Chapter Seventeen.
“It is Sweeter to Love—It is Wiser to Dare.”
Now night had fallen, and at Quaggasfontein the sounds of household and nursery were alike hushed, and these four sat out upon the stoep, enjoying the still freshness; discussing, too, Roden’s trip to the nearest seat of hostilities, on which topic Grace Suffield was inclined to be not a little resentful.
“How can you go out of your way to shoot a lot of wretched Kaffirs, who haven’t done you any harm, Mr Musgrave?” she said.
“That holds good as regards most of the fellows at the front,” he replied.
“No, it doesn’t. Many of them are farmers, who have had their stock plundered, perhaps their homes destroyed. Now, nothing of the kind holds good of yourself. I call it wicked—yes, downright wicked, and tempting Providence, to throw oneself into danger unnecessarily. Your life is given you to take care of, not to throw away.”
“I don’t know that it’s worth taking such a lot of care of,” he murmured queerly. But she overheard.
“Yes it is, and you’ve no right to say that. Putting it on the lowest grounds, don’t you come out here and help amuse us? That’s being of some use. Didn’t you help me splendidly when we crossed that horrible Fish River in flood? I believe you saved my life that night. Isn’t that being of some use?”
“Here, I say, Mrs Suffield, are you all in league to ‘spoil’ a fellow?” he said, in a strange, deep voice that resembled a growl. For more forcibly than ever, her words seemed to bring back to the lonely cynic, how, amid the whole-hearted friendship of these people, he had been forced again to live his life—if indeed he could—if only he could!
“Don’t know about ‘spoiling.’ You seem to be catching it pretty hot just now, Musgrave, in my opinion,” laughed Suffield.
“And he deserves to,” rejoined that worthy’s wife, with a tartness which all her hearers knew to be wholly counterfeit. “Doesn’t he, Mona?”
“I don’t know. As you’re so savagely down upon him, I think I shall have to take his part.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Roden. “Well, Mrs Suffield, you have mistaken your vocation. You ought to have been a preacher—a good, out-and-out, whole-souled tub-thumper. However, you seem determined I am destined to glut the assegai of John Kaffir, and as you are so savage on the subject, it is to Mona I shall impart my last will and testament—orally, of course. So, come along, Mona, and give it, and me, your most careful attention.”
Left alone on the stoep, the husband and wife laughed softly together, as they watched Mona’s white dress disappear in the darkness.
“All is coming right, as I told you it would, Grace. Musgrave is a precious careful bird; but he’s limed safe and sound at last. Mark my words.”
“You needn’t be so awfully vulgar about it, Charlie. That’s quite a horrid way of putting things.”
Now in the silence and darkness those two wandered on—on beneath the loaded boughs of the fruit garden, and on by the low sod wall, then out in the open, and finally into gloom beneath the drooping, feathery branches of the willows. It was a silence unbroken by either, unless—unless for a soft shuddering sigh, which followed upon a long kiss.
In the dark and velvety moonless vault great constellations flashed as though they were fires, throwing out the black loom of the distant mountains away beyond the open waste, and flaming down into the smooth mirror of the water, upon which the willow boughs trailed. Even beneath the shadowy gloom their light pierced; shining upon the white dress, and throwing the large, supple figure of the girl into ghostly relief.
“I love you, Mona. Here on the very spot where we first beheld each other, I tell you I love you. And you had better have let me fall to my death, shattered to atoms that day, than that I should tell it you.”
The tone, a trifle unsteady, but firm and low, was rather that of a man unfolding a revelation of a painful but wholly unavoidable nature than the joyous certainty of a lover, who knew his passion was returned in measure as full as the most ardent could possibly desire. But the girl for a moment made no answer. Her lips were slightly parted in a smile of unutterable contentment, and the light in her eyes was visible under the stars. Again he kissed the upturned lips, long and tenderly as he had never done before.
“Yes. This is the spot where we first met,” she said at last, with a glad laugh in her voice. “My hammock was slung there—and look, there it is still. I remember so well what we were talking about that day. Grace was predicting that my time would certainly come, and I said I didn’t believe anything of the kind, but I rather hoped it would. And I had hardly said so when—oh, darling! you came up! And it has all been so entrancingly sweet ever since. Life has been entirely different, and I am quite a transformed being.”
Thus she ran on—almost rattled on, so airy, so bright and joyous was her tone. But it was so with a purpose; for all her pulses were thrilling; her very mind seemed to reel beneath the surpressed strength of her feeling. She felt giddy. The great stars in the dark vault overhead seemed to be whirling round. With heart panting, she leaned heavily upon the arms which encircled her, then tried to speak, to whisper, but could not.
“Dear, I ought not to have told you—ever at all,” he went on. “But I am going away to-morrow—”
Then she found her voice.
“Why are you going away to-morrow? Give it up, my heart’s love, and stay near me.”
“That is just why I am going away—to be away from you for a few days. Wait,” seeing she was about to interrupt. “This was my idea. I wanted to be at such a distance that it would be impossible to see you merely by taking one hour’s short ride. I wanted to try if I could break the influence which you were so surely weaving round me.”
“Ah, why would you try?”
“For the good of us both; but especially for your good. Listen, Mona. I am no longer young, and my experience of the world is not small. Well, nothing lasts. We are both of a strong nature. Two strong natures cannot fuse, cannot intertwine. Then comes disillusion.”
“Now, I wonder if, since the world began, any living woman was ever convinced by such reasoning as that,” said Mona decisively. But not heeding her, he went on—
“To every one of us the cup of life is filled but once. The contents of mine are nearer the dregs than the brim; whereas you are but beginning to sip at yours.”
“Which dark syllogism I quite grasp, and fully appreciate—at its proper value,” she returned. “But come; have we not had about enough solemn wisdom beneath the stars? Why, just before we first saw you—here, on this very spot—Gracie was trying to make me believe you were quite a sober and middle-aged fogey. Those were her words; and if you go on a little longer in this strain, I shall begin to think she was right. I remember, too, how I answered her. I said I was about tired of boys. So let’s hear no more about ‘cups of life’ and ‘dregs,’ but repeat what you said just now—just before—my beloved one!”
The glad, laughing voice changed to one of tenderest adjuration. And it may be that he did repeat it.
“Now,” he went on, “would you rather I had told you this before going away, or after my return?”
“But you are not going away, now?”
“I am—more than ever, I was going to say. I want a few days to think.”
“Roden!” she exclaimed suddenly, with a catching in her voice; “this is not an artifice? You are coming back—coming back to me?”
“If John Kaffir allows me—certainly. Dwelling a moment upon which consideration, perhaps that is why I told you before I left, what I have just told you. Would you rather I had not?”
“Would I rather forego one moment of the life, the soul, those words have given me? Love of my heart, I know it is of no use to try and persuade you to give up this plan now. But be careful of your life. You are mine, remember. I won you when I held back your life that awful day upon the brow of the cliff; and that consciousness, and that alone, enabled me to do it. Whatever will and strength was given me then was through that alone. Now, say, are you not mine? mine for ever—throughout all the years?”
“Dear, ‘for ever’ is a long time. Had we not better put it, ‘as long as you think me worth keeping’?”
“Why do you say such a thing, and in such a voice?” This with a shiver, as though she had received a sudden stab.
“Mona, what was it I was trying to impress upon you but a minute or so back? I have got my life all behind me, remember. Nothing lasts. I have seen eyes melt, as those dear eyes of yours are melting now—have heard voices tremble in the same sweet intensity of tone. Well, it did not last. Time, separation, new interests, and it was swept away; nor did the process take very long, either. Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts! It may be my curse; but, child, I have reached a stage at which one believes in nothing and nobody.”
“Did they—those of whom you speak—love you as I do? Was their secret wrenched from them at the very jaws of death?”
“No. Never did I hear words of love under such, strange circumstances. And yet, Mona, the fact that it was so, nearly turned me against you, for I seemed bound—bound to you in common gratitude. If you had left me to myself, I believe that feeling would have changed into strong dislike.”
“And when did the change come—the change for the better?” she said softly.
“I don’t know. It has all been so gradual. But there is something, some magic about you, dear, that drew me to you in spite of myself—and kept me there.”
“Then one can love, really love, more than once in a lifetime?”
“Of course. The notion to the contrary was invented for the purposes of fiction of the most callous sort. More than once, more than twice. But the difference is that through it all runs the interwoven thread of misgiving, that the thing is ill-judged and destined to end in blank—or worse.”
“Mine throughout all the years, did I not say just now?” she whispered, again drawing down his head. “This seals it,” and again speech was stilled in a long, clinging kiss. “This is our farewell—only for a few days—and oh, my heart’s life, how slowly they will drag! I will go to the place where I held you up from death, and there—on that, to me the sweetest, spot on earth—pray, and pray with all my soul that no danger may come near you.”
Were his very senses slipping away from him in that warm embrace? Was it indeed upon him that this love was outpoured, or upon somebody else? The thought passed with jarring hammer strokes through his brain. And like the distant echo of gibing demon-voices, came that old, grim, cynical refrain, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”
And as a little later he rode homeward through the stillness of the night, on the puffs of the fresh night breeze billowing up the grass, sighing through the coarse bents, still that goading, tormenting refrain kept shrieking in his ears, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”