Ensign Knightley | Page 6

hear the story nakedly
from me."

"From you?" exclaimed Tessin. "Another duel, then. Have you counted
the cost?"
"Why, yes," replied Scrope quietly.
"Two years of the bastinado," said the Major. "That was what he said.
He comes back to Tangier to find--who knows?--a worse torture here.
Knightley, Knightley, a good officer marked for promotion until that
infernal night. Scrope, I could turn moralist and curse you!"
Scrope dropped his head as though the words touched him. But it was
not long before he raised it again.
"You waste your pity, I think, Major," he said coldly. "I disagree with
Mr. Wyley's conclusions. Knightley knows the truth of the matter very
well. For observe, he has made no mention of his wife. He has been
two years in slavery. He escapes, and he asks for no news of his wife.
That is unlike any man, but most of all unlike Knightley. He has his
own ends to serve, no doubt, but he knows."
The argument appeared cogent to Major Shackleton.
"To be sure, to be sure," he said. "I had not thought of that."
Tessin looked across to Wyley.
"What do you say?"
"I am not convinced," replied Wyley. "Indeed, I was surprised that
Knightley's omission had not been remarked before. When you first
showed reserve in welcoming Knightley, I noticed that he became all at
once timid, hesitating. He seemed to be afraid."
Major Shackleton admitted the Surgeon's accuracy. "Well, what then?"
"Well, I go back to what I said before Knightley appeared. A man has
lost so many hours. The question, what he did during those hours, is
one that may well appal any one. Lieutenant Scrope doubted whether
that question would trouble a man, and needed an instance. I believe
here is the instance. I believe Knightley is afraid to ask any questions,
and I believe his reason to be fear of how he lived during those lost
hours."
There was a pause. No one was prepared to deny, however much he
might doubt, what Wyley said.
Wyley continued:
"At some point of time before this duel Knightley's recollections break
off. At what precise point we are not aware, nor is it of any great
importance. The sure thing is he does not know of the dispute between

Lieutenant Scrope and himself, and it is of more importance for us to
consider whether he cannot after all be kept from knowing. Could he
not be sent home to England? Mrs. Knightley, I take it, is no longer in
Tangier?"
Major Shackleton stood up, took Wyley by the arm and led him out on
to the balcony. The town beneath them had gone to sleep; the streets
were quiet; the white roofs of the houses in the star-shine descended to
the water's edge like flights of marble steps; only here and there did a
light burn. To one of the lights close by the city wall the Major directed
Wyley's attention. The house in which it burned lay so nearly beneath
them that they could command a corner of the square open patio in the
middle of it; and the light shone in a window set in that corner and
giving on to the patio.
"You see that house?" said the Major.
"Yes," said Wyley. "It is Scrope's. I have seen him enter and come out."
"No doubt," said the Major; "but it is Knightley's house."
"Knightley's! Then the light burning in the window is--"
The Major nodded. "She is still in Tangier. And never a care for him
has troubled her for two years, not so much as would bring a pucker to
her pretty forehead--all my arrears of pay to a guinea-piece."
Wyley leaned across the rail of the balcony, watching the light, and as
he watched he was aware that his feelings and his thoughts changed.
The interest which he had felt in Scrope died clean away, or rather was
transferred to Knightley; and with this new interest there sprang up a
new sympathy, a new pity. The change was entirely due to that one
yellow light burning in the window and the homely suggestions which
it provoked. It brought before him very clearly the bitter contrast: so
that light had burned any night these last two years, and Scrope had
gone in and out at his will, while up in the barbarous inlands of
Morocco the husband had had his daily portion of the bastinado and the
whip. It was her fault, too, and she made her profit of it. Wyley became
sensible of an overwhelming irony in the disposition of the world.
"You spoke a true word to-night, Major," he said bitterly. "That light
down there might turn any man to a moralist, and send him preaching
in the market-places."
"Well," returned the Major, as