Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley Part 28

"Peggy!... You found something?"

"Yes! It had slipped through a ripped place down between the cloth and the lining."

"Good G.o.d! _The message?_"

"The message! Here it is." And from the bosom of my low dress I pulled the folded bit of khaki-yellow paper, warm from my heart. He took it from me. Our fingers touched, and his were cold as ice.

I stood still while he opened the paper and read the words which were of as great importance in his life now as when he wrote them. They had power to make all the difference to him and to another man between honour and dishonour.

For a long minute he was silent and motionless, reading or thinking.

Then he looked up abruptly, and his eyes blazed into mine.

"Peggy!" he said in a level, monotonous tone which I knew hid deep feeling. "Do you realize what this means to me?"

"Yes," I answered. "I realize fully. I've dreamed of a moment like this for you. I've lived for it, for weeks and months that seem like years."

"And that it should come to me from you!"

"I hoped--I prayed."

"Tell me what happened."

I told him, only leaving out the part about Diana, how she had come home and guessed the secret I had found and tried to rob me. To mention that, I thought, might seem as if I were trying to boast of what I had done.

Then, when I had explained how I dashed out of the house, leaving everything but the coat, which would be invaluable as proof, I hurried on, lest he should ask questions I didn't wish to answer.

"What has become of the notebook?" I wanted to know. "I hope you've got it?"

"Better than that," Eagle said. "If I'd had it in my possession all this time I might have written this message whenever I chose, torn out the leaf, and pretended that it had been done on the night of the gunfiring.

Luckily Dell, the friend who defended me in my trial, kept the book. It was produced at the court-martial in my defence, and the torn edge shown, with the marks on the next page made by pressing down heavily with a blunt pencil. Vague traces of words could be seen, but even with a magnifying gla.s.s they couldn't be read. There was no evidence that amounted to anything, but my friend kept the book. He said it might be of use some day. I had no such hope, but now--my G.o.d, Peggy, with that coat and your story, the case against Vand.y.k.e seems to me complete!"

"How thankful I am to hear you say that!" I almost sobbed, moved by his excitement to greater excitement of my own. "I felt it must be so; but I'm only a girl. I didn't _know_. I couldn't be sure. Oh, Eagle! You'll never understand what it is to me to think I've been able to help you, even a little. If it hadn't been for me the dreadful thing would never have happened. You'd still be just what you were before we met."

"You've not helped me a 'little'; you've given me new life," he said.

"Some time I'll tell you, maybe, why I'd rather have the gift from you than any one else. But I can't understand what you mean by saying 'the thing would never have happened' if it hadn't been for you."

"If I hadn't wanted a new dress, and if I hadn't gone to Wardour Street to sell my lace and make money to buy the frock, we should never have known each other. You wouldn't have seen Diana; we shouldn't have gone to America, and if we hadn't gone to America, and met Major Vand.y.k.e, those guns would never have been fired, and heaps of official bother would have been saved. But far the best of all, _you_ would have been as happy as ever!'"

"You might as well blame yourself for being born," said Eagle; "and on my soul, I tell you, Peggy, that even without the new hope you've given me to-night, I wouldn't go back if I could choose, and be without my experience in Belgium, or--or without _you_ in my life."

He held out his hands for mine, and I gave them to a grasp that hurt.

Something he was about to say; but before he had time to speak there came a long shrill peal of the electric bell.

Eagle dropped my hands instantly. "By Jove! It must be Jim. He's forgotten his key! I don't want him to see you, Peggy. He's a very good fellow, but a rattle-brain--tells everything he knows. Run behind that red screen, and when I've got him into his own room, which I'll do somehow in a few minutes, I'll take you to a taxi, and drive home with you if it can be managed."

I whisked behind the screen, peeping out to whisper: "Better hide the khaki coat if you don't want questions!"

Eagle took my advice, handing me the coat to keep for him as he pa.s.sed on his way to the door. There was plenty of room to stand behind the screen without flattening myself against the wall. And without danger of being seen I could look through the interstices between the leaves of the screen into the brightly lighted room.

I heard Eagle's footsteps on the parquet floor of the vestibule. I heard the click of the latch as he opened the door. After that, instead of a loud, jolly greeting from his friend, there was dead silence for an instant. Then a woman's voice spoke in a low tone of intense and pa.s.sionate eagerness. I had never heard it speak in that tone before.

But with a shock of surprise and fear, I recognized the voice: it was Diana's.

CHAPTER XXV

My heart stood still. Thinking calmly, it seemed that Diana had no power to harm Eagle March. I had the coat which betrayed Sidney. Eagle had the written message, and his friend in America had the notebook out of which it had been torn. The chain of our evidence was complete. It could not be broken. Eagle had long ago seen through Diana and ceased to worship her. Surely she could do nothing with him now, no matter how shamefully she might humble herself. But I could not think calmly. And as I heard her sweet, imploring voice, begging to come in, as I realized that Eagle could not shut her out, a heavy presentiment of failure weighed upon me.

I braced myself to be ready for anything that might happen, ready to spring from behind the screen and confront Diana if need came.

"If you ever cared for me, if you have any pity for an unhappy woman, let me in--let me speak to you," were the words I heard her say, in a voice like the wail of harp-strings. Its pathos would have been irresistible to any man, even if he had never loved her. Eagle March let Diana come in, though I heard him protesting that his friend Jim White might arrive at any moment.

"What does it matter?" she cried; and with the words she was at the study door. Through the leaves of the tall screen I saw her trail in, a figure of beauty in her white satin dress and sombre purple cloak, her dark hair wreathed with a fillet of emerald laurel leaves that gave her face the look of some tragic muse of long ago. "I know Jim White," she hurried on, "and he knows me well enough to be sure I'm here for nothing wrong! I'm not afraid of him. It's you I'm afraid of, Eagle!"

She stopped, and faced him. Unknowingly she faced me, too. Eagle's back was turned toward me, but I could see Diana's blue eyes gazing up at him. They were sad and beautiful beyond words. With a shiver of fear, I realized that no woman on earth could be lovelier than my sister. All womanhood, with its appeal to man, was in her great imploring eyes.

I was glad that Eagle did not answer. I hoped his silence might mean that her beauty had lost its magic for him, that he understood fully how she had come to beguile him, and that he meant to give her no opening.

"This is the first time I have seen you since--since that night at Alvarado when you bade me 'good-bye,'" she went on, letting her voice break into a half-stifled sob.

"You saw me at the Emba.s.sy," he answered, so coldly that, in her place, I should have been chilled with discouragement.

"I dared not look at you there," she confessed. "I was afraid of--myself. Oh, Eagle! I'm even more afraid of you now--more afraid than of myself!"

"Really, I am not so very formidable, Lady Diana," said Eagle, with cool scorn that showed in tone and manner. "But if I may ask--since you stand in such dread of me, why do you come to beard the lion in his den?"

"Because the lion is brave and kingly I have ventured. I _had_ to come, Eagle. There was no other way. I found out your address from your Russian friend, Major Skobeleff. He happened to mention it, asking me if I knew Jim White who'd lent the place to you. I didn't guess then how thankful I'd soon be to know where you lived. Oh, Eagle! Don't look at me so cruelly! I can't bear it. You hate me, but you mustn't judge. If you knew everything, you'd see that you'd done me a wrong."

"I should be sorry to think that," said Eagle, as formally as if he spoke to a stranger. "And you are mistaken if you really suppose I hate you. I have gone through a good deal lately, Lady Diana, and learned to see personal things in the right proportion. Let me a.s.sure you, my feelings toward you are not in the least malevolent."

"You mean you don't care for me any more? I ought to be glad, for your sake and mine, too. But I _did_ love you, Eagle. I truly did, only--I was a coward. I was deceived, as other people were deceived. And I had Father to think of as well as myself."

"Don't excuse yourself to me, I beg! All that is past and done with. You didn't come here I'm sure to----"

"Ah! If the past could be done with! It can't, and that is why I have come. I know Peggy has been with you. It's useless to tell me she has not."

"I've no intention of telling you a lie, Lady Diana."

Di broke down, and cried without any effort to restrain herself. She did not look quite her beautiful self when she cried, but she looked a hundred times more pathetic. "You won't believe me, I suppose," she sobbed, "but till to-night I never knew--knew that Sidney had deceived me. I believed what he told me to believe. It is an awful blow! I think--my heart is broken. But, oh, G.o.d, Eagle, if you ruin him before the world it will be my death!"

To my astonishment Eagle answered with a laugh--a laugh of exceeding bitterness.

"You seem to believe and disbelieve easily, Lady Diana Vand.y.k.e!" he said. "Once you believed in me. Then you ceased to believe in me and threw me over because another man--a richer man than I--told you and everybody else that I was a liar. You believed in him instead--on his mere word. You married him. May I ask if he has confessed to you, or do you take his guilt for granted as you took mine, on circ.u.mstantial evidence?"

"No, he has not confessed anything," Di answered. Yet there was something in her tone and confused, anxious manner that made me sure she was not telling the truth. The conviction swept over me that something had happened at the house in Park Lane since I slammed the front door and ran out. Diana might have thought twice before coming to grovel here to Eagle, unless she had been sure that I was not jumping to conclusions--sure that there could be no possible mistake about _what I had found in Sidney's coat_. Suddenly I knew as well as if she had put the story into words that Sidney had come home before she had made up her mind what to do; that she had told him about the coat, and that I had carried it off to Eagle March; that Sidney, knowing well what my discovery must have been, had broken down and sent Diana to Eagle, in the one last hope that her pleading might save him from his enemy's revenge.

"I haven't seen Sidney," she hurried on. "But--instinct tells me some things. I'm afraid--I know that his loving me so much made him cruel to you. Oh, don't look at me like that. You turn me to ice. It's true--'cruel' isn't a hard enough word for what he did. I don't try to excuse him. But he sinned for my sake. That softens my heart toward him.

I'm human!"