The Tigress Part 52

Carleigh felt dazed. Nina's viewpoint was very puzzling at times.

"And yet I understand," he said, seizing on the most obvious end of the tangle. "I don't suppose I'd--you see I have been so close to desperation myself--I don't suppose I'd care, either, if--" But he got no further.

Nina hooked her fingers together tightly behind her head.

"I wouldn't think such thoughts if I were you," she said quite gravely.

"You know if you do, the chance comes, and then you do something--and G.o.d--only G.o.d--will ever measure you by what you really did mean."

Then she looked at him very intently and went on with great impressiveness both of tone and emphasis: "I did give a most awful jab with that sharp thing, and the cartridge exploded and killed my husband, and--I was glad. So, of course, I _am_ a murderess at heart. Don't you see?"

"Yes, I see," said Carleigh somberly.

"And that was my crime," she continued--"that I wanted to do it. And the results haven't mattered so much. What matters is that _I wanted to do it_. That's all that matters. All that can ever matter."

"I understand," said the man, his voice so low that the words were barely articulate.

There was a long, grim silence which grew oppressive.

"It's years ago, is it not?" he asked then.

"Five years," she answered. "It's not a pretty story, is it? How the d.u.c.h.ess enjoys telling it! What she knows and what she thinks. And she's my great-aunt. Fancy what fun it has afforded the rest of the world!"

"That is unworthy of you," Carleigh rebuked under his breath--"to rail about the horror that has blighted your life. I can't laugh over horrors. They turn me cold in the night."

"Ah, but I've grown used to mine," she returned lightly. "And besides, it wasn't so bad as what followed--as the realizing that I could never be clean again. I wonder if all those who've sinned as I have sinned are trying to fill an empty life as I've been trying!"

He moved to a seat, sank down and clutched his head between his hands.

"But love wasn't killed in you--you find pleasure in men. It has been in me."

She whirled in her seat so suddenly that he started.

"Good Heavens!" she cried, "you don't fancy that I get any real joy out of flirting, do you? Why, it's only to pa.s.s the time. I never forget for one second. I--I couldn't."

There was another silence--briefer, this time--and then Carleigh rose, a bit heavily.

"You're horribly human, you know," he said. "I don't know what to say or what to do. I know only that I long more than ever for you. You--you couldn't care for me again, I suppose?"

She began to laugh. "Oh, you very manlike man!" she cried. "As if I didn't know that was what you came for. No; I couldn't ever care for you. No; not possibly."

There was a tap on the door and the housemaid entered with a card for Nina, who knew whose name it bore before she glanced at it.

"Certainly, Wilson," she said; "show Mr. Andrews in at once."

CHAPTER XXV

The Interested Married Man

Lord Kneedrock lived, when he was in town, in a small suite in St.

James's Square.

Here Carleigh came on a bright morning, three days later, to find Kneedrock in the little sitting-room reading before a fire, three windows open and two dogs asleep at his feet.

They talked for half an hour before the visitor reached his point.

"She told me all," he said, then. "I suppose it's fairest to say outright that she told me all."

Kneedrock didn't look at him. He was smoking his pipe, and his gaze fixed itself on the curling clouds of smoke that eddied in the cross-currents of air from the open windows.

"I suppose that she told you she was to blame, eh?" he drawled after a moment.

"She said that she hadn't cared what happened."

"It isn't a pretty story, no matter how you look at it," the viscount observed, putting his reflections into words. "Two desperate persons who didn't care what happened. Poor Darling! He didn't care what happened, either, don't you know. I've often wondered if he didn't load the thing and call her to manage the discharge."

Carleigh's eyes were fascinatedly fixed on the flames in the grate--little blue, dancing devils of light whose heat was overpowered by the chill from outside.

"I thought of that, too," he said, grimly.

"Poor Darling!" Kneedrock went on musingly. "I saw him before any one else. The smoke hadn't cleared away. His face was quite gone, you know.

It was awful."

"Good G.o.d!"

There was a little pause, and then the older man said:

"What horrible things go on in the world, anyhow!"

"Yes," the other said simply.

"I saw him after that, though," pursued Kneedrock, "in his coffin, tricked out in his dress uniform, a handkerchief spread where his face used to be, and his head on a silk pillow. He looked very peaceful. Glad it was all over, I dare say."

Carleigh only nodded, still looking at the fire. And then there was another pause, which Kneedrock broke eventually with: "We're awfully primitive.... Still Nina's story wasn't strictly primitive. It was all warped and twisted by civilization.

"In the stone age things would have been different. The troglodyte would have clubbed Darling, and later, if the lady played tricks, he would have ended her in the same way. That's how to manage women."

He stretched out his iron hand and wrist and looked at them--his right hand and wrist, not the scarred ones. "I hate civilization," he said then suddenly. "I hate honor, and _n.o.blesse oblige_, and all such tommyrot. It's the ruin of the race."

He spoke slowly now, but with a frightful bitterness.

"Yes," said Carleigh, sympathy swelling quick, "we've gone a long way from the truth of existence."

"It isn't any use going on a wild-goose chase after happiness in these times," Kneedrock went on. "You can't cure your ills, nowadays. I tried to help myself once, and made the worst kind of a mess of it. Go back to your wife, or go off with your mother-in-law, but don't imagine that either course is going to help you to happiness. Because it isn't."

Carleigh was looking Nibbetts straight in the eyes now.