flood of indignant blood rushed to Stafford's forehead.

"The man is an unscrupulous adventurer--no doubt he has safeguarded his own interest carefully enough," he exclaimed bitterly.

"You are quite right. His wife has all the money, and he has taken care that it should be well tied up and out of reach. That is what my father did."

He turned to her again.

"Your father?"

"Yes, my father," she repeated, meeting his eyes gravely and unflinchingly. "He tried to do what Travers did. But he wasn't quite so clever. He ran too close to the wind, as he said himself, and they put him in prison. He died there."

He stood looking at her with a new interest. He too, was beginning to understand. The bitter line about the mouth was not the expression of a hard, unfeeling heart after all, then, and the sharp, mocking laugh which had jarred so often on his ears was not the echo of a shallow, worthless character? They were no more than the deep wounds left after a rough battle with a world that knows no pity for those branded with inherited shame and dishonor. He had misjudged her. There were unlimited possibilities of n.o.bility and goodness in the beautiful face lifted to his. But he said nothing of the thoughts that flashed through his mind. In moments of crisis we always speak of what is least important.

"And you managed to keep it a secret in Marut?" he asked.

"Yes, it was a marvel, wasn't it?"--her eyes brightening with a spark of the old fun. "We lived in a constant state of alarms and excursions. But Mr. Travers did what he could. He knew all about it, and he helped us."

"On conditions, no doubt?"

"Of course, on conditions. But he said, quite truthfully, that he had no idea of blackmailing me. It was just a fair bargain between us."

She paused a little before she went on: "Now, you understand what brought us to Marut, and what made you such a desirable catch. We wanted to get clear away from the past and build up a new life. But we couldn't. One can't build up anything on a lie."

"That is true," he returned sternly, "and yet this is hardly a time for you to talk of your failure. From the moment that you are my wife--"

"But, John, that's what I never shall be." She laughed wearily. "Do you think a clever woman would own up to an unpleasant past to the man she wanted to marry? And if you want to hear more detestable things about me, ask the Colonel, ask Mrs. Berry, ask the Rajah. They know all about me, for I told them yesterday. You don't need to look so white and haggard. I am not going to marry you. That is what I came to say. And I wanted to explain everything, and to ask you, if you can, to forgive me all the trouble I have brought upon you." She rose, and held out her hand to him. "Will you shake hands, John?"

He stood motionless by the table, watching her with a last stirring of the old distrust.

"I do not understand you," he said bluntly, and in truth he did not.

This pale-faced woman with the earnest eyes deep underlined with the marks of sleepless nights was a riddle which his stiff, conventional imagination could not solve.

"Is it necessary that you should understand?" she answered. "I have not asked you to explain why, still loving her, you threw Lois over. I believe that you had some grave reason. It could not be graver than mine for doing what I am doing."

"Then you mean that--it is entirely over between us?"

"Yes, it is over between us. Your sense of justice will not have to undergo the ordeal of forcing your sense of honor to link itself with dishonor. To your credit, I believe you would have married me, John, and I am grateful. But there's an end of it. I have come to say good-by. I suppose it is absurd, but I wish we could remain friends."

This time he took her hand in his. Now that the artificial union between them was done away with, their real friends.h.i.+p for each other came back and took its rightful place in their lives.

"Why shouldn't we, Beatrice?" he said. "Heaven knows, we both have need of friends."

"It is a strange thing," she continued thoughtfully, "that, though you are so completely my opposite, I have always liked you. Even when you most jarred upon me with your prunes-and-prisms morality, I was never able quite to close my heart. I wonder why?"

He could not repress a faint amus.e.m.e.nt at the flash of her old self.

"It has been the same with me," he said. "Even when you trod on all my principles at once, I haven't been able to smother a sort of shamefaced respect for you. You always seemed more worthy of respect than--well, some of the others."

"I suppose it is our sincerity," she said. "You are sincere in your goodness, and I, paradoxical as it sounds, in my badness."

"I think not," he answered, looking her gravely in the face. "I think it is because the hidden best in both of us recognized each other and held out the hand of friends.h.i.+p almost without our knowing."

She smiled, but he saw a light sparkle in her eyes.

"Oh, practical John, you are making fast progress in the soul's world!

Who has taught you?"