The Lamp in the Desert, Ethel May Dell [the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT] 📗

arose within him mingling with his strong contempt. He pulled a hand out of his pocket and displayed a few _annas_ in his palm.
"Well?" he said again. "What may this valuable piece of information be worth?"
The other made an abrupt movement; it was almost as if he curbed some savage impulse to violence. He moved back a pace, and there in the moonlight before Dacre's insolent gaze--he changed.
With a deep breath he straightened himself to the height of a tall man. The bent contorted limbs became lithe and strong. The cringing humility slipped from him like a garment. He stood upright and faced Ralph Dacre--a man in the prime of life.
"That," he said, "is a matter of opinion. So far as I am concerned, it has cost a damned uncomfortable journey. But--it will probably cost you more than that."
"Great--Jupiter!" said Dacre.
He stood and stared and stared. The curt speech, the almost fiercely contemptuous bearing, the absolute, unwavering assurance of this man whom but a moment before he had so arrogantly trampled underfoot sent through him such a shock of amazement as nearly deprived him of the power to think. Perhaps for the first time in his life he was utterly and completely at a loss. Only as he gazed at the man before him, there came upon him, sudden as a blow, the memory of a certain hot day more than a year before when he and Everard Monck had wrestled together in the Club gymnasium for the benefit of a little crowd of subalterns who had eagerly betted upon the result. It had been sinew _versus_ weight, and after a tough struggle sinew had prevailed. He remembered the unpleasant sensation of defeat even now though he had had the grit to take it like a man and get up laughing. It was one of the very few occasions he could remember upon which he had been worsted.
But now--to-night--he was face to face with something of an infinitely more serious nature. This man with the stern, accusing eyes and wholly merciless attitude--what had he come to say? An odd sensation stirred at Dacre's heart like an unsteady hand knocking for admittance. There was something wrong here--- something wrong.
"You--madman!" he said at length, and with the words pulled himself together with a giant effort. "What in the name of wonder are you doing here?" He had bitten his cigar through in his astonishment, and he tossed it away as he spoke with a gesture of returning confidence. He silenced the uneasy foreboding within and met the hard eyes that confronted him without discomfiture. "What's your game?" he said. "You have come to tell me something, I suppose. But why on earth couldn't you write it?"
"The written word is not always effectual," the other man said.
He put up a hand abruptly and stripped the ragged hair from his face, pushing back the heavy folds of the _chuddah_ that enveloped his head as he did so. His features gleamed in the moonlight, lean and brown, unmistakably British.
"Monck!" said Dacre, in the tone of one verifying a suspicion.
"Yes--Monck." Grimly the other repeated the name. "I've had considerable trouble in following you here. I shouldn't have taken it if I hadn't had a very urgent reason."
"Well, what the devil is it?" Dacre spoke with the exasperation of a man who knows himself to be at a disadvantage. "If you want to know my opinion, I regard such conduct as damned intrusive at such a time. But if you've any decent excuse let's hear it!"
He had never adopted that tone to Monck before, but he had been rudely jolted out of his usually complacent attitude, and he resented Monck's presence. Moreover, an unpleasant sense of inferiority had begun to make itself felt. There was something judicial about Monck--something inexorable and condemnatory--something that aroused in him every instinct of self-defence.
But Monck met his blustering demand with the utmost calm. It was as if he held him in a grip of iron intention from which no struggles, however desperate, could set him free.
He took an envelope from the folds of his ragged raiment. "I believe you have heard me speak of my brother Bernard," he said, "chaplain of Charthurst Prison."
Dacre nodded. "The fellow who writes to you every month. Well? What of him?"
Monck's steady fingers detached and unfolded a letter. "You had better read for yourself," he said, and held it out.
But curiously Dacre hung back as if unwilling to touch it.
"Can't you tell me what all the fuss is about?" he said irritably.
Monck's hand remained inflexibly extended. He spoke, a jarring note in his voice. "Oh yes, I can tell you. But you had better see for yourself too. It concerns you very nearly. It was written in Charthurst Prison nearly six weeks ago, where a woman who calls herself your wife is undergoing a term of imprisonment for forgery."
"Damnation!" Ralph Dacre actually staggered as if he had received a blow between the eyes. But almost in the next moment he recovered himself, and uttered a quivering laugh. "Man alive! You are not fool enough to believe such a cock-and-bull story as that!" he said. "And you have come all this way in this fancy get-up to tell me! You must be mad!"
Monck was still holding out the letter. "You had better see for yourself," he reiterated. "It is damnably circumstantial."
"I tell you it's an infernal lie!" flung back Dacre furiously. "There is no woman on this earth who has any claim on me--except Stella. Why should I read it? I tell you it's nothing but damned fabrication--a tissue of abominable falsehood!"
"You mean to deny that you have ever been through any form of marriage before?" said Monck slowly.
"Of course I do!" Dacre uttered another angry laugh. "You must be a positive fool to imagine such a thing. It's preposterous, unheard of! Of course I have never been married before. What are you thinking of?"
Monck remained unmoved. "She has been a music-hall actress," he said. "Her name is--or was--Madelina Belleville. Do you tell me that you have never had any dealings whatever with her?"
Dacre laughed again fiercely, scoffingly. "You don't imagine that I would marry a woman of that sort, do you?" he said.
"That is no answer to my question," Monck said firmly.
"Confound you!" Dacre blazed into open wrath. "Who the devil are you to enquire into my private affairs? Do you think I am going to put up with your damned impertinence? What?"
"I think you will have to." Monck spoke quitely, but there was deadly determination in his words. "It's a choice of evils, and if you are wise you will choose the least. Are you going to read the letter?"
Dacre stared at him for a moment or two with eyes of glowering resentment; but in the end he put forth a hand not wholly steady and took the sheet held out to him. Monck stood beside him in utter immobility, gazing out over the valley with a changeless vigilance that had about it something fateful.
Minutes passed. Dacre seemed unable to lift his eyes from the page. But it fluttered in his hold, though the night was still, as if a strong wind were blowing.
Suddenly he moved, as one who violently breaks free from some fettering spell. He uttered a bitter oath and tore the sheet of paper passionately to fragments. He flung them to the ground and trampled them underfoot.
"Ten million curses on her!" he raved. "She has been the bane of my life!"
Monck's eyes came out of the distance and surveyed him, coldly curious. "I thought so," he said, and in his voice was an odd inflection as of one who checks a laugh at an ill-timed jest.
Dacre stamped again like an infuriated bull. "If I had her here--I'd strangle her!" he swore. "That brother of yours is an artist. He has sketched her to the life--the she-devil!" His voice cracked and broke. He was breathing like a man in torture. He swayed as he stood.
And still Monck remained passive, grim and cold and unyielding. "How long is it since you married her?" he questioned at last.
"I tell you I never married her!" Desperately Dacre sought to recover lost ground, but he had slipped too far.
"You told me that lie before," Monck observed in his even judicial tones. "Is it--worth while?"
Dacre glared at him, but his glare was that of the hunted animal trapped and helpless. He was conquered, and he knew it.
Calmly Monck continued. "There is not much doubt that she holds proof of the marriage, and she will probably try to establish it as soon as she is free."
"She will never get anything more out of me," said Dacre. His voice was low and sullen. There was that in the other man's attitude that stilled his fury, rendering it futile, even in a fashion ridiculous.
"I am not thinking of you." Monck's coldness had in it something brutal. "You are not the only person concerned. But the fact remains--this woman is your wife. You may as well tell the truth about it as not--since I know."
Dacre jerked his head like an angry bull, but he submitted. "Oh well, if you must have it, I suppose she was--once," he said. "She caught me when I was a kid of twenty-one. She was a bad 'un even then, and it didn't take me long to find it out. I could have divorced her several times over, only the marriage was a secret and I didn't want my people to know. The last I heard of her was that her name was among the drowned on a wrecked liner going to America. That was six years ago or more; and I was thankful to be rid of her. I regarded her death as one of the biggest slices of luck I'd ever had. And now--curse her!"--he ended savagely--"she has come to life again!"
He glanced at Monck with the words, almost as if seeking sympathy; but Monck's face was masklike in its unresponsiveness. He said nothing whatever.
In a moment Dacre took up the tale. "I've considered myself free ever since we separated, after only six weeks together. Any man would. It was nothing but a passing fancy. Heaven knows why I was fool enough to marry her, except that I had high-flown ideas of honour in those days, and I got drawn in. She never regarded it as binding, so why in thunder should I?" He spoke indignantly, as one who had the right of complaint.
"Your ideas of honour having altered somewhat," observed Monck, with bitter cynicism.
Dacre winced a little. "I don't profess to be anything extraordinary," he said. "But I maintain that marriage gives no woman the right to wreck a man's life. She has no more claim upon me now than the man in the moon. If she tries to assert it, she will soon find her mistake." He was beginning to recover his balance, and there was even a hint of his customary complacence audible in his voice as he made the declaration. "But there is no reason to believe she will," he added. "She knows very well that she has nothing whatever to gain by it. Your brother seems to have gathered but a vague idea of the affair. You had better write and tell him that the Dacre he means is dead. Your brother-officer belongs to another branch of the family. That ought to satisfy everybody and no great harm done, what?"
He uttered the last word with a tentative, disarming smile. He was not quite sure of his man, but it seemed to him that even Monck must see the utter futility of making a disturbance about the affair at this stage.