The Knave of Diamonds by Ethel May Dell

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"Sin!" he said. "What is sin? Is it sin to fulfil the very purpose for
which you were created?"

But at that she winced so sharply that he knew he had gone too far.
It was characteristic of the man that he made no attempt to recover
lost ground.

"I'm a wicked pagan no doubt," he said, with a touch of recklessness.
"Everyone will tell you so. I fancy I've told you so myself more than
once. Yet you needn't shrink as if I were unclean. I have done nothing
that you would hate me for since I have known you."

He paused and seemed to listen, then very quietly released her hand. A
curious expression flickered across his face as he did so, and a little
chill went through her. It was like the closing of the furnace door.

"I am going," he said. "But I shall come back--I shall come back." His
smile, sudden and magnetic, gleamed for an instant and was gone.

"Do you remember the missing heart?" he said "There are some things that
I never forget."

And so, without farewell, he turned and left her, moving swiftly and
easily over the grass. She heard the jingle of his spurs, but no sound of
any footfall as he went.

CHAPTER IV

THE FATAL STREAK

"My lady!"

Anne looked up with a start. She had been sitting with closed eyes under
the lilac tree.

Dimsdale, discreet and deferential as ever, stood before her.

"Mr. Lucas Errol is here," he told her, "with another gentleman. I knew
your ladyship would wish to be at home to him."

"Oh, certainly," she answered, rising. "I am always at home to Mr. Lucas
Errol. Please tell him I am coming immediately."

But she did not instantly follow Dimsdale. She stood instead quite
motionless, with her face to the sky, breathing deeply.

When she turned at length she had recovered all her customary serenity.
With the quiet dignity peculiar to her, she passed up the garden path,
leaving the thrush still singing, singing, singing, behind her.

She found her visitors in the drawing-room, which she entered by the
open window. Lucas greeted her with his quiet smile and introduced
Capper--"a very great friend of mine, and incidentally the finest
doctor in the U.S.A."

She shook hands with the great man, feeling the small green eyes running
over her, and conscious that she blushed under their scrutiny. She
wondered why, with a vague feeling of resentment. She also wondered what
had moved Lucas to bring him.

As she sat at the tea-table and dispensed hospitality to her guests it
was Lucas who kept the conversation going. She thought he seemed in
wonderful spirits despite the heavy droop of his eyelids.

Capper sat in almost unbroken silence, studying his hostess so
perpetually that Anne's nerves began to creak at last under the strain.

Quite suddenly at length he set down his cup. "Lady Carfax," he said
abruptly, "I'm told you have a herb garden, and I'm just mad on herbs.
Will you take me to see it while Lucas enjoys a much-needed and
well-earned rest?"

Anne glanced up in surprise. They were almost the first words he had
spoken. Capper was already upon his feet. He stood impatiently cracking
his fingers one by one.

She rose. "Of course I will do so with pleasure if Mr. Errol
doesn't mind."

"Certainly not, Lady Carfax," smiled Lucas. "I am extremely comfortable.
Pray give him what he wants. It is the only way to pacify him."

Anne smiled and turned to the window. They went out together into the
golden spring evening.

The herb garden was some distance from the house. Capper strode along in
silence, with bent brows. More than ever Anne wondered what had brought
him. She did not try to make conversation for him, realising by instinct
that such effort would be vain as well as unwelcome. She merely walked
quietly beside him, directing their steps whither he had desired to go.

They were out of sight of the house before he spoke. "Say, madam,
I'm told you know the Errol family off by heart without needing to
look 'em up."

She glanced at him in surprise. "Of course I know them. Yes, I know
them all."

"Well?" he demanded.

"Oh, quite well." Almost involuntarily she began to explain the intimacy.
"I was taken to their house after a hunting accident, and I was an
invalid there for several weeks."

"That so?" Again piercingly the American's eyes scanned her. "You're real
friendly then? With which in particular?"

She hesitated momentarily. Then, "I am very fond of Mrs. Errol," she
said, speaking very quietly. "But Nap was my first friend, and
afterwards Lucas--"

"Oh, Nap!"

There was such withering contempt in the exclamation that she had
perforce to remark it.

"Nap is evidently no favourite with you," she said.

He raised his brows till they nearly met his hair. "Nap, my dear lady,"
he drily observed, "is doubtless all right in his own sphere. It isn't
mine, and it isn't yours. I came over to this country at his request and
in his company, and a queerer devil it has never been my lot to
encounter. But what can you expect? I've never yet seen him in a blanket
and moccasins, but I imagine that he'd be considerably preferable that
way. I guess he's just a fish out of water on this side of civilisation."

"What can you mean?" Anne said.

For the second time that afternoon she felt as if the ground beneath her
had begun to tremble. She looked up at him with troubled eyes. Surely the
whole world was rocking!

"I mean what I say, madam," he told her curtly. "It's a habit of mine.
There is a powerful streak of red in Nap Errol's blood, or I am much
mistaken."

"Ah!" Anne said, and that was all. In a flash she understood him. She
felt as if he had performed some ruthless operation upon her, and she was
too exhausted to say more. Unconsciously her hand pressed her heart. It
was beating strangely, spasmodically; sometimes it did not beat at all.
For she knew beyond all doubting that what he said was true.

"I don't say the fellow is an out-and-out savage," Capper was saying.
"P'r'aps he'd be more tolerable if he were. But the fatal streak is
there. Never noticed it? I thought you women noticed everything. Oh, I
can tell you he's made things hum on our side more times than I've
troubled to count. Talk of the devil in New York and you very soon find
the conversation drifting round to Nap Errol. Now and then he has a lapse
into sheer savagery, and then there is no controlling him. It's just as
the fit takes him. He's never to be trusted. It's an ineradicable taint."

She shivered at the words, but still she did not speak.

Capper went unconcernedly on. "I fancy Lucas once thought he was going to
make a gentleman of him. A gentleman, ye gods! Teach a tiger to sit up
and beg! He has a most amazing patience, but I guess even he realises by
now that the beast is untamable. Mrs. Errol saw it long ago. There's a
fine woman for you--A.1., gilt-edged, quality of the best. You know Mrs.
Errol, you say?"

"Yes, I know her." Anne heard the words, but was not conscious of
uttering them.

Capper gave her a single straight look. "You wouldn't think, would you,"
said he, "that that woman carries a broken heart about with her? But I
assure you that's so. Nap Errol was the tragedy of her life."

That quickened her to interest. She was conscious of a gradual sinking
downwards of her dismay till it came to rest somewhere deep in her inmost
soul, leaving the surface free for other impressions.

"He came out of nowhere," Capper went on. "She never tried to account for
him. He was her husband's son. She made him hers. But he's been a tiger's
cub all his life, a hurricane, a firebrand. He and Bertie are usually at
daggers drawn and Lucas spends his time keeping the peace; which is about
as wearing an occupation for a sick man as I can imagine. I want to put a
stop to it, Lady Carfax. I speak as one family friend to another. Lucas
seems to like you. I believe you could make him see reason if you took
the trouble. Women are proverbially ingenious."

Anne's faint smile showed for a moment. They had entered the herb garden
and were passing slowly down the central path. It was a small enclosure
surrounded by clipped yew hedges and intersected by green walks. The
evening sunlight slanting down upon her, had turned her brown hair to
ruddiest gold. There was no agitation about her now. The grey eyes were
gravely thoughtful.

She bent presently to pluck a sprig of rosemary. "Will you tell me," she
said, "what it is that you want to do?"

Capper shot her a keen side-glance. "I want to cure him," he said. "I
want to make a whole man of him."

"Could you?" she asked.

"I could." Abruptly Capper stopped. His yellow face was curiously aglow.
"I say I could," he asserted almost fiercely, "if I could choose my
conditions. If I could banish that pestilent brother of his, if I could
rouse him to something like energy, if I could turn his will in one
direction only, I could do it. Given his whole-hearted co-operation, I
could do it. Without it, I am powerless. He would simply die of
inanition."

"It would mean an operation then? A very serious one?" Anne had paused
upon the green path. Her eyes sought Capper's.

He answered her with curt directness. "My dear lady, it would mean not
one, but two. I won't trouble you with technical details which you
wouldn't understand. Put briefly, it would mean in the first place a
pulling down and in the second a building up. Both operations would be a
serious tax upon his strength, but I am satisfied that he has the
strength for both. Six months would elapse between the two, and during
that time he would be flat on his back. If he could hold on for those six
months he would come through all right. Of that I am convinced. But those
six months are my stumbling-block. Freedom from all anxiety is essential.
He wants a stanch friend continually beside him to keep him cheery and at
peace. That fellow Nap is the principle obstacle. He stirs up hell and
tommy wherever he goes, and he's never absent for long. Lucas himself
admits that his brothers are a care to him. Oh, it's all an infernal
tangle. I sometimes think family ties are the very deuce."

Capper tugged at his beard with restless fingers and ground his heel
into the turf.

"If you consider Nap an obstacle--why don't you speak to him?" Anne asked
in her quiet voice.

Capper shrugged his shoulders. "He hates me--and small wonder! I've told
him the brutal truth too often."

Anne passed the matter by. "And Lucas does not wish to undergo the
operation?"

"That's just the infernal part of it!" burst forth Capper. "He would
undergo it to-morrow if he didn't consider himself indispensable to these
young whelps. But that isn't all. Lady Carfax, he wants help. He wants
someone strong to stand by. I believe you could do it--if you would. You
are the sort of woman that men turn to in trouble. I've been watching
you. I know."

Again very faintly Anne smiled, with more of patience than amusement.
"Dr. Capper, has Lucas been telling you about me?"

Capper thrust out a hand. "Yes."

"You know how I am situated?" she questioned.

"I do." There was no sympathy in Capper's voice or face; only in the
grasp of his hand.

"And you think I could be of use to him?"

"I don't think," said Capper. "I know." He released her hand as abruptly
as he had taken it. His long fingers began to curve and crack
mechanically. "I'll tell you something," he said. "Don't know why I
should, but I will. I love Lucas Errol as if he were my son."

"Ah!" Anne said gently. "I think we all love him in our different ways."

"That so?" said the American keenly. "Then I shall leave the matter in
your charge, Lady Carfax. I can see you're a capable woman. I'm coming
back in September to perform that operation. You will have a willing
patient ready for me--by willing I mean something gayer than
resigned--and my bugbear, Nap--that most lurid specimen of civilised
devilry--hunting scalps on the other side of the Atlantic."

"Oh, I don't know!" Anne said quickly. "I don't know!"

She spoke breathlessly, as one suddenly plunged into a strong current.
Her face was bent over the sprig of rosemary which she was threading in
her dress. Her fingers were trembling.

Capper watched her silently.

"Let me!" he said at last.

He took the sprig from her with a hand that was perfectly steady, held it
a moment, seemed to hesitate, finally withdrew it and planted it in his
own buttonhole.

"I guess I'll keep it myself," he said, "with your permission, in memory
of a good woman."

Anne commanded herself and looked up. "Keep it, by all means," she said.
"But do not expect too much from me. No woman is always good. The best
of us fail sometimes."

"But you will do your best when the time comes?" he said, in a tone that
was a curious blend of demand and entreaty.

She met his eyes quite fully. "Yes," she said, "I will do my best."

"Then I'm not afraid," said Capper. "We shall pull him through between
us. It will be a miracle, of course, but"--a sudden smile flashed across
his face, transforming him completely--"miracles happen, Lady Carfax."

CHAPTER V

THE TOKEN

Slowly Anne drew aside the curtain and looked forth into the night, a
magic night, soft and wonderful, infinitely peaceful. A full moon shone
high in the sky with an immense arc of light around it, many-rayed,
faintly prismatic. There was the scent of coming rain in the air, but no
clouds were visible. The stars were dim and remote, almost quenched in
that flood of moonlight.

Across the quiet garden came the song of a nightingale in one of the
shrubberies, now soft and far like the notes of a fairy flute, now close
at hand and filling the whole world with music. Anne stood, a silent
listener, on the edge of the magic circle.

She had just risen from the piano, where for the past hour or more she
had been striving to forget the fever that burned within. Now at last she
had relinquished the piteous, vain attempt, and utterly wearied she stood
drinking in the spring sweetness.

It was drawing towards midnight, and all but herself had retired. She
knew she ought to bolt the window and go to rest also; only she knew,
too, that no rest awaited her. The silver peace into which she gazed was
like balm to her tired spirit, but yet she could only stand, as it were,
upon the edge.

A great longing was upon her, a voiceless, indescribable desire, that
made within her so deep a restlessness that no outside influence seemed
able to touch it. She leaned her head against the window-frame, conscious
of suffering but scarcely aware of thought.

With no effort of hers the events of that afternoon passed before her.
She heard again the ardent voice of the friend who had become the lover.
He had loved her from the first, it seemed, and she had not known it.
Could it be that she had loved him also, all unknowing?

There came again to her the memory of those fierce, compelling eyes, the
dogged mastery with which he had fought her resolution, the sudden magic
softening of the harsh face when he smiled. There came again the
passionate thrilling of his voice; again her hands tingled in that close
grip; again she thought she felt the beating of the savage heart.

She raised her arms above her head with the gesture of one who wards off
something immense, but they fell almost immediately. She was so tired--so
tired. She had fought so hard and so long. Oh, why was there no peace for
her? What had she done to be thus tortured? Why had love come to her at
all? In all her barren life she had never asked for love.

And now that it had come it was only to be ruthlessly dashed against the
stones. What had she to do with love--love, moreover, for a man who could
offer her but the fiery passion of a savage, a man from whom her every
instinct shrank, who mocked at holy things and overthrew all barriers of
convention with a cynicism that silenced all protest. What--ah, what
indeed!--had she to do with love?

She had lived a pure life. She had put out the fires of youth long ago,
with no hesitating hand. She had dwelt in the desert, and made of it her
home. Was it her fault that those fires had been kindled afresh? Was she
to blame because the desert had suddenly blossomed? Could she be held
responsible for these things, she who had walked in blindness till the
transforming miracle had touched her also and opened her eyes?

She shivered a little. Oh, for a helping hand! Oh, for a deliverer from
this maze of misery!

She saw again the quiet garden lying sleeping before her in the
moonlight, and felt as if God must be very far away. She was very
terribly alone that night.

The impulse came to her to pass out into the dewy stillness, and she
obeyed it, scarcely knowing what she did. Over the silver grass,
ghost-like, she moved. It was as if a voice had called her. On to the
lilac trees with their burden of fragrant blossoms, where the thrush
had raised his song of rapture, where she had faced that first fiery
ordeal of love.

She reached the bench where she had sat that afternoon. There was not a
leaf that stirred. The nightingale's song sounded away in the distance.
The midnight peace lay like a shroud upon all things. But suddenly fear
stabbed her, piercing every nerve to quivering activity. She knew--how,
she could not have said--that she was no longer alone.

She stood quite still, but the beating of her heart rose quick and
insistent in her ears, like the beat of a drum. Swift came the conviction
that it was no inner impulse that had brought her hither. She had obeyed
a voice that called.

For many seconds she stood motionless, not breathing, not daring to turn
her head. Then, as her strength partially returned, she took two steps
forward to the seat under the lilac tree, and, her hand upon the back of
it, she spoke.

"Nap!"

He came, gliding like a shadow behind her. Slowly she turned and
faced him.

He was still in riding-dress. She heard again the faint jingle of his
spurs. Yet the moonlight shone strangely down upon him, revealing in him
something foreign, something incongruous, that she marvelled that she had
never before noticed. The fierce, dusky face with its glittering eyes and
savage mouth was oddly unfamiliar to her, though she knew it all by
heart. In imagination she clothed him with the blanket and moccasins of
Capper's uncouth speech; and she was afraid.

She did not know how to break the silence. The heart within her was
leaping like a wild thing in captivity.

"Why are you here?" she said at last, and she knew that her voice shook.

He answered her instantly, with a certain doggedness. "I want to know
what Capper has been saying to you."

She started almost guiltily. Her nerves were on edge that night.

"You may as well tell me," he said coolly. "Sooner or later I am
bound to know."

With an effort she quieted her agitation. "Then it must be later," she
said. "I cannot stay to talk with you now."

"Why not?" he said.

Desperately she faced him, for her heart still quaked within her. The
shock of Capper's revelation was still upon her. He had come to her too
soon. "Nap," she said, "I ask you to leave me, and I mean it. Please go!"

But he only drew nearer to her, and she saw that his face was stern. He
thrust it forward, and regarded her closely.

"So," he said slowly, "he has told you all about me, has he?"

She bent her head. It was useless to attempt to evade the matter now.

"I am mightily obliged to him," said Nap. "I wanted you to know."

Anne was silent.

After a moment he went on. "I meant to have told you myself. I even began
to tell you once, but somehow you put me off. It was that night at
Baronmead--you remember?--the night you wanted to help me."

Well she remembered that night--the man's scarcely veiled despair, his
bitter railing against the ironies of life. So this had been the meaning
of it all. A thrill of pity went through her.

"Yes," he said. "I knew you'd be sorry for me. I guess pity is about the
cheapest commodity on the market. But--you'll hardly believe it--I don't
want your pity. After all, a man is himself, and it can't be of much
importance where he springs from--anyway, to the woman who loves him."

He spoke recklessly, and yet she seemed to detect a vein of entreaty
in his words. She steeled her heart against it, but it affected her
none the less.

"Nap," she said firmly, "there must be no more talk of love between us. I
told you this afternoon that I would not listen, and I will not. Do you
understand me? It must end here and now. I am in earnest."

"You don't say!" said Nap.

He was standing close to her, and again fear stabbed her--fear that was
almost abhorrence. There was something about him that was horribly
suggestive of a menacing animal.

"I am in earnest," she said again. But she could not meet his eyes any
longer. She dared not let him read her soul just then.

"I am in earnest too," said Nap. "But you needn't be afraid of me on that
account. I may be a savage, but I'm not despicable. If I take more than
you are prepared to offer it's only because I know it to be my own." He
bent towards her, trying to see her face. "My own, Anne!" he said again
very softly. "My own!"

But at his movement she drew back sharply, with a gesture of such
instinctive, such involuntary recoil, that in an instant she knew that
she had betrayed that which she had sought to hide.

He stiffened as if at a blow, and she saw his hands clench. In the
silence that followed she stood waiting for the storm to burst, waiting
for his savagery to tear asunder all restraining bonds and leap forth in
devilish fury. But--by what means she knew not--he held it back.

"So," he said at last, his voice very low, "the Queen has no further use
for her jester!"

Her heart smote her. What had she done? She felt as if she had cruelly
wounded a friend. But because he demanded of her more than friendship,
she dared not attempt to allay the hurt. She stood silent.

"Can't you find another _role_ for me?" he said. "You will find it
difficult to exclude me altogether from the cast."

Something in his tone pierced her, compelled her. She glanced up swiftly,
met his eyes, and was suddenly caught, as it were, in fiery chains, so
that she could not look away. And there before her the gates of hell
opened, and she saw a man's soul in torment. She saw the flames mount
higher and higher, scorching and shrivelling and destroying, till at last
she could bear the sight no longer. She covered her face with her hands
and blotted it out.

"Oh, Nap," she moaned, "if you love me--if you love me--"

"If I love you--" he said.

He put his hand on her shoulder and she trembled from head to foot.

"Prove your love!" she whispered, her face still hidden.

He stood awhile motionless, still with his hand upon her. But at last it
fell away.

"You doubt my love then?" he said, and his voice sounded strange to
her, almost cold. "You think my love is unworthy of you? You have--lost
faith in me?"

She was silent.

"Is it so?" he persisted. "Tell me the truth. I may as well know it. You
think--because I am not what Capper would, term a thoroughbred--that I
am incapable of love. Isn't that so?"

But still she did not answer him. Only, being free, she turned to the
garden-seat and sank down upon it, her arms stretched along the back,
her head bowed low.

He began to pace up and down like a caged animal, pausing each time he
passed her, and each time moving on again as if invisibly urged. At last
very suddenly he stopped with his back to her, and stood like a statue in
the moonlight.

She did not look at him. She was too near the end of her strength. Her
heart was beating very slowly, like a run-down watch. She felt like an
old, old woman, utterly tired of life. And she was cold--cold from
head to foot.

Minutes passed. Somewhere away in the night an owl hooted, and Nap
turned his head sharply, as one accustomed to take note of every sound.
A while longer he stood, seeming to listen, every limb alert and tense,
then swiftly he wheeled and gazed full at the drooping woman's figure on
the bench.

Slowly his attitude changed. Something that was bestial went out of it;
something that was human took its place. Quietly at length he crossed
the moonlit space that intervened between them, reached her, knelt
beside her.

"Anne," he said, and all her life she remembered the deep melancholy of
his voice, "I am a savage--a brute--a devil. But I swear that I have it
in me to love you--as you deserve to be loved. Won't you have patience
with me? Won't you give me a chance--the only chance I've ever had--of
getting above myself, of learning what love can be? Won't you trust me
with your friendship once more? Believe me, I'm not all brute."

She thrilled like a dead thing waked to life. Her dread of the man passed
away like an evil dream, such was the magic he had for her. She slipped
one of her cold hands down to him.

He caught it, bowed his head upon it, pressed it against his eyes, then
lifted his face and looked up at her.

"It is not the end then? You haven't given me up in disgust?"

And she answered him in the only way possible to her. "I will be
your friend still, only--only let there never again be any talk of
love between us. That alone will end our friendship. Can I trust
you? Nap, can I?"

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