Chapter Twenty Six.
Lawless had during a chequered career spent many an eventful night round a camp fire, but no more strange experience had he passed through than on that night, guarding Van Bleit on the open veld.
The night was cold, with a fresh wind blowing. The Kaffir, who remained greatly against his will, but dared not openly refuse to stay for fear of the baas of the scarred face and compelling eye, gathered wood and made a fire, before which Lawless sat with his revolver at his hand, and Van Bleit stretched himself on the cushions that had been taken from the cart and flung down on the veld. He feigned slumber, but did not actually close his eyes throughout the night. He watched his captor incessantly, hoping that sleep would overtake him; but Lawless sat wakeful and alert, with his eyes upon the flames, only moving at long intervals when he rose to throw fresh wood upon the fire.
There was nothing to eat, and only a small quantity of spirit in Van Bleit’s flask. The Kaffir had a pocketful of mealies which he chewed before the fire. Close by their uitspan was a watercourse from whence he fetched water in small quantities in the empty flask.
Van Bleit complained of hunger. He also complained of cold, and of the tightness of the rope that bound his wrists. In common humanity, Lawless loosened the knots. He had no fancy to torture the man. But if Van Bleit had hoped by this means to slip his bonds he was doomed to disappointment. They were more comfortable, but none the less secure.
He lay still afterwards for a long while feigning sleep; and Lawless, watching intently, observed by the uncertain flickering light, that now leapt upward in a tongue of brilliant flame, and again died down to a dull red glow that left all beyond the immediate circle round the fire in absolute darkness, that with every interval of obscurity Van Bleit drew himself stealthily nearer the fire. When he lay quite close to the hot embers with his bound hands among them, Lawless rose, flung on fresh wood to make a blaze, and leisurely approaching the recumbent figure, stirred it with his boot.
“Get back,” he said. “I don’t mind you blistering your hands, that’s your look out; but I object to you trying to burn that rope.”
Van Bleit rolled back on his cushions without replying, and lay still again; and Lawless sat as before, smoking his pipe to solace his empty stomach, with his revolver beside him, and his eyes on the leaping flames. Only the Kaffir slept, and his rest was tranquil and unbroken, in strange contrast with the silent conflict that was going on close by him on the opposite side of the fire.
The stars sloped to the westward, and the night grew darker, with the heavy blackness that precedes the dawn. The wind died away. Cold and still and strangely pure was the feel of the air. Lawless kicked the fire into a blaze and looked down at Van Bleit.
“Want a smoke?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Van Bleit’s tone was sulky. Lawless took his pipe from his pocket and filled it for him. He put the stem in his mouth and held a match to the bowl. Van Bleit was not gracious. He wanted to smoke badly or he would have refused the offer.
“Makes a man feel a precious fool,” he said.
“Makes him look one,” Lawless answered.
He returned to his place and sat silent and still, watching for the dawn. It came with a faint breath of wind in the trees, just a whispering stir among the leaves. Then silence again, and the light broke like a white line drawn horizontally upon the blackboard of the sky. Lawless watched it broaden, grow brighter, till it dispersed the surrounding blackness, and objects and landmarks familiar in the daylight began to take definite shape and form. He stretched himself wearily and looked about him. His glance fell on Van Bleit, pallid, red-eyed, obviously suffering, observing him with the baleful look of some savage captive beast.
He got up and took a few short rapid turns to circulate his blood. It was cold in the dawn, and the fire was dying. There was no more wood to throw on. He had spent nights like this in the Boer lines during the war, but he had never been told off single-handed to guard a prisoner.
He kept a watchful eye on the east for the first flushing of the clouds. Never had he welcomed the sun more gratefully than when it lifted itself indolently from the rose clouds that veiled its rising and soared above them into the blue of the morning sky. Van Bleit stirred, stretched himself to the warmth as an animal does, and sat up.
“Blast you!” he snarled. “When are you going to make a move out of this? I want some breakfast. I’m famished... And I’ve got a chill. My clothes are wet through with the dew.”
Lawless looked at his watch.
“There’s lots of time yet,” he answered cheerfully. “You won’t hurt for a little fasting. When a man habitually overfeeds it’s good for his stomach to give it a rest.”
“How long are you for keeping me here?” Van Bleit asked, his voice quivering with repressed rage.
“I’m giving Tom his chance to get to the Bank,” Lawless answered. “After that, I’ve no further interest in your movements.”
Van Bleit eyed him calculatingly. His courage had returned to a certain degree since he had suffered no personal violence. He felt reassured on that point. But his respect for his captor was no greater on that account. Had their relative positions been reversed he would have acted very differently.
“My arms are numb,” he grumbled. “Can’t you put me on parole and undo this cord? It’s the very devil I’m suffering in my wrists.”
But Lawless was wholly unmoved.
“When we part company,” he said, “I’ll free them—which is more than you did for me. As for your parole! ... I wouldn’t place greater trust in your word than I would in that of a Kaffir.”
Van Bleit controlled himself with an effort.
“You’re armed, and I’m not,” he sneered.
“Yes, I’m armed. But I’m not going to put myself to the trouble of sitting with my finger on the trigger.”
Van Bleit got up and walked about. He was stiff and hungry, and his head ached. He believed he had a touch of fever. He was subject to intermittent attacks, and lying out all night with no protection from the heavy dews was sufficient to bring on an attack. He cursed volubly as he tramped about, and swore swift and dire vengeance on his enemy, who, exercising also with his hands in his coat pockets, was keeping a steady watch on his movements.
The Kaffir awoke after a while, and, rolling over, stared about him as if wondering how he came to be amid his present surroundings. Then his eye encountered the terrible eye of the strange baas with the scar upon his face, and he scrambled to his feet and grinned nervously.
“In an hour’s time I shall want the horses inspanned, John.”
“Ja, baas.”
The Kaffir made off. There was in the woolly head instructed at the Mission-station a suspicion that the tall, stern-faced baas with the eye that pierced through one, and the ugly scar along his jaw, was, if not the Devil himself, a very near relation. Had he suddenly disappeared in smoke with his captive, though it would have terrified the black man, it would not greatly have astonished him.
As he moved rapidly away to where the horses were hitched to the pole of the cart he came upon one of his former gods, a strange-looking insect that, after the manner of the chameleon, took on the shade of the grass upon which it fed. It closely resembled in form a forked blade of coarse grass. With a surreptitious look about him to make certain he was not observed, the Kaffir bowed before his one-time god and uttered a weird invocation in his native tongue for protection against the white man’s Devil. Then in order to square the white man’s God he looked up at the blue sky in the hope that the great mysterious Being, who was somewhere behind the clouds, was not conversant with the Kaffir language, and so had failed to understand his lapse into idolatry, and cried aloud, parrot-fashion, a prayer he had been taught in English when he became a convert at the Mission, because his brother Klaus had joined the Mission, and had a blanket given him, and plenty good things when he was zwak. But the chance encounter with the little grass-god, which, being tangible, was easier of comprehension, did more to reassure him than the prayer sent into the blue distance which, having such a long way to travel, might never reach.
The Kaffir’s idea of time was vague. He went by the sun. One hour the sun him so much higher. He rubbed down the horses as best he could, having nothing to groom them with save handfuls of grass, and led them away to the watercourse to drink. He did not hasten to return, but kept an observant eye on the sun, fearful of incurring the baas’ anger by overstaying the limit. When he judged the hour up he returned to the uitspan and proceeded to harness the horses. The baas still stood with his hands in his pockets; but he no longer watched the other baas, who was reclining again on the cushions of the cart, a huddled inert mass of misery. The game was up, and he had lost finally. He felt like a man who has toiled honestly and laboriously and been scandalously defrauded of the rewards of his industry.
The Kaffir finished harnessing the horses, and then came up for the cushions. Lawless spoke to Van Bleit, and he got up sullenly, kicking the native savagely as he stooped and reached out a dusky hand. The Kaffir shot a venomous glance at him, but uttered no verbal protest. He gathered up the cushions and carried them away and arranged them in the cart. Then he mounted to his seat and sat with the reins in his hands, waiting.
Lawless again addressed himself to Van Bleit.
“Turn round,” he said curtly, “and I’ll unfasten your wrists.”
Van Bleit’s arms were so cramped when eventually they were released that for some time he could only work them gently, moving his wrists and fingers and relaxing his stiffened muscles. The inconvenience and the pain in them did not improve his temper. And when it became clear to him there was no room in the cart for him, that he must walk many miles before he could get a conveyance or break his fast, his rage was beyond control.
“You devil!” he shouted. “You dirty low cad of a Kaffir! Look out for your skin, that’s all. I keep my word regardless of consequences, and I say that for this you shall pay—and pay dearly, you hired spy who does another man’s dirty work.”
“Drive on,” said Lawless indifferently; and the Kaffir promptly whipped up his horses and drove off at a furious rate.
The little schoolmaster was seated at breakfast when the Cape cart clattered noisily up the sunny street, and Lawless, descending from it, entered the hotel. He went to his room, stripped, bathed, and changed his clothes; then he repaired in all haste to the dining-room, and nodding to Mr Burton, sat down at the end of the table.
“I’m famished,” he said. “But if you’ll give me a little time in which to take the brunt off an appetite that seems as though it would never be satisfied, I’ll be ready to accompany you as we arranged.”
The mild eyes behind the glasses blinked their surprise and their pleasure in equal degrees.
“Oh! plenty of time! plenty of time?” he asserted, and quietly pushed the butter and rolls and fruit nearer the new-comer’s hand. “It’s early... I am glad to see you. I was afraid you might not be returning.”
Lawless fell to on his breakfast when it made its appearance with a zest that astonished his companion.
“What a good thing it is to have a healthy appetite,” he observed. “Early rising and a drive before breakfast suit you, my friend.”
Lawless laughed grimly.
“For the first time I experience a sneaking sympathy with the cannibal... I could almost eat you.”
Even a much neglected appetite reaches its limit in time. The quantity of food that Lawless managed to dispose of was a revelation to the schoolmaster; he had never in all his life been equal to making such a meal.
“You have a good digestion,” he remarked. “It is a fine thing.”
“No doubt,” Lawless answered. “But it becomes assertive when a man neglects to give it work. And now, Mr Burton, I won’t keep you waiting any longer. Your patience has stood a test this morning that mine would not bear so well.”
“Indeed, I have been well entertained,” the other assured him.
“In watching the exhibition of a man’s eating prowess! You are more easily amused than I am.”
“I imagine that to be so. I belong to a generation that enjoyed simpler pleasures than you men of the present day. But I fancy we who took pleasure in simple things got more joy out of life... I may be wrong.”
“Joy! There’s precious little joy in life that I can see,” Lawless replied, and rose, scraping his chair noisily upon the carpetless floor. The little man looked at him earnestly.
“I am not a philosopher,” he said, “nor have I over much learning—just enough for the exercise of my profession, and no more. But I can tell you the reason you find no joy in life; it is because you don’t know where to look for it. Joy lies in ourselves.”
Lawless laughed shortly.
“I’m not a likely sort of subject to harbour joy,” he returned.
“Why not?” the other said quite simply... “You shut the door in her face, my friend, or she would find her way in fast enough. Give her a chance.”
He took up his hat, and lighted his old meerschaum pipe before going out.
“On a day like this,” he said, “it makes a man joyful merely to feel he is alive.”
It was a great pleasure to the schoolmaster to walk along beside his tall companion and point out to him the many beauties of the place, beauties which alone Lawless would assuredly have overlooked. A lizard, peeping with bright eyes between the stones of a piece of broken wall, caught the little man’s attention. As they approached it darted into a crack and disappeared. The schoolmaster pointed to it like an eager boy who discovers something rare. Despite his boredom at such trifles, Lawless was faintly amused. A wild flower, a humming-bird, a large green butterfly, each in turn excited interest, and called forth admiration and comment.
The man was a botanist, and spoke learnedly of the flora of the neighbourhood. The wild flowers of the Cape have yet to be properly classified; many of them are unnamed; they are simply “bloemetjes.” The schoolmaster had named many of them to please himself. He picked a beautiful pure white bloom from the veld, and gave it to Lawless to admire.
“It is so flawless, so pure,” he said. “I call that my Flower of Innocence. The veld is full of them. But they are scentless. One day someone will take it, perhaps, and cultivate it and give it a scent. But I like it best as nature has made it. To me it is perfect.”
Lawless placed it in his buttonhole, not that he cared for wearing flowers, but because—why he did not know—it pleased him to give pleasure to this simple-minded man.
The schoolmaster introduced his friend to his pupils, a proceeding that was fraught with embarrassment to both sides. Never in his life before had Lawless felt so great a fool. He was glad to make his escape.
Mr Burton parted from him reluctantly. He went a little way with him on his backward journey, and stood for quite ten minutes looking after the tall figure as it strode away over the veld. Afterwards he was heard to assert that Providence had without doubt moved him to act as he acted that morning. No man was ever more conscientious in the performance of his duties than this man, yet here was he lingering in the sunshine, gazing after a departing acquaintance while his pupils idled their time away waiting for him in vain.
Mr Burton held no class that morning.
As he was about to turn back to his work he saw a strange sight. The figure he was watching suddenly threw up its arms and fell and lay upon the veld quite motionless, so that had he not seen the falling of it he would not have known that it was there. And galloping away from the spot where the man had fallen was another man seated on a raw-boned white horse.
The schoolmaster was no athlete, but he put foot to ground and ran for all he was worth.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
Colonel Grey lay in bed smoking his customary before-breakfast cigar. He was not an early riser—or, as he expressed it, he had had so much early rising during his life that he was justified in taking his leisure.
He was unaccountably thinking of Lawless and the letters. He still half-trusted and half-doubted his man. That is to say, at times his belief in him was unbounded, and again at other moments, according to his mood, he mistrusted the man’s honesty of purpose. Reckless, impecunious, an admitted adventurer, were not the chances even that if he got hold of the letters he would turn them to his own purposes? With such a source of profit in his possession, would he be likely to give it up for the sum originally agreed upon between them? Colonel Grey could not altogether conquer his suspicions; the man’s past life had prejudiced him.
While he lay thinking, sending clouds of blue smoke-rings up from the pillow like smoke from a sacrificial altar, the bell of his front door was rung loudly and imperatively. As it was not answered with the promptitude that could only have been possible had a doorkeeper been stationed in readiness, the bell pealed again. Colonel Grey got out of bed and went to the window. He had already paddled out of bed once to admit his boy, for no servant slept in the house; and he paddled across the room a second time, jerked open the window, and looked out. It was with an involuntary exclamation of surprise that he recognised Tom Hayhurst.
“Good Lord!” he ejaculated.
And then, in accents of anger:
“What the devil are you pulling that bell down for?”
Hayhurst came forward, saluted the irate speaker, and followed him into the bedroom.
“I thought I paid you to clear out,” the Colonel observed sharply, eyeing with no great favour the spruce, confident young man he had last seen—or so he imagined—with a bandaged head, taking his passage to Durban.
“You did, sir.”
Hayhurst controlled his countenance with difficulty. In dealing with the Colonel he made it a practice to allow him to let off steam first. It gave a man a chance of second place, he used to say.
“Then, why in hell are you back here? ... I’ve no further use for you.”
“I’m not asking you to use me,” Hayhurst answered coolly. “I came by Lawless’ orders, to give into your own hands the packet of letters which I’ve just received from the Bank.”
He put his hand inside his coat as he spoke, and withdrew a sealed packet from an inner pocket, which, in a matter-of-fact manner, he tendered the Colonel. The Colonel nearly collapsed at sight of it. The cigar dropped from his lips, his mouth fell helplessly open.
“The—letters!” he gasped.
He stretched forth an eager hand that shook with his excitement, and almost tore the packet from Hayhurst’s grasp.
“Sit down, my boy,” he said... “Sit down.” He turned the packet lovingly. “Good God! the letters—at last!”
Breaking the seal with fingers that in their feverish eagerness could scarce perform their office, he glanced through the contents, counted the letters, and finally, going to a drawer and unlocking it, he took out a notebook to which he referred continually while he went through the packet again.
“It’s all right,” he said... “They’re all here.”
He snatched up a box of matches, and carrying the letters to the grate, thrust them between the bars and set light to them. Hayhurst watched with him while they burnt, dividing his attention between the flaming papers and the intent set face of the man who crouched before the hearth, watching, watching, while the letters that had cost much money and a man’s life were swiftly reduced to ashes. When only the charred and blackened paper remained, Colonel Grey took the ashes up in his hands and crumbled them to powder. He drew a long breath of relief.
“They’ve cost dear,” he muttered,—“too dear... But they’ll do no more harm.”
He rose and, turning, stared into the young man’s eyes.
“A moment since,” he said, and his voice trembled with an emotion he could not altogether subdue, “it seemed to me that nothing mattered outside that,” and he pointed to the ashes in the grate. “Now I’m back in the world again, and I want to know how you came to have them in your possession.”
“It’s a fairly long story,” Hayhurst said. “It’s taken weeks to bring to a successful issue.”
The Colonel shook his head.
“Don’t you get into the habit of drinking before breakfast, my boy,” he said.
Tom Hayhurst laughed. His eye had certainly travelled towards a syphon and bottle of whisky that stood on the washstand.
“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” he said. “Besides, I have breakfasted. And I’ve been strict teetotal practically ever since I’ve been working with Lawless. It was a condition he made in taking me on.”
The Colonel went to the washstand to cleanse his hands.
“Pity to break it,” he said. “But help yourself, if you’ve a mind to.”
When he had washed he got back into bed, and Hayhurst sat on a chair facing him, with a glass of whisky in his hand.
“We’ll have to go back to the beginning,” he said, “if you want to follow the yarn—that is, to the time when Lawless left Cape Town before poor Simmonds’ murder. You may remember he left Cape Town with a companion.”
“I do,” Colonel Grey answered drily. “I have reason to remember.”
“So have I,” Hayhurst rejoined.
“Indeed!”
“You see, I was with him,” he explained, taking pleasure in the Colonel’s open amazement. “We were in Stellenbosch together.”
“You!—With that she—”
“Devil,” prompted the young man cheerfully. “Yes! She wasn’t half a bad sort either. You mustn’t call her names. I’ve a sneaking affection for her.”
“I can imagine you would have.”
The Colonel snipped a fresh cigar, and lighted it, and lay with his hands clasped behind his head eyeing the youngster curiously as, in obedience to a nod, he helped himself from the box of cigars that stood on the table beside the bed.
“I suppose you wouldn’t believe me,” he hazarded, “if I were to tell you that that was the most platonic friendship Grit Lawless ever indulged in?”
“I should say that your ideas and mine of platonism were widely different,” was the response.
Hayhurst laughed.
“Did you ever see the lady at close quarters?” he asked.
“No... And have no wish to.”
“I fancy you are labouring under a mistake... You are looking at her now.”
He stroked his clean-shaven lip to hide his amusement, and his blue eyes smiled at the Colonel, who, in incredulous amazement, stared back at him from the pillow.
“I never reckoned myself an effeminate-looking fellow,” he said; “but I’m a tremendous success in petticoats—though it took a thundering lot of paint, no matter how carefully I shaved.”
“You lying young devil!” the Colonel ejaculated. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Van Bleit wouldn’t either,” Hayhurst answered, calmly sipping his whisky, “if I hadn’t changed my sex in front of him. I left him my hair as a keepsake... His friendship wasn’t as platonic as old Grit’s.”
The Colonel half sat up as a light broke in on him.
“And that,” he exclaimed with conviction, “is how you got hold of the letters?”
“No.” Tom Hayhurst leant forward with his hand on the counterpane, his boyish face flushed and eager. “All the credit for getting hold of the letters belongs to Lawless,” he said. “I was merely the decoy for leading Van Bleit into his hands. He managed the rest. He’s fine, Grit Lawless—a man... a white man. My conscience! you ought to have been with us yesterday and seen him handle Van Bleit.”
He furnished a description of the scene on the veld, and the Colonel listened in silence, save for an occasional appreciative grunt.
“And I left him,” the boy finished admiringly, “guarding the beast. He might have put a bullet into him and saved himself the trouble; instead of which I expect he has been sitting by him all night. I tell you, when Grit undertakes a thing he doesn’t half do it.”
Colonel Grey looked thoughtfully at the speaker. He was remembering how at their last meeting Lawless had said to him, with reference to Van Bleit, that he was keener on killing the man than anything else.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said, “that he didn’t put his bullet into him after you were gone.”
But Tom Hayhurst had no doubts on that head.
“Grit isn’t the man to shoot another with his hands tied, and unarmed,” he said. “He wouldn’t even lash him so, although I wanted him to. I’ve got a blunter sense of honour, I suppose; but I don’t believe in being generous to swine like Karl Van Bleit.”
“No,” the Colonel agreed.
He smoked for a few moments in silence. Then he put the end of the cigar down in the ashtray, and flung back the bedclothes.
“You say you’ve breakfasted! It must have been a fairly early meal. You’d better stay and breakfast with me. When do you suppose Lawless will be coming down?”
“To-night, I expect. He didn’t say. But there’s nothing to keep him there. I shall meet the train anyway.”
“I’d like to see him.” The Colonel frowned thoughtfully. “Pity!” he said. “I’m dining out to-night—at the Smythes’. If it had been any other house I would have sent an excuse. But, owing to the trial, things have been a bit strained. To-night will be the first time I have been to the house since that affair... I can’t very well get out of it.”
“Leave early, sir,” Hayhurst suggested, “and come round to his hotel.”
“And suppose he shouldn’t arrive?”
“Oh! he’ll arrive right enough... If he doesn’t, I’ll manage to let you know.”
There was no happier man in Cape Town that day than Colonel Grey when he went into the city and cabled Home to the person it most concerned the news of success. It had taken months to accomplish at a terrific cost, but the matter was ended, and the incriminating letters were beyond reach for any purpose evil or the reverse.
Because his conscience accused him of having misjudged the man, quite as much as in recognition of his valuable services, he determined to use his influence with the greater influence behind him in getting Lawless some honourable occupation that would give him a fresh start. There was use in the world for men like that. The idea grew in his mind and took definite shape. He decided to talk it over with Lawless when they met and then write home. Whatever his past, he merited some consideration for his present services. The impulse of the moment is no correct index to a man’s nature, and only a crude sense of justice assigns life-long punishment for the sins of youth. In Colonel Grey’s opinion Grit Lawless had expiated his crime.
He went to the Smythes’ that evening with his thoughts still revolving around Lawless’ future, which quite suddenly had become of immense importance to him. It was his liking for the man, that strange unaccountable feeling he had had for him at their first meeting which, despite prejudice and later distrust, he had never managed to conquer, that made him so extraordinarily anxious to hold out a helping hand. Simmonds, the man who was dead, had had a similar regard for him; and the boy, Tom Hayhurst, in a more exaggerated degree realised the magnetic attraction of his personality. Given a second chance. Colonel Grey was fully convinced that Lawless would carve out a future for himself of which no man need be ashamed. It remained for him to see that a suitable chance offered.
By an odd coincidence the first person he came across in the Smythes’ drawing-room after greeting his hostess was Mrs Lawless. He was, he discovered later, to take her in to dinner. He had not seen her to speak to since the evening he had called upon her at the time of Simmonds’ murder, and he was not quite sure until she turned and spoke to him how he stood in her regard.
She was looking very lovely, but older, he decided. He had never observed anyone age as she had within a few months. There were lines in her face that had not been there when he first knew her, and her eyes were sadder, her bearing altogether less confident. Some people might have considered her less attractive on this account; but to him, in the clouded expression of the thoughtful eyes, in the thin line that ran from nose to mouth, there was a pathetic appeal that was infinitely womanly, and therefore more alluring than the proud defiance of youth.
She held out her hand to him, and smiled a welcome.
“I began to think that you and I were not to meet again,” she said.
“That is a very gracious speech,” he answered, “for it permits me the belief that you were not unwilling for a meeting. But there is a grim suggestion underlying the words that pleases me less. Is it my speedy dissolution you anticipate?”
“No,” she answered quietly. “But—I thought you might have heard—I’m going Home.”
“Indeed!” he said, and looked at her with quickened interest. “That’s news to me. Do you leave shortly?”
“Next week,” she replied slowly, her fingers entwining themselves in the silver girdle at her waist. “I never intended to stay very long, you know. I came to... Just on a visit.”
“And you return satisfied?” he asked, and knew not why he asked the question, nor why she should look at him so strangely with so sad an expression in the look.
“No,” she replied.
There was a perceptible pause. He pulled his heavy moustache, and his shrewd eyes met hers with a look of understanding and sympathy. He did not know what her purpose had been in coming out, but he felt she had followed no idle whim, nor sought merely health or pleasure from the visit. She had come, as he had come, for a definite purpose, and while he was leaving with his mission accomplished, she returned discouraged with her object unattained.
“I’m sorry for that,” he said... “If there is any way in which I can be of service to you...”
She shook her head.
“I go back as I came,” she said... “It was a venture. But at least I have the consolation of knowing that the attempt has been made. One can’t help one’s failures.” She looked into the grave, distinguished face and smiled. “We are in danger of growing serious,” she said.
“Look here,” he cried quickly, moved by some inexplicable and irresistible impulse, a sense of chivalry perhaps that her evident depression roused in him. “You say you are going home next week. I propose going also. If I can make my arrangements in the time, would it be agreeable to you that I should travel in the same boat?”
“You!” Her voice as well as her face expressed astonishment. “Then you—Have you accomplished your purpose in coming out?” she asked.
A glow of satisfaction overspread his features.
“I have,” he answered, and was conscious of feeling half ashamed to show his joy in the successful issue of his undertaking.
She rested her hand, oblivious of the people about them, for a moment on his arm.
“Oh! I’m glad,” she said... “I’m glad. That’s finished with. I have always felt those letters would cost another life.”
“God forbid!” he muttered, and added reassuringly: “They’re past doing harm now... They’re destroyed. I burnt them myself—to-day.”
She drew a long breath that was, he felt, a sigh of genuine relief. He looked at her curiously. He had never understood her interest in the letters, but he knew she was very greatly interested; and her relief in the knowledge of their destruction conclusively proved that in this matter at least she had no sympathy with Karl Van Bleit. He sometimes wondered whether he had not been mistaken in his opinion as to her feeling for Van Bleit.
“They are making a move,” he said to her. And then, as Theodore Smythe spoke to him in passing, he turned to her and offered her his arm. “I have the pleasure of taking you in,” he added.
And neither of them remembered, then or later, that his question as to travelling Home with her remained unanswered.
Colonel Grey left the Smythes’ early as he had arranged to do, and Mrs Lawless, who was going on elsewhere, took her departure at the same time.
“I am crowding all the dissipation possible into my last week,” she explained, but withheld the reason for this feverish activity.
He gave her his arm and led her out to the waiting motor. As he came out of the gate Tom Hayhurst, who had been dawdling about for him for the past half-hour, stepped quickly forward; then seeing who was with him stopped abruptly, and drew back. But Mrs Lawless had seen and recognised him.
“Mr Hayhurst!” she exclaimed, in a voice of surprise, and held out her hand.
“You were going to cut me,” she said, as he came forward again.
He laughed self-consciously. He was a fool for harbouring malice. Whatever part she had played in the matter of his broken head, she was an alluringly beautiful woman, and that in his opinion excused a great deal.
“Pardon!” he returned. “I was merely diffident as to my welcome.”
She suddenly smiled.
“I rather suspect,” she said, “that you are accustomed to being forgiven. I haven’t any faith in your diffidence.”
Hayhurst opened the door of the car for her and she got in.
“How is it you are not in evening dress? If you had been I would have taken you on to the subscription dance, which is where you ought to be, instead of hanging about other people’s doorways.”
“If I’d only known sooner...” he murmured regretfully.
She looked at Colonel Grey, who, grave and silent, stood behind the younger man.
“Can I drop you anywhere?” she asked.
“Thank you, no,” he answered. “I’ve an engagement with Mr Lawless at his hotel.”
Mrs Lawless started.
“He hasn’t come, sir,” she heard Tom Hayhurst saying. And then, in reply to an inaudible question: “I met the train. He wasn’t there. Van Bleit came by it.”
There was a muttered exclamation from the Colonel, and Hayhurst added:
“Yes! I don’t like the look of it myself.”
“Well, tell me presently.”
The words were spoken as a caution. Mrs Lawless leaned forward over the door, the light of the street lamp shining on her white face.
“Tell him now,” she said in a low voice. “I want to hear.”
Hayhurst stared back at her.
“There’s nothing to tell,” he stammered. “We expected Lawless by the train this evening... He didn’t come. That’s all.”
“Where is he?” she asked.
“At Kraaifontein.”
She thought for a moment.
“And Karl Van Bleit was at Kraaifontein too?”
“Yes... He’s back now.”
Mrs Lawless looked straight into the Colonel’s eyes.
“He got the letters for you,” she said, and he knew that she referred to Lawless though she did not utter his name.
“Yes.”
For the life of him the Colonel could think of nothing further to say. He was aware that the same suspicion that was in his own mind was in hers; and he had no reassurance to offer. He could find no word to supplement his bald affirmative. The pause lengthened.
“Another life!” she whispered... “I always felt—”
She touched Tom Hayhurst’s sleeve.
“Tell him to drive home,” she said, and sat back in her seat.
Colonel Grey stepped quickly to the door.
“Don’t worry,” he said... “I’m going up to-morrow... I’ll let you know immediately.”
The car drove away, and the two men were left staring blankly into one another’s eyes.
“What’s he to her?” Tom Hayhurst asked.
But the Colonel shook his head. Here was a complication he had not foreseen. They turned and walked on together. Hayhurst was excited and inclined to hunt up Van Bleit and have an explanation, but his companion quashed the idea.
“You are positive, I suppose, it was Van Bleit you saw?”
“Of course I am. I got quite close to him once, and he grinned at me. I tell you, I didn’t like that grin. I followed after him. I wanted to hit his face for showing his teeth at me, but he got into a taxi and drove off. He was looking sick too, beastly sick... There’s been foul play,—I’m certain of it. I’d have suspected it by Van Bleit turning up and Grit not; but when I saw that beast’s smug, vindictive grin, I knew it.”
“Well, I’ll find out to-morrow,” Colonel Grey said.
“I’m going up the line with you. If anything’s happened to Grit, whatever hole Van Bleit sneaks into, I’ll see he pays.”
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Colonel Grey flung a suit of pyjamas and a few toilet accessories into a handbag and started out for the station. He was very much perturbed. Against his judgment he was greatly affected by Mrs Lawless’ forebodings of the previous night; her softly uttered, prophetic—they seemed to him prophetic—words: “I have always felt those letters would cost another life.”
And as a foundation for this belief, Tom Hayhurst had turned up with his tale of suspicion and his unreserved misgivings that had insensibly given rise to similar doubts in his own mind. What a finish to a life of failure! ... If this, indeed, should prove the end! He recalled his recently formulated plans for the man’s future... the chance he had thought to give him; and a hard look came into his eyes, his lips tightened. Those ashes in the grate had indeed cost dear!
Tom Hayhurst was already on the platform when he made his appearance from the direction of the booking-office. He came forward quickly to meet him, his boyish face grave and concerned.
“I saw Van Bleit come out of the shipping-office when I passed on my way here,” he said. “I tried to stop him, but he eluded me, and I daren’t give chase for fear of missing the train. I take it he was booking his passage to England. He means clearing out... Looks queer, eh?”
Colonel Grey nodded briefly.
“It’ll take a bigger world than this for him to lose himself in, if he’s killed Grit,” the young man said.
They turned and walked the length of the platform side by side. The train was in the station, and passengers were leisurely selecting their seats. From the door of the booking-office as they came opposite to it, among a hurrying group of late arrivals, Mrs Lawless emerged, tall and composed and very pale, with a cluster of early roses, fresh gathered with the dew still on them, drooping in her hands. A servant accompanied her carrying luggage. It was evident that she too was going by the train.
The Colonel was the first to see her; Hayhurst in his preoccupation had eyes for no one. He stopped, regarded her in surprise, and raised his hat.
“Mrs Lawless!” he exclaimed. “You! ... Surely you are not thinking—”
She looked him steadily in the eyes.
“I am going to Kraaifontein, Colonel Grey,” she interrupted him—“to find my husband.”
It was not often that the Colonel was startled beyond all power of lucid expression, but in the extremity of his amazement words failed him.
“Your—Eh?” he said, and stood still on the platform and stared at her.
He felt a touch on his arm.
“Unless you want to be left behind, you’d better take your seat.”
Tom Hayhurst stood at his elbow, his blue eyes on the woman’s face, with a mingling of respect in them and wondering resentment. He hurried them to the train, opened the door of an empty carriage, and shut it on them with a bang.
“Send me a wire,” he said.
The Colonel thrust his head out of the window.
“You’re not coming?”
“No.” The young man gave an expressive glance in the direction of Mrs Lawless, seated in the far corner of the carriage with the fragrant drooping flowers in her lap. “Grit wouldn’t thank us for making a picnic, or a funeral party, of it with her there,” he said.
Colonel Grey understood.
“I’ll let you know immediately,” he promised, and sank back on the cushions, taking off his hat and mopping his much perplexed and perspiring brow as the train moved slowly out.
He looked across at Mrs Lawless. She was gazing out of the window at the sunny country as it swept past her view with eyes that saw nothing consciously, and with thoughts, he rightly conjectured, far away from her surroundings. He tried to think of her in this new connection that she had sprung on him so suddenly and for which he had been so wholly unprepared; tried, but failed to remember, what Lawless had said in respect of his relationship with her that had so entirely misled him. He recalled that he had asked point blank whether he was a connection of hers, recalled too the ambiguous answer to his question: “By marriage only.” Truly a man may usually be said to be related to his wife by marriage only. But the answer had been given with intent to deceive. And Lawless had said other things that had tended to turn his mind from any such suspicion. For private reasons he had desired to conceal the fact of his marriage.
It was long before Mrs Lawless turned her face in his direction; when she did he saw that her eyes were filled with a great hopelessness, and something that resembled dread. Unconsciously she fingered the roses in her lap, touching them with a nervous caressing hand.
“I am afraid,” she said, and looked at him wistfully. “I have never imagined anything like this... I thought I was going Home without ever seeing his face again. I had reconciled myself to that. And now... It ought not to be more difficult to part from the dead than to part irrevocably from the living. But it is.”
She looked down suddenly at the roses, and lifted them gently, and laid them against her face.
“I brought them for him,” she said simply.
“I think it would be wiser,” he returned, “not to make up your mind to misfortune. It is quite possible that when we arrive we shall find Mr Lawless in perfect health. There are absolutely no grounds for supposing otherwise.”
“I have a feeling that all is not well,” she answered quietly. “That feeling was with me throughout the night; and in my sleep I heard him call me... My own imagination! ... Yes, I know. He wouldn’t ask for me.”
She turned her face away and gazed out of the window again.
“Do you think,” she asked presently, after a further lengthy silence, and in her tone and manner it was apparent how great was the effort it cost her to touch upon the subject, “that she will be with him? ... that woman?”
Colonel Grey sat up suddenly as though a bomb had been flung at him. He had forgotten since his knowledge of Tottie’s identity that this thing had been an open scandal, and that she must know of it.
“Good Lord, no!” he answered. And added quickly: “There wasn’t any woman.”
He moved down to her end of the compartment, and leaning forward took both her hands and held them firmly.
“You haven’t allowed that to come between you?” he asked gently.
The tears rose in her eyes.
“It didn’t help,” she whispered... “But you see—I am going to him in spite of it.”
“It was a cruel thing to let you believe that,” he said, and dropped her hands, and sat back against the cushions, watching her. “I’ll tell you the story as I heard it myself yesterday.”
And he related to her unreservedly the history of Tottie and her connection with Lawless in the recovery of the letters. When he had finished he found that she was quietly weeping with her face hidden in her gloveless hands.
He left her to herself and returning to his former seat sat stiffly upright, staring out of the window with unseeing eyes beneath their knitted brows. It would seem that those letters had more to answer for than even he had supposed. He wondered whether, could he have foreseen all that this enterprise would involve, he would have consented to its undertaking.
There was a prolonged silence. Mrs Lawless rose after a while, moved by what impulse he failed to understand, and dropped the sweet scented roses from the window. She turned round and faced him after doing so, and he felt that already she regretted the act.
“They were dying,” she explained, and went nearer to him and sat down opposite. “It was a foolish thought to pick them.”
“It was a kind thought,” he returned.
She looked at him gravely.
“Colonel Grey,” she said, “a man must hate a woman when he can let her believe—what my husband allowed me to believe. Nothing less than hate could be so cruel as that.”
He looked her straight in the eyes.
“Dear lady, don’t you know,” he asked, “how closely love and hate are allied so that it is difficult to separate the one from the other? It is possible for a man to hate the woman who is dear to him. I’ve known such cases.”
“I can understand,” she said, and looked thoughtfully out upon the passing country, “moments of impulsive hate. But systematic hate... That’s different.”
She pulled at the strap of the window absently, and continued to gaze out at the scenery, while the shadows darkened the sun-flecked eyes, and memories stirred in their troubled depths that, far away now but still unsoftened, covered over a space of hopeless years. She had loved her husband with such an intensity of passion, and yet she had failed somehow to satisfy him. She had failed him most at the moment he particularly needed help and sympathy—at the time of his disgrace. Her love for him had had its root to a great extent in her pride in him. The fall of her pride was tremendous. His dismissal from the Service cut her more deeply than at that time of hysterical patriotism his death could have. The blow hardened her. Instead of loving encouragement, unsympathetic silence was all she offered. And he turned from her and sought comfort elsewhere. Another woman came into his life. Zoë Lawless did not know how brief had been that interval of madness. She had refused to hear explanations, had withheld forgiveness. He had written to her, offering facilities for her release. To that she had replied that if he wished it, if he desired to give the woman the protection of his name, she would submit to the humiliation of having their affairs dragged through the courts. He had answered that he was merely considering her, that he had no wishes in the matter, and should certainly not re-marry if she divorced him.
After that there had been unbroken silence between them, and she lost sight of him for many years. During those years, in the lonely watches of the night, she had often lain awake thinking of him, wondering about him; and her conscience had reproached her for throwing that undisciplined nature back upon itself. When, unexpectedly, under the will of an eccentric relative she inherited a comfortable fortune she determined to follow after him. She had heard from her cousin in Cape Town that Lawless was in Africa; and so she came to Africa to find him, with some vague idea in her mind that they might possibly pick up the dropped strands of their lives and interwind them anew. She had earnestly desired this until she met him. When they met she realised how vain had been her hope. And now it was all over... There remained only the bitterness of the empty years.
When they reached Kraaifontein, and the Colonel got out of the train and turned to offer her assistance, she hung back, white and nervous, and caught at the luggage bracket as though to save herself from falling. He took her by the arm and assisted her on to the platform.
“In a little while,” he said, with a view to encouraging her, “you will be smiling at your fears. Come now! be brave.”
He left her for a moment on the platform while he went to speak to an official. When he returned he endeavoured without success to mask his gravity behind a reassuring smile.
“We’ll walk,” he said, “it’s close here. I’ve arranged about the luggage.”
She looked at him swiftly.
“You’ve heard something,” she said.
“Nothing definite,” he answered,—“and nothing very alarming. There is a visitor at the hotel who has met with an accident. That tells us little, but at least it proves he is not dead.”
She took his arm and they started to walk.
“If he’s only slightly hurt,” she said, as they proceeded, “I’ll go back again. It would only anger him, my being here. But if he’s too ill to notice—then surely I may stay? ... You don’t think that I should do him harm by staying, then?”
Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, her voice broke.
“Oh! I’m so afraid,” she whispered. “Afraid most of all of his coldness.”
“I think,” he said gently, “you may rest assured he can only feel grateful to you for your consideration.”
But notwithstanding his words of comfort she grew more nervous with every step they advanced. Death she could have faced, and faced bravely; she had had to face worse things than that; but the thought of his further coldness—his displeasure, perhaps, at being followed—completely unnerved her.
When they reached the hotel and entered from the sunshine into the small, plainly furnished hall, she sat down on one of the chairs inside the door and left it to Colonel Grey to make inquiries. The first person he saw to put a question to was Mr Burton. It chanced to be a holiday, and Mr Burton was spending his leisure in attendance on the man whom, brief though the acquaintance was in respect of time, he had come to regard with an esteem beyond the ordinary. He crossed the hall at the moment of Mrs Lawless’ entry with the Colonel on his way to the sick man’s room, and seeing visitors, and one a lady, bowed with his customary courtesy as he passed. The Colonel waylaid him, and taking him aside, stated the object of their visit. Mr Burton looked puzzled.
“His wife, you say! Strange that he did not mention her. I asked him if there was anyone he would wish informed of his condition; I was prepared to communicate with his friends; but he said no, and I knew no address to telegraph to. He probably feared to alarm her. Does Mrs Lawless realise what has happened? He’s badly hurt.”
“What’s the damage?” the Colonel asked gruffly. “We know nothing. It is only surmise that has led us here. We’ve heard no details.”
Mr Burton’s mild eyes blinked their astonishment behind their glasses. He had never happened across such an extraordinary sequence of remarkable incidents in all his life before. It fully bore out his oft-repeated assertion that it is not only in big cities that the great events occur.
“He has been shot in the breast,” he answered gravely. “His condition is not critical, but it is sufficiently serious. It was the most dastardly attempt upon his life. I witnessed the whole affair,—indeed, Mr Lawless and I had but a few minutes previously parted company. I am not a vindictive man, I hope, sir; but I should wish the man who was responsible for that cowardly attack to suffer punishment. But I cannot persuade Mr Lawless to furnish me with a clue as to his identity, and I was too far away to see clearly. Perhaps when Mr Lawless recovers he may speak of the matter, at present it is not wise to refer to it before him. We have orders to keep him as quiet as possible.”
“Who’s attending him? ... Got a decent medical man?” Colonel Grey asked, with some idea in his mind of sending to Cape Town for skilled advice and nurses.
“Oh! we have an excellent man... Out from England for his health. Mr Lawless is quite well looked after in that respect.”
“And nurses?”
The little man looked surprised.
“The landlady does what is necessary,” he explained. “I help a little... Yes.”
“But—good Lord, man!—he wants trained nursing.”
Colonel Grey turned round and spoke to Mrs Lawless, and she rose from her seat and approached them. The pathos of her expression, her pallor, and her great personal charm, made a direct appeal to Mr Burton’s kindly nature. Her singular beauty impressed him vividly. While sympathising strongly with her anxiety, he was none the less glad that she had come; it would be such an agreeable piece of news to break to the sufferer.
“Tell me,” she said. “I have watched you talking till I am half afraid to ask. He’s ill... He’s very ill... I know he is. You are not going to tell me that he will die?”
“God forbid!” Mr Burton cried, and was slightly ashamed of his excitement. “He is badly hurt, Mrs Lawless. But he has a wonderful spirit. He will get over this all right. And with you here to nurse him, why, bless me! he’ll enjoy being ill.”
She smiled, but so wanly that it was in his idea infinitely sadder than tears.
“What do you think?” she said, and looked inquiringly at Colonel Grey... “Ought I to let him know that I am here?”
“Well, he’s got to know some time, I suppose,” he answered, and appealed to the schoolmaster. “He isn’t so ill but that he can stand a little excitement, eh?”
“Excitement of that nature would not be likely to hurt him,” Mr Burton answered confidently out of his profound ignorance. “I was just about to visit him. I’m sitting with him to-day. If it is agreeable to you I will break it to him that you are here.”
He left them and went upon his errand cheerfully, pleasantly anticipating Lawless’ satisfaction in the news. The patient’s reception of his wonderful intelligence was an added astonishment to the many surprises of that day. It chilled his gladness as completely as cold water flung upon a cheerful blaze. There was a little spluttering, and the blaze was finally extinguished.
“Help me into my clothes, Burton,” the man in the bed said querulously.
“No,” Mr Burton refused. “It would be the death of you.”
“Then, get out of this, and I’ll dress myself.”
The schoolmaster deliberately approached the bed, and looked down kindly into the tormented eyes that stared up at him out of the pallid face upon the pillow. He put out a restraining hand as the patient pushed the bedclothes fretfully aside and attempted to sit up.
“You can’t do it. Lawless,” he said, endeavouring to soothe him, fearing that he had been over hasty with his news. Delirium alone could account in his opinion for this rash determination to get up.
“Lie still,” he entreated. “They will come to you.”
“They will do nothing of the sort,” Lawless replied, with a lucidity only to be equalled by his determination. “You’re an old fool, Burton, and you don’t understand. Hand me my clothes, there’s a good chap, and so make this matter easier for me.”
In response Mr Burton gathered up the garments and made for the door.
“Very well,” Lawless answered grimly, “then I must make my appearance as I am.”
The other came back and stood, perplexed and troubled, with the clothes bundled together in his arms, and a guilty look in his eyes as though he had been surprised in the act of stealing.
“You don’t mean it?” he said.—“Not seriously?”
“I’m perfectly serious, and entirely rational,” Lawless replied quietly. “If you are really anxious that I shouldn’t overtax my strength you’ll stay and help me dress.”
And so it was that the Colonel and Mrs Lawless were kept waiting for the expected summons.