"jani," said her mistress, "bring me captain english's box!"
the ayah stared as if she could not have heard aright. there followed a strange oppressive silence, in which the lapping of the waters in the inner marble spaces seemed to take whispering voices of amazement. then lady gerardine, standing straight and impassive by her dressing-table, her head just turned aside from the reflection of her own beauty, repeated her order in the same hard, uninflected tone.
"captain english's box; bring it to me."
jani looked sharply up at the speaker's face and clapped her hands together with the wail of the children of her race when sudden trouble comes upon them.
"ai, ai!"
"go," said lady gerardine.
grudgingly jani turned to obey. she went, muttering to herself, groping in her soul for the reason of this strange and most unexpected order—an order so out of keeping with the whole tenor of her mistress's life, that it rang in her ears like a menace of calamity.
* * * * *
it was a small thing enough, a common battered tin box, to rank with such importance. but it held tragedy: more than tragedy, a woman's murdered youth. well did jani remember the day it had come back to the little home, up in the hills—all that was left to them of their handsome young lord. they could not carry rosamond back her dead; what soldier's widow can hope for that last tragic comfort? but the few tangible traces he had left behind him; these were hers by right, and to her they were brought, with scarcely less reverence than if they had been his honoured remains—the journal he had kept for her during yonder endless months of siege; the letters he had written her, never to post; his notes; sundry trifling belongings, marked with that poignant personal touch which seems to inflict the hardest pain of all.
one can kneel in uplifted resignation beside the awful grandeur of the soul-abandoned clay. but the old pipe, burned down on one side, the worn glove ... over these trivial relics the heart breaks. rosamond english, in her nausea of misery, her rebellion against the unaccepted unrealisable sorrow, could not look at them, could not touch the poor memorials. she thrust them back into the battered box away from her sight, and with them all the garnered treasures of her brief girlhood and of her briefer wifehood: the simple keepsake, the dried flowers—sprig from her wedding bouquet, bridal wreath—the letters to the betrothed, the first letters to the wife. things of no worth, yet full of hideous potentialities of grief: symbols of what had been, what might have been. "away, away with them!" cried her sick heart, "out of my sight for ever!"
and now she was to break open the coffin to look upon the horror of the murdered thing that was her youth; she who had nailed it down so fast, buried it so deep!
jani laid the box at her mistress's feet and loosened the cords slowly and with protest.
"go, leave me now," said rosamond, "and let no one disturb me. leave me!" she ordered sharply, as once more the ayah hesitated. and jani slunk away, dragging noiseless feet, her dim mind filled with inarticulate foreboding.
rosamond drew a long breath as the hangings fell. surely, surely, if there be anything to which one has a right, in this grinding world, it is to be alone with one's dead!
* * * * *
she took the key from where she had herself placed it ready to her hand on the table: a black rusty thing amid all the jewels and costly trinkets which it was sir arthur gerardine's pleasure to provide for the adornment of the most beautiful of all his attributes—his wife. she knelt down and inserted it in the lock; and then she paused, passing her hand across her damp forehead.
inexorable fate! she for years had walked in the company of some creature of horror, the face of which had been mercifully veiled; she had carried a mortal anguish cunningly lulled to sleep. now her hand must lift the veil.... now no opiate would further serve her: she must face the pain.
for a moment yet she hesitated: the last recoil of the flesh. then the courage which despair or resignation lends—that rise of the spirit to meet the inevitable which seldom fails even the lowest human being at the end—brought back strength sufficient. she turned the key, drew out the rusty hasp, and opened the casket of her dead past.
* * * * *
the breath that rushed at her from the gaping box seized her by the throat. the unfading scent of the faded orange blossom; the very atmosphere of the lost presence, of the tobacco he had been wont to use, of the russian-leather pocket-books she had given him; a faint, faint whisper of the english lavender her hands had been so careful to set for him, since he loved it. and, over all, through all, some odour of the siege: of strife, fever, bloodshed, and death—eastern, indescribable, terrible! her soul sickened away.
no, the past was not dead! it had but lain in wait for her all these years. it had but gathered force to spring upon her in the fated hour. none can escape destiny. here was the cup she had refused to drain; here were the tears of which she had cheated her heart; here, even, was the intensity of her lost youth, that she might mourn the husband of her girlhood as it had been written she must mourn.
she rose to her feet. a cry rang in her ears like the cry of an animal hurt; and she never knew that it had come from her own lips. through gathering mists she saw jani reappear and run towards her; and, summoning all her failing energies in one supreme effort, she called out in distinct tones:
"close the box and let no one touch it."
then she fell like a mown lily, straight and long, beside it.
