The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection. W. Somerset Maugham

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СКАЧАТЬ could he offer of anything he said? Walker had been killed on the same night as George, poor Walker with his cheerfulness in difficulties and his buoyant spirits: his death too must be laid to the charge of George Allerton; Adamson had died of fever. Those two alone had any inkling of the truth; they could have told a story that would at least have thrown grave doubts upon Macinnery's. But Alec set his teeth; he did not want their testimony. Finally there was the promise. He had given his solemn oath, and the place and the moment made it seem more binding, that he would utter no word that should lead Lucy to suspect even for an instant that her brother had been untrue to the trust she had laid upon him. Alec was a man of scrupulous truthfulness, not from deliberately moral motives but from mere taste, and he could not have broken his promise for the great discomfort it would have caused him. But it was the least of the motives which influenced him. Even if George had exacted nothing, he would have kept silence. And then, at the bottom of his heart, was a fierce pride. He was conscious of the honesty of his motives, and he expected that Lucy should share his consciousness. She must believe what he said to her because he said it. He could not suffer the humiliation of defending himself, and he felt that her love could not be very great if she could really doubt him. And because he was very proud perhaps he was unjust. He did not know that he was putting upon her a trial which he should have asked no one to bear.

      He stood up and faced Lucy.

      'What is it precisely you want me to do?' he asked.

      'I want you to have mercy on me because I love you. Don't tell the world if you choose not to. But tell me the truth. I know you're incapable of lying. If I only have it from your own lips I shall believe. I want to be certain, certain.'

      'Don't you realise that I would never have asked you to marry me if my conscience hadn't been quite clear?' he said slowly. 'Don't you see that the reasons I have for holding my tongue must be overwhelming, or I wouldn't stand by calmly while my good name was torn from me shred by shred?'

      'But I'm going to be your wife, and I love you, and I know you love me.'

      'I implore you not to insist, Lucy. Let us remember only that the past is gone and that we love one another. It is impossible for me to tell you anything.'

      'Oh, but you must now,' she implored. 'If anything has happened, if any part of the story is true, you must give me a chance of judging for myself.'

      'I'm very sorry. I can't.'

      'But you'll kill my love for you.'

      She sprang to her feet and pressed both hands to her heart.

      'The doubt that lurked at the bottom of my soul, now fills me. How can you let me suffer such maddening torture?'

      An expression of anguish passed across his calm eyes. He made a gesture of despair.

      'I thought you trusted me.'

      'I'll be satisfied if you'll only tell me one thing.' She put her hands to her head with a rapid, aimless movement that showed the extremity of her agitation. 'Oh, what has love done with me?' she cried desperately. 'I was so proud of my brother and so utterly devoted to him. But I loved you so much that there wasn't any room in my heart for the past. I forgot all my unhappiness and all my loss. And even now they seem so little to me beside your love that it's you I think of first. I want to know that I can love you freely. I'll be satisfied if you'll only tell me that when you sent George out that night, you didn't know he'd be killed.'

      Alec looked at her steadily. And once more he saw himself in the African tent amid the rain and the boisterous wind. At the time he sought to persuade himself that George had a chance of escape. He told him with his own lips that if he showed perfect self-confidence at the moment of danger he might save himself alive; but at the bottom of his heart he knew, he had known all along, that it was indeed death he was sending him to, for George had not the last virtue of a scoundrel, courage.

      'Only say that, Alec,' she repeated. 'Say that's not true, and I'll believe you.'

      There was a silence. Lucy's heart beat against her breast like a caged bird. She waited in horrible suspense.

      'But it is true,' he said, very quietly.

      Lucy did not answer. She stared at him with terrified eyes. Her brain reeled, and she feared that she was going to faint. She had to put forth all her strength to drive back the enveloping night that seemed to crowd upon her.

      'It is true,' he repeated.

      She gave a gasp of pain.

      'I don't understand. Oh, my dearest, don't treat me as a child. Have mercy on me. You must be serious now. Ifs a matter of life and death to both of us.'

      'I'm perfectly serious.'

      A frightful coldness appeared to seize her, and the tips of her fingers were strangely numbed.

      'You knew that you were sending George into a death-trap? You knew that he could not escape alive?'

      'Except by a miracle.'

      'And you don't believe in miracles?'

      Alec made no answer. She looked at him with increasing horror. Her eyes were staring wildly. She repeated the question.

      'And you don't believe in miracles?'

      'No.'

      She was seized with all manner of conflicting emotions. They seemed to wage a tumultuous battle in the depths of her heart. She was filled with horror and dismay, bitter anger, remorse for her callous indifference to George's death; and at the same time she felt an overwhelming love for Alec. And how could she love him now?

      'Oh, it can't be true,' she cried. 'It's infamous. Oh, Alec, Alec, Alec... O God, what shall I do.'

      Alec held himself upright. He set his teeth, and his heavy jaw seemed squarer than ever. There was a great sternness in his voice.

      'I tell you that whatever I did was inevitable.'

      Lucy flushed at the sound of his voice, and anger and sudden hatred took the place of all other feelings.

      'Then if that's true, the rest must be true. Why don't you acknowledge as well that you sacrificed my brother's life in order to save your own?'

      But the mood passed quickly, and in a moment she was seized with dismay.

      'Oh, it's awful. I can't realise it.' She turned to him with a desperate appeal. 'Haven't you anything to say at all? You know how much I loved my brother. You know how much it meant to me that he should live to wipe out all memory of my father's crime. All the future was centred upon him. You can't have sacrificed him callously.'

      Alec hesitated for an instant.

      'I think I might tell you this,' he said. 'We were entrapped by the Arabs, and our only chance of escape entailed the death of one of us.'

      'So you chose my brother because you loved me.'

      Alec looked at her. There was an extraordinary СКАЧАТЬ