Epilogue.

“Heard the latest, Violet?” said Squire Courtland, as they got up from lunch.

“There are so many latests,” was the reply, somewhat acidly made.

“So there are. But this is a local ‘latest,’ and touches a nearish neighbour. What do you think of Lamont?”

“I never do think of him,” she answered, even more acidly.

“Well, he’s coming home. His place is being done up, and they’ve got people working at it night and day. He’s not only made a big name for himself as a fighter, but he appears to have struck a gold mine into the bargain, and now he’s cleared off all the encumbrances and is having the place put into tip-top order. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t think anything of it either way. In fact the matter has no earthly interest for me whatever,” snapped Violet, with her nose in the air.

“Not? That’s lucky. You did make a mess of your chances there, Violet, and no mistake.”

“Did I? I don’t know that I agree, and at any rate it’s all ancient history, and like most ancient history rather flat and stale and humdrum. Anyway the whole subject has lost all interest for me.”

Squire Courtland looked at his daughter, with a mischievous pucker round his eyes.

“What instinctive liars all women are,” he was saying to himself.

Violet made some excuse, and took herself out of his presence. She had to, or her temper would have got the upper hand: result—a stormy scene, recrimination on her part; cold, withering sarcasm on that of her father; then rancour and bitterness for days. She knew he had never forgiven her for breaking off her engagement with Lamont; less, that she had done so than her manner of doing it. And the worst of it was, he seemed determined never to allow her to forget it; and now the man was coming back—coming to settle down at his ancestral home, almost, so to say, next door to them. And—he was bringing with him a bride.

He had been quick to console himself, she reflected, her lips curling with bitterness—oh yes, quite quick. Only two years. Two years to this very day. But two years mean a great deal to a man of action; and following his career in the newspapers, as she had done, this one, whom she had thrown over, was very much a man of action indeed. For herself—well, her intimates had noticed a very considerable change in Violet Courtland. She had gone through her seasons and social functions, but somehow she had done so listlessly. All her adorers, whom formerly she had patted and made sit up and fetch and carry, she now snubbed ruthlessly, including more than one eligible; and what had formerly afforded her keen enjoyment she now went through perfunctorily.

During the war in Matabeleland she had developed a feverish thirst for reading newspapers, and about them she had found Lamont’s name pretty frequently strewn in connection with that disastrous rising and a certain dare-devil corps known as Lamont’s Tigers, from the fight at the Kezane Store onwards. But ever he seemed to be the leader of this or that desperate venture, wherein the rescue of some outlying, half-armed band, comprising women and children, was the object, and that against large odds. And this saviour of his countrymen—and women—from the horrors of savage massacre, was the man whom she, Violet Courtland, had denounced that very day two years ago, had denounced in public, with every expression of aversion and disgust, as a coward.

She had not been able to escape from the sound of his name. At the dinner-table, in the ballroom—everywhere—his deeds came under discussion and comment; and that in one key—admiration. Moreover, certain newspaper men began to rake up two or three of his doings during the former war in the same wild country, causing Violet Courtland’s eyes to open very wide as she recalled the scene by the mere, and how she had driven this very man from her as a coward.

Two years ago that very day! Strange that exactly the same conditions should prevail: the same hard frost; the same silver sparkle on the bare trees; even the same Christmas Eve bells practising their carillon at intervals. A wave of association it might have been that moved Violet to take her skates, and start for the frozen mere. She was alone now, but she would be sure to find somebody there—the rector’s girls perhaps, and a few others.

She has judged correctly. The surface of Courtland Mere is covered with a smooth and glassy sheet. The ring of the skates is melodious upon the air, and gliding forms dart hither and thither: but these are few—only four, in fact—for the mere is not yet thrown open, and the ice, undulating freely, here and there with an ominous crack, is none too safe even for these four.

“Come back, Violet,” cries a girl’s clear voice. “You’re too far out. It’s awfully thin there. Do you hear?”—as a couple of warning cracks dart along the heaving surface.

“Yes, do come back, Miss Courtland,” echoes the only man in the party. “You’re near the spring hole. Do come back. It’s beastly dangerous.”

Violet Courtland throws back her head and laughs defiantly, circling ever nearer to the fatal spot. One, seeing but unseen, amid the undergrowth beneath the black pines, takes in the picture—the warm kiss of the frosty air upon the flower-like face, framed so seductively in its winter furs; the curve of the red lips, laughing mischievously; the sparkle in the large clear eyes, as the answer is shrilled back—

“Not for me. I’m light enough to go over even the spring hole itself. Oh—h—!”

For, with these words, the ice wave beneath her gliding feet rises and falls like a sheet in the breeze. A crack, and then another—then a horrid shattering sound as of shivered glass. The water, forced through the cracks, spurts upward in blade-like lines, and, with hardly time to utter a shriek, Violet disappears, feet downwards, beneath the surface. A great slab of blue ice, momentarily dislodged, heaves endways upward, then settles down above the head of the girl. The grim mere has literally swallowed its prey.

Those who behold are petrified with horror. Full a hundred yards are they from the disaster, but the man skims straight for the spot. He can do nothing, for he is heavy of build, and the ice will give way beneath his weight long before he reaches her. It will only mean one more victim. But almost instantaneously with the catastrophe a startling thing happens.

A man dashes from beneath the pines, and with a loud warning shout to the others to keep away, he flings himself upon the ice, and, lying flat, propels himself straight for the deadly spring hole, which is here but a score of yards from the bank. Now he is fighting his way through the heaving, crackling ice—now he disappears as if gives way beneath him. Now he is up again; then once more, with a hiss and a splash and the splintering of glass-like ice, he is beneath the surface again. Those on the bank are turned to stone. Will he—will they—never come up? Ah—h!

A head shoots above the surface—two heads! Panting, nearly winded with his terrible exertion and the deadly cold numbing his veins, Piers Lamont is treading water, supporting Violet in a state of semi-unconsciousness; but powerful and wiry as he is, it is all he can do to keep her head above the surface.

“Soames!” he shouts, recognising the man, “there are some chopped poles lying there just inside the trees. Run, man, and throw some out. You girls run for help—keeper’s lodge the nearest. And yell—yell for all you know how,” he pants gaspingly, for the exertion of speech has frightfully sapped his remaining strength.

“God—will they be all day!” he groans through his blue and shaking lips. He can hear Soames tearing through the wood—then things become mixed. The familiar landscape is whirling round. Now he is beheaded—no, it is only the cold ice-edge against his neck. Now he is charging an enemy, using Violet, held in front of him, as a shield. Oh yes, of course he is a coward, for did not she say so—here—on this very spot? And— Something comes whizzing at him. A spear—and he is unarmed. Well, he will grasp it. No, it eludes him. Another! He has it—grasped hard and fast. “Hold tight, old man! Now, are you ready?” yells a voice from the bank.

“Ready? Yes—shoot away!”

And Lamont, with his half-unconscious charge, is hauled to the bank, he gripping with death-like force the end of the fir-pole, under the impression that he is warding off a hostile spear from his heart. Once on firm ground though, and relieved of the strain, he soon recovers himself.

“Put her between the sheets and give her something hot,” he enjoins. “Quick, not a moment to lose. I’m off to try the same prescription myself. So long—but it was a near thing.”

Those who came up had been present on that other occasion that day two years ago, and remembered it vividly—remembered this man’s answer, “I daresay I can risk my life for an adequate motive.” Here, then, he had literally fulfilled his words. And—now he was married.

Clare—no longer Vidal—about to start for a drive, looking lovelier than ever in the sharp English winter air, and the dainty furs which set off the beautiful face, was mightily astonished to behold her proprietor sprinting up the avenue, looking, as he asserted he felt, like a half-drowned rat.

“Had an adventure?” he panted. “Must first get dry, then tell you all about it.”

“Oh, I’m dying to hear. The carriage can go back now. I shall not go out this afternoon.”

Half an hour later she was hearing about the accident at the spring hole.

“You ran a great risk,” she said. “Piers, did you never think of me when you took your life in your hands?”

“Very much so. But I couldn’t stand by and leave her to drown, could I?”

“Of course not I was only trying you. But—tell me. Did it bring back just a little of the old feeling? Not a wee tiny echo of it?”

He took her hands in his.

“Not the faintest shadow, darling. You believed in me from the very first—that other one did not. And besides—”

“And besides—what?”

“You are infinitely the more beautiful of the two.”

“I shan’t be that long if you go on giving me what you men call ‘swelled head’,” she answered brightly. “Look. There’s the post African mail day too.”

“So it is,” taking up the letters which were brought in. “Here’s a great screed from Peters. Full of the mine, I suppose.”

We heard Squire Courtland refer to Lamont having struck a gold mine. As an actual fact he had, and it had come about in rather a peculiar way. After peace was restored he and Peters had made their way out to the farm, to see how things were looking; but the enormous hole blown out of the ground where the house had stood astonished even them. It was while fossicking in this that the keen eye of the professional prospector was at once attracted. A few more quick strokes with the pick, and the yellow treasures of the earth lay revealed. Up went Peters’ hat high in the air, and from his throat a roaring hooray.

“We can put on our jackets now,” he said. “We’re rich men for life.”

“It may be only a ‘pocket,’” was the more cautious comment of the other.

“Pocket or not—there’s enough stuff there to get us a fat offer from any syndicate. But there’s more. Well, didn’t I tell you we’d make our fortunes here.”

“Yes, but who’d have thought we should have to blow up the old shack to do it?”

They had realised on it well—uncommonly well—declared those who knew; and at once Lamont had set to work to clear off the encumbrances on his ancestral home.

“Peters threatens to run across to see us, if we promise not to make him wear a top-hat and a long-tailed coat. I’ve often told him he can wear anything he likes. Hallo, here’s a yarn from Ancram. Christmas cards too—um—um. ‘Kind regards to Mrs Lamont.’”

“It was good of you to get him that berth, Piers. He behaved very meanly to you at first, I thought.”

“He couldn’t help it. He’s built that way. And even then—if the poor devil got so desperately ‘stony’—when you see a chance of putting him on his legs again, you naturally take it.”

“You do. You are always setting somebody on his legs again.”

“Ah! ah!”—holding up a warning finger. “Who is likely to suffer from ‘swelled head’ now?”

“Well, it seems to me you are going to get no rest on earth. You spent about six months pulling everybody out of holes, and now no sooner do we get here for good than you start in the same line again,” said Clare softly.

“It’s different, dearest. On that side one got them out of hot water; on this side one gets them out of cold—oh, very!” with a shiver at the recollection of his recent ice-bath.

Pearly and grey the Christmas gloaming deepens, a few stars peep frostily out, and in the gloom of the fir-woods an owl is hooting melodiously. And the stillness, with the peace of the hour, is sweet to these two, as it rests upon them.

The End.