# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 14/Number 3/The Higher Duty

   The story of Sandys whom men called “Coward”
The Higher Duty
BY I. A. R. WYLIE
Author of “The Barrier,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY HERMANN WALL
AMIDST the roll of drums and blare of trumpets the Regiment of the Tenth Foot filed past the little isolated bungalow, the dust rising up behind the last company in great drift-clouds. As the mid-day sun beat down upon the fixed bayonets, it seemed to Enid Sandys, as she stood watching the pageant from the veranda, that she was gazing after a moving vapor lit up with a hundred glittering points of light. Then the confusion and tramp of marching feet faded presently; the dusk sank lazily upon the trees and withered flowers; the surrounding waste of open country resumed its normal dreamy aspect, and with its passing all vestige of life seemed to die away with the gay pageant, leaving behind a breathless, stifling silence.
Enid sank back into her lounge chair.
The one episode of the day, as far as she was concerned, was over. Just once every twenty-four hours her blood stirred out of its torpor, her pulses quickened—just a few minutes whilst her Regiment marched on its way back to the barracks. She called it her Regiment, and no one on the Station would have ventured to question her right to do so. She had once been a Farnel, and that family and the Tenth Foot were so associated together that it was not possible to imagine the one without the other. A Farnel had commanded the Regiment during the Peninsular war, and from that time on- ward, in ranks varying from private to colonel, a Farnel had never ceased to serve under the old colors. Even the daughters, obeying an unwritten law, had married into the Tenth or not married at all—until Enid came. She was the first to strike out on a new line.
One day a curious, awkward mannered individual, who called himself a doctor came and settled himself on the outskirts of the Station—why, no one knew. He muddled about among the natives, at tended to their ailments in a desultory, amateurish way, which excited general derision. And people were further contemptuously amused when he began to make love to Enid Farnel. There was nothing very surprising about it—a lot of men before him had done the same. But when Enid actually became his wife, the astonishment and disgust of the whole Farnel clique were truly pitiful to behold.
“She will repent it,” they said, as a sort of consolation to their wounded feelings.
If Enid did repent she never admitted it, but every day she came and stood on the rickety veranda and gazed after the magic circle she had quitted with eyes that were not exactly those of a very happy woman.
On this particular afternoon she was not left long to indulge in her reflections. She heard a quiet step, and looking up found her husband standing at her side.
“The Regiment has just gone past so I thought I should find you here,” he said in his rather stilted way.
Her eyes wandered back towards the road beyond the compound.
“Do you want me for anything?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” he said, smiling faintly, “it was not exactly for my own sake I came. I thought you might be lonely and, for once in a way, I have got news which may interest you.”
In an instant her whole attitude and expression changed. She sat up and a flush of eager animation spread itself over the finely-cut, aristocratic features.
“News!” she exclaimed. “Wait—let me see if I can guess! Colonel Fitzroy is going home after all. No? Why, then I know! Cyril has got his company!”
He shook his head. There was a faint shadow of disappointment in his manner.
“All wrong!” he said. “As a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with the Regiment. It has to do with what I have been working at all these months.”
“Oh. it has to do with your work!” she said.
That was all, but there was a great deal in the tone—a sudden lassitude, indifference, a very slight undercurrent of contempt.
Perhaps he heard and understood, for he leaned his elbows railing and gazed out over the country that lay simmering in a haze of heat.
“Phew! What weather!” he exclaimed as if nothing had happened. “If the rains don’t hurry up we shall have all the diseases on the earth breaking over our heads.”
He seemed perfectly friendly, but a slight feeling of contrition compelled her to say:
“You haven't told me your news yet.”
“I don’t suppose, after all, it would interest you much,” he returned. She made no effort to persuade him and they both relapsed into silence.
Enid wished he had not come. His slow, methodical ways rather irritated her, and she began to study his profile with that carping criticism common to wives with over-strained nerves.
He had come straight from his laboratory at the back of the house and still wore his white over alls, rather torn and considerably stained with chemicals. His tall, narrow figure and thin, pale face, surmounted by the massive forehead. were so little in accordance with her usual manly ideal that she found herself echoing the question her cousin Cyril Farnel had put to her when he first heard of her engagement: “My dear girl, what do you see in the fellow?” Of course she loved him—that was certain. But why? The Station was unanimous in its dislike, and Cyril, who knew a good recruit from a bad one at a glance, was guardedly contemptuous.
Irritated with herself and her thoughts which she felt were disloyal, she sprang to her feet.
“Why don’t you go back to your work?” she said.
He gave a slight start.
“I thought you might be lonely,” he replied, hesitatingly.
“Don’t bother about me,” she answered, knitting her brows as if the sun troubled her. “I expect Cyril will be round soon to cheer me up.”
“Cyril!” he echoed.
He stood a moment silently contemplating his discolored hands, then he went on:
“I suppose, dear, if Cyril did not come quite so often you would miss him?”
“I should miss him very much,” she said, looking at her husband with some perplexity. “We have always been tremendous friends. What do you mean?”
“Nothing—at least I have been thinking lately that it must be lonely for you at times. I shouldn’t leave you so much to yourself. Only, my work—”
“I quite understand,” she interrupted, sharply.
His lips parted as if he would have said something more, but at that moment the compound gate clicked and he turned away with a short sigh.
“TI must get back now, at any rate,” he said, “but I’ll try and be in to tea, little woman.”
She nodded, hardly hearing what he said. She was watching a tall, broad shouldered man who was walking quickly up the path waving his sun-helmet recklessly as he came.
“You mad-cap!” she exclaimed, laughing as he sprang up the steps. “One of these days you will go even madder with sun-stroke!”
He took both her hands and kissed them with debonair gavety.
“My skull is guaranteed in every way impenetrable, dear cousin!” he answered. “Why, where has Humphrey disappeared to? I saw him a minute ago.”
“He has gone back to his hobby horse from which, as you know, he rarely dismounts,” she answered, with a rather forced lightness. “I fancy he saw you coming.”
Lieutenant Farnel laughed.
“I am not exactly a favorite, am I?” he said. “I believe my good spirits and war-like ways jar somewhat on his nerves. Your Lord and Master has distinctly domestic tastes, Enid.”
“You are always making fun of him because he is not a soldier,” she said, frowning. “After all, his profession can require every bit as much courage as yours.”
Then the frown gave place to a smile of pleasure. His muscular, upright figure, fresh, handsome face and clear eyes were to her like an oasis in a parched desert.
“It does me good to look at you!” she exclaimed involuntarily. “You are just the person to cheer me up. Come and tell me some wild, exciting tiger-story—anything that will give me a real live thrill.”
He shook his head.
“I can’t—at least, I must have a word with Humphrey. In fact, for once, I have come entirely on his account.”
“On Humphrey’s account? What do you want with him?”
“Our medicine man sent me. There are some nasty cases of the Plague in the Native (Quarter, and as the authorities are short of help they want all the professionals they can get. I told them Humphrey dabbled in microbes, so they’ve sent him an invitation.”
As he spoke the color died out of Enid’s face. Her beauty, usually lit up by a warm glow of health, became trans parent and ethereal. Cyril, suspecting that his light tone had not deceived her, watched her with a tenderness in his eyes of which he himself was unconscious.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “It will be taken in time. They wont let it get to the Europeans, I promise you.”
She passed her hand over her forehead.
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” she said, unsteadily.
He patted her on the shoulder. His manner became graver.
“Look here, Enid,” he said, “you're a Farnel and the only thing a Farnel ought to be afraid of is Fear. You ought to be thankful, and so ought Humphrey, that he is given a chance to show what he is made of. This epidemic is for a doctor what a battle is for us—a test of his mettle.”
She nodded. There was an expression on her face which he did not understand.
“You are right,” she said brightly. “Except for the pcor people I am glad, and I know Humphrey will be. Run and tell him. After that you can come and talk to me.”
“After duty—pleasure!” he answered with a pressure of the hand. He turned and entered the house. She heard his brisk, firm step echoing down the corridor, but she was not thinking of him. She was thinking of her husband and a sensation within her. How much the covert sneers of her old friends new awoke had hurt her she alone knew. Still harder to bear had been the faint but growing disparagement in her own heart. She was a proud woman and she had so wanted to be proud of the man she loved.
“A chance to show what he is made of!” she thought with a quickening of the pulses. Perhaps the time had come when he would throw off the desultory, useless dabbling in his laboratory and prove himself a man of energy, courage, and determination. An old hope revived with a new strength.
II
The two men greeted each other without cordiality. There was no bond of sympathy between them; indeed, from the first moment, both had been conscious of a secret antagonism as indefinite as it was real.
“I thought you were with my wife,” Sandys said.
He had been engaged on some experiment which he now carefully covered up. He looked wan and haggard—a striking contrast to his stalwart, health glowing visitor.
“No,” Farnel replied, drawing a letter from his pocket. “Hewet asked me to give vou this and wait for an answer.”
Sandys raised his eyebrows with natural surprise. Few people bothered to write to him.
“I suppose he wants something,” he said, with a rather cynical smile.
Farnel made no reply. He was one of those men who looked upon unpopularity as a brand mark, and Sandys was undoubtedly branded. He had no sympathy with him.
Farnel’s eyes wandered restlessly round the laboratory which, at the bottom of his heart, he despised as much as he despised its owner. He wanted to get back to Enid, and Sandys was an abominably long time reading his letter.
He glanced at him and only just managed to choke back an exclamation of surprise. Sandys was not reading. The hand which held the letter had sunk upon the table and he was staring into space with a face whiter than the paper. The high forehead was damp with perspiration, the whole man trembled with an irrepressible excitement—or fear.
“Good Heavens, Sandys!” Farnel exclaimed, impatiently. “What’s the matter? Have you seen a ghost?”
Sandys turned and looked at the speaker. His dreamy eyes were wide open and had that blank stare in them which betokens a mind whose whole force is focused on something afar off.
“No—not a ghost.”
He hardly seemed know what he was saying. He looked at the letter again, turning it over and over in his hands.
“Hewet wants an answer,” Farnel observed, with the exasperated patience of a man who is conscious that he is speaking to a creature of inferior understanding.
Sandys started and appeared to regain his normal self.
“An answer—of course,” he said. “I will write to him.”
“You will go at once?”
“Go?”
“I mean—to the hospital. I didn’t tell Enid, but as a matter of fact the thing has a nasty look. The natives are dropping off one after the other and we have had telegrams from other stations with even worse news. Help is urgently wanted.”
Again the same wandering, nervous look flashed over Sandys’ face.
“No,” he said, in a low voice, “I am not going.”
“Not going? What on earth do you mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“You can’t mean it. It isn’t a little local outbreak. It’s a disaster which is threatening the whole of the country. The man who holds back a helping hand is a—well, I haven’t got a name for him Look here, Sandys, you’re a doctor. Pull yourself together and don’t talk nonsense.”
Sandys looked up.
“I am not talking nonsense. I have said exactly what I mean.”
“What excuse have you to give?”
“I need give you none.”
There was a short, hot silence. The two men stared at each other, Farnel with open disgust.
“I am free to draw my own conclusions then,” the latter said. “Sandys, you are just in a godless, awful—funk.”
He swung round on his heel and went spur-jingling towards the door.
There Sandys stopped him.
“Farnel!” he said.
Cyril turned with well lifted head.
“If you have anything to say, say it quickly,” he said. “I don’t feel as if I could talk much with you.”
“It’s just this,” Sandys said, quietly, “I want you to abstain from your constant visits to this house.”
Farnel laughed with savage contempt.
“Why? Because I said you were in a blue funk?”
“No. You can say and think whatever you like about me. I don’t care. It’s about Enid. I don’t go out much but I know what people are saying and they are beginning to talk about you and her.”
“Oh, of course, if you are going to listen to every old woman’s chatter—” Farnel began, with high scorn.
Obeying a sudden resolution Sandys crossed the space that divided them and looked his opponent squarely in the face so that he seemed to be reading down into the depths of his soul.
“It’s not that I’m afraid of,” he said, in the same level voice. “It is something else—something I have seen and recognized with my own eyes. Farnel, you love my wife.”
The younger man caught his breath in a hard gasp. Perhaps he had never admitted it, even to himself, perhaps the truth sounded too naked and brutal. Then he lifted his eyes, which for a moment had wavered, and the whole of his contempt and bitterness which had lain smothered so long burst out with a reckless, headstrong violence.
“Yes, I do love her,” he said. “Is there anything new in that? I have loved her all my life. Everybody knew it. Everybody believed we were meant for each other; I believed it: she believed it. Then you came—you, a poor, mean, weak kneed creature, who hasn’t even got the spunk to do his duty. I tell you, Sandys, I would rather she had married any man than you. You aren’t fit to breathe the same air with her. A Farnel and you! Good heavens!”
Sandys turned away.
“You may be right,” he said. “I have no doubt you are, but that does not alter what I said. Enid is my wife and her honor is my honor. You will help me to protect it.”
“His honor!”
Farnel laughed furiously to himself as he strode out of the bungalow. He, had forgotten Enid, forgotten everything, save his own resentment and contempt.
Her voice calling from the veranda brought him to a standstill. She was standing on top of the steps smiling at him with a mixture of amusement and vexation.
“Is that the way you keep your promises?” she asked.
He turned his scarlet face to hers.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m going—I must.”
“Wont you come and talk to me a little?”
“No,” he returned between his clenched teeth. “I’m going and I am not coming again.”
The smile died suddenly on her lips.
“Why not? What has happened? Have you two been quarreling?”
“Yes, you can call it a quarrel if you like. He has forbidden me the house.”
“Why?”
He stared at her. His blue eyes shone like two angry points of fire. He made ro pretense at hiding the truth from her or any effort to conceal what he was feeling. According to his principles a coward was beyond the scope of mercy or consideration.
“He has refused to help against the plague,” he said in a loud, high voice as if he wished Sandys to hear. “And I told him to his face what I thought of him. Then he ordered me out of the house on some trivial, trumpery excuse.”
She did not seem to hear the last sentence. She had dropped back a step and a gray shadow crept over her features. The eyes that searched Farnel’s face were full of shrinking, terrible fear. But this fear he understood. It was the thing he had himself felt the first time he went under fire—the fear of being afraid.
“A coward!” she murmured under her breath.
“Yes, that’s what he is!” he affirmed in his headlong Way. “He hadn’t even the pluck to knock me down. He just stood there as white as a frightened girl, trembling like a whipped hound. Oh, he made me sick to look at him!”
He caught her hands and pressed them in a passion of regret and reproach.
“Enid!” he exclaimed, “what a mess we've made of things—what a hopeless mess!”
“Hush!” she cried, pushing him almost roughly from her. “You are not to talk like that. I don’t believe, after all, that it is true. He has some explanation—he must have—one that he will confide to me if not to you.”
Farnel turned away, as if he could no longer bear to speak to her or look at her, and strode out of the compound.
She stood a long time after he had dis appeared, staring after him with the same drawn expression of intense suffering on her white face. She had spoken boldly, but at the bottom she felt as if the whole fairy structure of her married life had been shattered and the truth which she had striven so hard to ignore, made clear and irrefutable before her eyes. She, too, felt sick to the very heart. Yet she turned and went about preparing the tea with apparent calm and unconcern.
Only when her husband entered and advanced as if to kiss her, she drew back with a sudden irrepressible shrinking.
“Enid!” he exclaimed.
His tone rang false, the surprise feigned.
She drew back further, this time with full intention.
“You have not gone?” she said.
A hard, obstinate line shadowed itself round his mouth.
“You have been listening to Cyril?” he demanded. “He has told you?”
“Yes,” she answered bitterly, “he has told me, but I want to hear it from your own lips. Oh, Humphrey!”—unconsciously her tone softened and grew full of pleading—“it isn’t true, is it? You are going to help those poor creatures. Think, there may be hundreds of them—thousands before long. You will go—you are not—afraid?”
“No, Enid, I am not going,” he said quietly, but she saw that his hand shook with nervous agitation.
“Why not?” she asked, still pleading. “Is it for my sake? If so, don’t think of me. I am only one and out there there are hundreds to whom you owe your first and best strength. You know, we Farnels have all been soldiers’ wives and often had to give up our husbands to their profession. Sometimes we have even had to give up our own lives. We have tried to be brave. neither crying nor lamenting. I will try to be like that—only go—go!”
“Dear, I have my reasons. I can’t.”
“Tell me those reasons!”
He looked at her for the first time with angry eyes. Perhaps he saw the gathering distrust on her face, for unconsciously he clenched his fists.
“You must learn to trust me,” he said, sharply.
She clasped her hands with a gesture of miserable despair.
“Yes, I will, indeed I will. I must. It’s my duty. But I cannot understand and it is breaking my heart.”
“I shall give you no explanation—not now.
She bit her lip, then she said quietly, but with a distinctness and trenchancy which gave every word its value:
“Cyril—everybody—will say that you have no explanation to give—not even the one I suggested, though it was poor enough, They will say that you are afraid—for your own life.”
She waited for him to protest, to thunder her down with some authoritative answer which would restore her wavering confidence in him, but nothing came.
The frown gave place to a faint smile that was half-mocking, half-tender.
“Let us change the subject, Enid,” he said. “You are upset. You have been listening to a young hot-head and are in no condition to judge in this matter. Give me some tea, will you, dear?”
That was all.
Slowly, as if in direct defiance to her own will, she came to the little table and obeyed. Every movement, every look was an indignant protest. As for Humphrey, he seated himself in the shadow. Neither spoke. Suddenly Enid dropped to her knees and pressed his hand passionately against her cheek. “My darling, I do trust you!” she cried, in a voice broken with grief. “I do—of course I do, only—I am such a poor, foolish woman. Don’t be hard on my want of faith!”
It was a piteous appeal to him, but he did not answer it. He only kissed her and smoothed her hair with his hand. Thus they remained silently side by side. The darkness crept in through the open window and minute by minute another darkness even more impenetrable was lifting itself between them, an intangible barrier, hiding each from the other’s true self.
III
The clock upon the table had struck twelve.
Sandys looked up for an instant as if the sound startled him. But for the echo chime there was silence.
He went on working. With nervous, agile fingers he weighed and prepared the various chemicals before him. There was no doubt or hesitation in his movements. It seemed that the task he had set himself was a clear, definite one, and that he was striving to bring it swiftly to a conclusion. His face had grown thinner and his eyes had that wide open stare of a racer who sees before him the goal towards which he is striving with the last remnant of his strength.
As the clock struck again, this time the first morning hour, he stopped. He had just filled and corked a little phial which he held up against the light. It contained an ugly yellow liquid, but as he moved it backwards and forwards he smiled.
That smile transformed him. The weariness, exhaustion, and hunted eagerness vanished. Had he at that moment been turned to an unnamed marble statue no one would have hesitated to subscribe the inscription. “Yictory” was written on the face and in the attitude—not, indeed, a victory of brute force, but of mind over some unseen, intangible foe.
He stood there for a full minute, then gradually his expression changed, becoming less absorbed and more alert, as if something had caught his attention. The hand holding the phial sank and he looked about him curiously and with a slight frown. He went to the window and threw it open, letting in a fresh gust of the night air. Even then he did not seem satisfied. He looked about him again, and the frown of perplexity grew more marked.
Suddenly his eyes stopped in their restless search and fixed themselves on the bottom of the door. Like a ghost a thin gray feather of smoke crept through the crevice and ascended slowly into the air, dissolving as it went. Another followed, this time denser, darker.
In an instant he had crossed the room, and wrenching the door open confronted the dark, terrified face of his native servant. The corridor behind him was one thick suffocating cloud.
“Fly, Master!” the man cried despairingly. “The place burns!”
Humphrey seized him by the shoulder and, dragging him into the room, slammed the door against the inrushing volumes of smoke. Then he ran back to his table where he had left the phial.
“Has Mrs. Sandys returned from the ball?” he asked, in sharp, concise accents.
“No, Master,” was the trembling answer.
“Thank God!”
The atmosphere was growing every instant less bearable.
Humphrey half pushed half carried the native towards the window.
“Follow me!’ he commanded.
The bungalow was one-storied, and Humphrey’s laboratory being on the ground floor, the distance was inconsiderable. Humphrey thrust the native over the ledge, following himself immediately afterwards. The next minute they were both running towards the front of the burning building.
“How did it happen?” Humphrey asked, as they stumbled through the darkness.
“I do not know,” the native panted, “but it may well be the work of my distracted brothers. Whole families are lying at the door of death—the accursed plague is spreading and they say—”
“What do they say? Out with it!”
“They say it is because the White Doctor would not lift his hand to help them.”
Humphrey laughed through his set teeth, but made no reply.
When they reached the front they found that a crowd had already assembled and. were watching the increasing conflagration in helpless alarm. Sandys’ appearance was greeted by the whites with polite exclamation of relief, and by the natives with growls which might have indicated either surprise or disappointment.
Sandys said nothing. He stood quietly on one side watching the flames leap up against the night sky with the unconcerned interest of an outsider. The disaster seemed to leave him totally unmoved.
Suddenly a hand gripped his shoulder. The grasp was so violent, so expressive of haste and fear that Sandys started round with an involuntary exclamation. He found Cyril Farnel’s white, startled face within a foot of his own.
“Sandys—where is Enid?” he stammered. “In Heaven’s name—where is she?”
Sandys stared at him without comprehension.
“My wife?” he asked. “My wife is at the Colonel’s hous
“She is not. I brought her back an hour ago.”
Ihe questions and answers had passed between them like the exchange of pistol shots.
With a scream that hushed the chattering gossiping groups to silence and rose above the crack of burning timber, Sandys flung the people about him to right and left and rushed headlong towards the entrance of the bungalow, now wreathed in flames and smoke. He reached the steps—he was actually within the burning circle when he stopped short, as if stricken with paralysis. They saw his face, red with the grim reflection, they saw his eyes and their expression was one that not a man in that crowd ever forgot.
“I can’t!” they heard him say. “I can’t!—oh, my God—I can’t!”
Farnel had seen his hesitation, and with a bound reached his side.
“Where is she?” he shouted.
“Upstairs—the back room!” was the gasping answer.
Farnel rushed up the swollen wooden steps and disappeared, as it seemed to the horror-stricken spectators, into the very heart of the flames.
There was no sound now, save the hissing of the fire and an occasional crash of falling wood. A breathless silence had fallen on the crowd, and as if by mutual consent no one glanced towards the stricken man who stood rigid where Farnel had left him. They were ashamed for him, they shrank instinctively from him as from some hideous deformity.
The minutes passed. Suddenly a frantic cheer broke from the hitherto spellbound watchers. Against the red glow a faint shadow outlined itself, growing rapidly darker and more distinct. An instant later Farnel, with blackened face and scorching clothes, stumbled down the steps, bearing in his arms a motionless something loosely covered with a blanket. As he sprang to the ground there was a crash behind him which mingled itself with the gasp of horror from the crowd. The roof had given way, the whole bungalow lay a smouldering ruin. Death had snatched at his two victims but one instant too late.
“Give her air!” Farnel shouted. “Back, all of you!”
With more order than is usual on such occasions, the crowd obeyed his imperative command. Tenderly and with infinite care, Farnel laid his burden on the ground. No one ventured to approach—no one save one man. As they saw him there arose the sound of a faint, irrepressible hiss. Sandys staggered toward the prostrate form, and dropping on his knees drew back the blanket from the white, drawn face. He bent his cheek to her half-parted lips and around him reigned again the breathless silence of fearful suspense.
He looked up at last.
“Oh, my God, I thank Thee!” he said.
Farnel leaned forward and caught the kneeling man by the shoulder.
“Leave her alone!” he said.
“What right have you here? She does not belong to you. You have lost her—you coward!”
The two men looked at each other for one brief instant. The somber glow from the now expiring fire fell on Sandys’ haggard features and clouding eyes. Suddenly, as if some frightful strain had relaxed, he smiled faintly, but with a profound peace. Then, with an exclamation that sounded like a broken laugh, he sank face downwards at his wife’s feet.
When they picked him up they found a glass phial in his left hand. The grasp was so gentle yet so firm that they could not take it from him. Two men bore him to a neighboring house and left him there to recover as best he could. No one cared.
“Better for him if he never came round at all,” one man said, disgustedly. “For my part I’d rather have helped some of those poor plague-stricken fellows whom he was afraid to touch.”
IV
Cyril Farnel was at the bottom an honorable, high-minded man. He knew it and reckoned on himself accordingly. It never occurred to him to question his own motives and actions, even when they were most impulsive. He was too certain that where matters of honor were concerned he was infallible. Consequently, he never realized, as he stood there pleading his cause with the woman he loved, that he was doing anything particularly wrong, still less that he was acting the part of tempter to a shaken and unhappy woman. Humphrey Sandys had proved himself more despicable than the dust under his feet, and so, like dust, Farnel was striving to sweep him out of Enid’s life and out of his own way.
“You can’t help facing the truth now, Enid,” he said, pacing restlessly up and down the sitting-room of the hired bungalow, “and when you have faced it, what I have prophesied to you is inevitable. You cannot live any longer with him.”
She buried her face in her hands and he proceeded with the energy and conviction of one sure of success.
“Another woman might go on with the old life, but you could not. You are a Farnel. The Farnels have all been brought up to despise cowards. And the woman who lives with the husband she despises is a coward.”
She rose with a gesture of despair.
“You are right,” she said, “I cannot go on like this. I could not bear it. You see, I loved him very dearly, and what makes it worse—I love him now.”
“No,” he said, “you mean—you loved m foolishly and blindly. You didn’t know what he was. Now you know, Enid, is it too late? Can’t we put right at last in awful mistake—or must it be a fatal one, ruining both our lives? Enid, think what it means, think—”
He had taken her hand in his feverish one, though she tried to draw it from him.
Suddenly he dropped it of his own accord, Someone had called him by name.
He turned swiftly on his heel.
“Who called 2?” he asked
“Farnel!” came the faint cry from the next room.
Cyril looked at his companion
“Who is it?” he whispered.
He saw that she was white and trembling.
“It is Humphrey’s voice,” she answered in an undertone. “I did not know he had come back. He is calling you—he wants you. Go!”
He did not move and she looked at him questioningly.
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
His answer was to turn and walk slowly towards the door. It is not easy, in the best of cases, to face the man whom you have been seeking to betray. The room he entered was scantily furnished as a bedroom. A little iron bedstead was drawn up against the wall and on it lay Sandys’ prostrate figure, his hands covering his face. As he entered, the hands sank weakly onto the white coverlet, and then Farnel saw something that sent a pang of horror through his angry, contemptuous heart and held him rooted to the ground. The poor thin face upon the pillow bore the unmistakable traces of the dreaded plague.
“This is retribution!’ was the thought that flashed through Farnel’s mind, but his voice was not steady as he said aloud:
“I heard you calling. What’s the matter? Are you ill?”
Sandys raised himself feebly on his elbow.
“Yes, I am ill,” he said. “As things stand I am dying. Whether I shall die or not remains to be seen. I called you for two reasons: First, because my wife must not see me; second, because I believe you to be a most brave, honorable man, and I have a question to put to you which only a brave, honorable man can answer. Will you try?”
Farnel held himself stiff and uncompromising, but a curious uneasiness was creeping over him.
“I will try,” he said
“Thank you.”
Sandys sank back, and when he spoke again his voice sounded as if it came from a long way off.
“Farnel, I want you to suppose something. Suppose you had a great pair of scales before you, and on one side hung your own happiness and the life of someone who was dearer to you than either life or happiness, and on the other side a thousand no, perhaps a million, suffering human creatures, and after them generations, whose suffering you could alleviate—suppose you had to choose, Farnel, either your ownself and that other, or the happiness and life of those millions, which would be your choice?”
Farnel hesitated, then threw back his shoulders.
“It seems to me there is only one possible answer to your curious question,” he said. “What, after all, are two beings compared to millions?”
“You would choose the millions?”
“It would be my duty to do so.”
Sandys turned his heavy eyes on the tall, upright figure and smiled.
“And yet, Farnel, you called me a coward because I chose as you would choose.”
Farnel took a deep breath. The sense of uneasiness and doubt was growing upon him, He was no longer so conscious of his own superiority. He was conscious instead of a certain resigned nobility and dignity in the man that he despised.
“I don’t fully understand,” he said, retaining his ground with an effort.
“No, but I am going to try and explain. You see, I have the plague. As I said, I am to all intents and purposes dying, but it’s not by the hand of a punishing Fate, as you perhaps think; it is my own hand. I inoculated myself three hours ago.”
Farnel staggered.
“You—are mad,” he stammered.
“No, I am not mad, nor do I contemplate suicide. It is just this—I am my first patient. All my life I have studied the disease, seeking a definite cure and preventative. A week ago I believed myself at last on the point of success. It was the same day you came and asked for help. I refused, because the good I could have done then was nothing in comparison to what I knew I should be able to do a few days later when my discovery was complete. My life was no longer my own to throw away. It belonged to those millions whose fate lay in my hands.”
“Why did you not explain, man!” Farnel cried passionately.
A bitter smile twisted the blue lips.
“My wife cared nothing for my work. She only cared for the Regiment and her old life. She thought I was an unsuccessful muddler. And you—would you have believed me without proof? You would have said it was an excuse. No, I had to wait my time.”
Farnel put his hand to his forehead. He felt that there was something pitiful and terrible in this revelation.
“Two nights ago,” Sandys went on, “my discovery was complete. I believed that I was, at last, successful. ‘Then came the fire. You know the rest. I was the only man who knew of the discovery—there were no papers, nothing to show the work I had accomplished. For one moment, Farnel, I was given the choice I have just laid before you. I chose. I followed what I considered the higher duty. God knows—it cost me most.
“And now——”
Sandys stretched out his arm towards the table at his side and took up a small steel instrument attached to a yellow phial. “I want you to inject this serum—here, in my arm. I can’t do it myself. That’s one of the reasons I called you; I know you wont be afraid.”
With a last effort he rolled back his sleeve.
Farnel followed his instructions. He was not afraid, but he shook in every limb, When it was all over Sandys lay back with closed eyes. An expression of peace and satisfaction rested on his suffering face.
“Thank you,” he said, “thank you. I know what will now happen. I shall be come unconscious. If my discovery is what I believe it is, I shall awake—cured —within twelve hours and with me those millions whom I serve. If it is not—I shall never awake again.”
There was a dead silence. In Farnel’s heart raged the last conflict. Suddenly he flung himself upon his knees and pressed the icy hand in both his own.
“Humphrey,” he stammered brokenly, “old fellow—I’m so awfully sorry. For give me—wont you?”
There was a feeble answering pressure, the blue lips parted, and like a breath came the words:
“Of course—there is—nothing—to forgive—”
Again an absolute, unbroken silence, save for a woman’s footfall.
Farnel turned his head; Enid was standing at his side. It was curious to see how suffering and thanksgiving were blended in her ashy face
“I have heard everything,” she said. “Go, I want to be with my husband—alone.”
He nodded. He did not look at her again or speak, but crept from the room as if from some holy mystery which it was not for him to penetrate.
The evening entered into the little room and then the profound night shadows. When, with the first rays of morning sunshine Humphrey Sandys awoke to life and health, his wife was resting beside him, sleeping peacefully, her head pillowed on his shoulder.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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