Volume Two—Chapter Fourteen.
“Summer has Stopped.”
“No, it’s of no use, old fellow. But look as much as you like, that’s everybody’s privilege. Deuced pretty girl, isn’t she?”
“Well, yes, now you mention it—that is, I think so.”
“Now I mention it! That’s good. Of course it was all piety, pure and simple, that trundled such a hardened reprobate as your redoubtable self into church on Sunday evening; an institution you, I make bold to say, have not patronised since the days of your downy youth. And, of course, it was by the merest accident that you happened to find a seat not far from the beautiful Miss Strange within that same tabernacle. Furthermore, it is purely accidental that she should be on one side of the street this morning, and you staring at her from the other. No, old boy. In the words of the poet, it won’t wash,” ironically concludes the first speaker.
A crowd has assembled in High Street to-day to witness the passage through Grahamstown of a body of men en route for the seat of war, and, for the time being, those who can do so, leave their shop, or store, or office, to come and look at this fresh batch of defenders, and give them a good, hearty cheer as they file away up the King Williamstown road. Those who have time and inclination to do so, make their way along the said road to the point where the band, which, discoursing inspiriting music, precedes the intending warriors, will cut adrift from them, and where some of the honest townsmen will, in the fulness of their hearts, air their rhetoric in speeches of an encouraging order as they weep over their martial brethren. And among those assembled at this point, to witness the ceremonial, is Payne and his household, and merged in the crowd about thirty yards away stand our two speakers.
“Bosh, Chadwick,” answers the butt of the good-humoured raillery. “Can’t a fellow look at a girl without your trying to evolve a ‘case’?”
The other laughs light-heartedly. He is a young fellow of five-and-twenty—slight, fair, and of middle height. His companion is ten years older, and exactly his opposite in personal appearance.
“A fellow can do anything he likes in that line—at least, a fellow like yourself can,” he replies. “But in this instance I fancy not. She’s booked, my good friend—booked as deep as the Dead Sea—and you haven’t a chance. You’re a day late for the fair.”
The elder man frowns slightly, which to conceal he half turns away.
“Who’s the fortunate individual?” he asks, carelessly, with a sneer.
“A man named Claverton. He’s away at the front now, and the fair Lilian is looking forward to the time when he shall come back ‘crowned with Triumph’s flushing honours.’ I deeply sympathise; but, barring the friendly thrust of an assegai, or the good offices of a peripatetic pot-leg discharged from the blunderbuss of the noble savage, you haven’t a chance. Not even then, for, from all accounts, I don’t think she’d let go the shadow of the departed Claverton in favour of the substance of even such a fascinating dog as Ralph Truscott. It is with grief that I say so.”
“It is with grief that I find myself constrained to listen to your maundering bosh. Now shut up for a moment, Chadwick, because I can’t talk amid the infernal din of this tin-kettle band.”
Shrill shrieks of laughter, much chatter, and some vituperation, drown their voices as the ragged portion of the crowd—slatternly Hottentot women and impish dust-coloured brats—fall back precipitately before the advancing cortège. Big drum puffs up the hill letting off a worthy sense of the importance of the event in well-timed whacks lustily laid on; and red in the face, hot and breathless, and with loving thoughts of that cool brandy and soda awaiting their return at the “Masonic Hotel” bar, the gallant musicians do their utmost to render with effect the cheery quick-step march destined to invigorate the pilgrimage of their brethren, going—as one of the orators subsequently puts it—to defend “their ’arths, ’omes, and haltars.” Then a halt is called, and, after some speech-making, the guard of honour—formed by a detachment of volunteer infantry—lining the road, presents arms, as the band strikes up the National Anthem, and the cavalcade of tough-looking, sunburnt men, two hundred and sixty strong, rifle on hip, and mounted on wiry, serviceable nags, files past, two deep, between the open ranks, and everybody feels exuberantly patriotic, and hoorays, and waves hats and handkerchiefs accordingly.
“Good compact lot of men, that,” is Payne’s verdict, as he watches the retreating burghers somewhat wistfully, for he is tired of hanging about the town, as he calls it, and would fain go to the front, only just at present he cannot. His wife detects the wistful expression, and rejoins mischievously:
“Yes. If anything, a trifle smarter than your old corps, George.”
“Not a bit of it,” says Payne, stoutly. “But—I forgot—you never saw it. They were all away, and in the field, before I got back from looking after you womenfolk. As it was, you did me out of half the fun.”
“Of course. Look, Lilian. There’s such a handsome man over there, who has done nothing but stare at you. He almost seems as if he knew you.”
Lilian is gazing after the retreating troop. It is little more than a fortnight since she bade farewell to her lover in the grey dawn, and now she is thinking that in three or four days that body of mounted men will be his camp-fellows; for the forces in the field have been concentrated for a combined movement. She has heard from him more than once—long, cheerful, tender letters, written during hours snatched from his hard-earned sleep, and despatched as opportunity served—rough scrawls, indeed, as was inevitable from the lack of appliances, and even of a knowledge of what time there would be to finish in—but to her so precious. And to-day, as she stands here gazing up the road, with a soft love-light in her eyes reflecting the burden of her own reverie, it is no wonder that the beautiful figure in the cool summer dress, with the dark, straight, patrician features, attracts many a look of admiration from several in the crowd. She starts, and softly twirling the handle of the open sunshade resting upon her shoulder—a pretty trick of hers when absent-minded—follows the direction of Annie Payne’s gaze. And a sudden flush suffuses her cheek, and fades, leaving it deathly white. Her glance is riveted to the spot, and it seems as if she must fall to the ground beneath the suddenness of the shock, for she gazes upon a face which she had never expected to look upon again in life. No, it could not be. He was dead, she had heard it for certain. It could not be. It must be a likeness—a marvellously startling one—but still a likeness. But on this point she is prevented from reassuring herself, for the owner of the face has turned, and is walking away through the crowd.
“Hallo!” says Payne, and it seems as if he was talking inside her brain. “There’s Truscott.”
“Who?” inquires his wife.
“Truscott. A man I met in the town yesterday. He was asking a lot about the war. Says he wants to raise a corps or something. That’s him—that tall fellow walking away.”
His wife manifests no further interest in the stranger, but with ready tact begins to talk about other things. Poor Lilian’s agitation has not escaped the kind-hearted little woman, who would rather die than do anything to increase it, as they return home. And Lilian, if she had a doubt before, Payne’s words have mercilessly dispelled it; and now she understands the foreboding of evil which came over her at the sight of the spy following them at King Williamstown for an unerring instinct leads her to connect that incident with the one of to-day. Her heart seems made of lead within her, and daring the walk home she hardly speaks, and even then at random. Even good-natured Payne notices it, but puts it down to the remembrances called forth by the sight of a number of men going to the war; but the remembrances called forth are, in fact, of a very different nature. They go back to a time when she was light-hearted and happy, and without a care or anxiety in the world; then to a time of love and trust succeeded by blank, bitter disappointment; to a hard, uphill struggle for daily bread, alone, uncheered and unaided. Still her memory carries heron, over afresh start in a sunny new world, free, indeed, all but for one shackle which the captive herself had riveted. Then a period of brief, contraband happiness, and long years of a kind of living death; the fetter falls off and she is free, and then the cup of life is full—full to overflowing. These are some of the memories which the sight of that face in the crowd calls forth. Yet, why should she dread? What can harm her, secure as they are in each other’s love—a love which has been tried, as by fire, and has come out brighter and more beautiful from the flame? Yet an unaccountable foreboding is upon her—a dread, chill presentiment of evil to come.
The day is overwhelmingly hot, and Payne playfully chides her for running the risk of sunstroke by standing all the morning on that dusty road, in which event he would, by the first law of nature, be compelled to spend the rest of his days speeding about the habitable and uninhabitable globe, with Claverton six hours behind him, fiercely on his trail with pistols and coffee. It is not fair of her to risk the life of a respectable father of a family, he says, even if she is tired of her own. As it is she is let down easy with a headache, whereat no one can wonder.
Poor Lilian smiles, rather faintly. Yes, she has a bit of a headache, she says; nothing much, she will go and lie down for a little while. Once in her room, however, she does not lie down, but sits and thinks. Then she opens a writing-case and begins a long letter to her lover. She does not know when it may reach him, perhaps not for more than a week, the movements of the Colonial Forces are so uncertain; but still the very fact of writing it is a source of comfort to her just now. She will tell him all about her foolish fears and forebodings, and as she does so it almost seems as if the calm, tender presence on which she has learnt to lean is at her side now, and for two hours she writes on, feeling comforted and happy. She lays aside her pen at last, thinks awhile, and then begins to read over the letter. She will not send it; on second thoughts—no; she will not worry him with mere foolish and superstitious fancies such as these—why should she? Has he not enough to think about up there, without having his mind troubled by such chimeras, perhaps just at the time when it should be most undisturbed to attend to the more serious game of war? As it is, she looks back to the way in which she yielded to her imaginary fears before, and will not trouble him with them now, when perhaps his life is in hourly danger. So with a sigh, she tears up and burns the letter which has taken her hours to write. Still, the composition of it has done her good, and her spirits have in great measure returned as she goes downstairs. The house seems deserted, so quiet is it. Payne is lying fast asleep in a hammock which he has slang in the little garden at the back, and his wife is either in the same blissful state of oblivion, or has gone out; the children are at school, and, meanwhile, quiet reigns. Lilian reaches the passage just as a man stands in the front doorway, holding the knocker in his hand as if about to knock, and, seeing her, refrains, and advances into the hall. She stops short, seeming rooted to the ground. For the man to whom she made that fatal promise which has blighted some of the best years of her life, is standing before her.
“Why, Lilian,” he exclaims, taking the hand which she mechanically holds out. “You look as if you hardly knew me.”
“Do I? This is—rather sudden, you know. But, come in. I’ll tell Mrs Payne you’re here.”
“By no means,” says Truscott, quickly, placing himself between her and the door—they are in the drawing-room by now. “This is the most fortunate thing in the world. Couldn’t have been better if we had arranged it so. You don’t suppose I want a third party present the very first moment we are together again after all this time.”
This bracketing of them jars horribly on Lilian’s ear; but she only answers, somewhat irrelevantly:
“I thought you knew the Paynes. You do; don’t you?”
“Confound the Paynes. Here have I been searching the world for you these years and found you at last, and—hang it all, Lilian, you don’t seem in the least glad to see me.”
In fact, she is not. And the statement as to the comprehensiveness of his search she does not altogether believe. She cannot forget that when she was thrown upon the world, destitute almost, and alone, at a time when she most needed help, encouragement, protection, this man had held himself aloof from her, and now, when after years of desolation of spirit and of a struggle almost beyond her strength, the battle is won, and she has found happiness and rest and peace, he jauntily tells her that she doesn’t seem in the least glad to see him. Her heart hardens towards him; but she checks the impulse which arises to tell him in words of withering scorn that she is not. Yet she does not contradict him, for she remembers vividly with what relief she heard that news, and how thankfully she had accepted the restfulness it brought her—a restfulness undisturbed until that morning.
“H’m, well, you don’t seem very glad. And yet I’ve come a good way to find you, and had a narrow shave of my life, too—as narrow a shave as a man could well have and escape.”
“Yes? How was that?” she asks, hardly able to restrain her eagerness. He sees it and is gratified. The old interest is waking, he thinks; Lilian was always tender-hearted to a fault.
“Why, out in California. Fact is, I was awfully down on my luck and went wandering. Well, I got into one of these street rows and was hit—hit badly. For thirteen weeks I was lying in a hospital, the most awful lazar-house you could imagine, and at the end I crawled out more dead than alive. The best of the joke is that my affectionate relatives thought I was dead, and advertised me accordingly.”
Lilian makes no answer. It was this advertisement that, seen haphazard two years ago, had emancipated her from her fatal bond.
“But didn’t you hear of all this?” he asks.
“You know I have been out of the world for more than four years. When did it happen?”
“Only a year ago,” is his reply. And then she knows that he is lying to her—endeavouring to play upon her sympathies—for she has the number of the newspaper containing the advertisement safely locked up in an inner drawer of her writing-table, and its date is rather more than two years previous. “Those fools Grantham, the lawyers, could tell me nothing about you, though I pestered them with inquiries, till at last I began to suspect they were telling lies just for practice, to keep their hands in. But at last I’ve found you?” And there is a ring of real warmth, to Lilian’s ear, in his voice, which fills her with dismay. Can it be that he has not heard of her position now, that he comes upon her suddenly like this and takes possession of her in his tone, so to say? At all risks she must tell him.
Just then a cheery voice is heard in the passage, humming an old colonial song, and Payne walks into the room. He stops short on seeing the visitor, snatching his pipe from his mouth with one hand, while with the other he welcomes the unexpected guest.
“How d’you do?” says Truscott, in his silkiest manner. “I was hoping to have found Mrs Payne at home this afternoon. Meanwhile, I have been fortunate enough to renew a very old acquaintance with Miss Strange here.”
“So?” replies Payne, looking from one to the other. “Well, I’m glad you’ve found your way up. I saw you this morning, at a distance, when we were seeing those men off to the front. Good all-round lot, weren’t they?”
“Yes, yes; a very fair lot indeed. I suppose there’s a tidy number of men in the field by now?”
“Too many. If it depended on mere numbers, the war would be finished to-morrow; but it’s the management—we always break down in that. If we were allowed to go ahead in our own way, we should do the thing properly; but there’s such a tremendous lot of red-tape and despatch-writing that the forces are kept doing nothing for weeks, eating their heads off in camp. By the way, have you heard anything more about your application?”
“No, nothing. I suppose I shall in a day or two.”
They talked about the war for a little longer, and criticised the Government, the tactics, and the Commandant-General, and all connected with the campaign, and then Truscott got up to leave. He was sorry, he said, but he could not wait; perhaps another day he would be more fortunate. And so, with a cordial hand-shake from his host, on whom he had made a golden impression, he took himself off.
“I like that fellow!” said Payne, returning to the room. “No nonsense about him.”
“He can be very pleasant,” assented Lilian, ambiguously.
Doubtless the reader is wondering how Truscott got out of durance vile, whither he had just been consigned when last we saw him. The method of his liberation is immaterial to this narrative; suffice it that he did get out—obviously, since here he is, at large in Grahamstown. And now, as he walks away from Payne’s door, he is turning over in his mind the results of the speculation. So far, he is bound to admit, they are not promising. His influence with Lilian is evidently dead, and to revive it, he feels, will be no easy task; but that everything depends upon his ability to revive it he is only too fully aware. Moreover, there is an additional incentive to success which hitherto he had left entirely out of his calculations. He was prepared to find Lilian “gone off” in appearance; a number of years like that—how many he did not care to reckon—are apt to tell. But the hand of Time, so far from buffeting, had been laid caressingly on the soft but stately beauty, which had grown graver, indeed, but far more sweet and attractive than in the earlier days of girlhood; and when he met her eyes that morning in the crowd a thrill shot through him as he thought how luck might throw into his hands, at one coup, such loveliness combined with such a reversion. Might? It should! And now, as he walked down the street, he revolved and elaborated his plans. He had never seen this lover of hers, who, he more than feared, would be no ordinary rival; but then the fact of his absence was an immense advantage. He might be killed in action, as the light-hearted Chadwick had airily remarked; and there’s many a true word spoken in jest, as we all know. But putting aside this contingency into the category of exceptional luck, he—Truscott—had other cards to play, and that warily, for he would not endanger success by any rash move. If the worst came to the worst, he could always use the double-edged weapon which chance had thrown into his hand in the shape of his scoundrelly friend, Sharkey; but win he must. Meanwhile, he would begin by sedulously ignoring Lilian’s engagement. He would show her the most marked attentions—in fact, compromise her—till at length this absent lover of hers should hear of it, and hear of it, too, in such a way that a split would be inevitable. Not that he intended to do this all at once—oh, no. He would take time, and the while his rival might be removed to a better sphere by accident or—well, things could not always be helped.
So he lost no time in calling again at the Paynes’; and having, with the attractive manner that he could so well assume, won the heart of that honest frontiersman, set himself to lay siege to that of his hostess, and succeeded. Not altogether, for Annie Payne was a shrewd little woman, and though she found this new acquaintance pleasant and amusing, watched him narrowly. She remembered the look which had passed between him and Lilian, and held her true opinion of him in reserve. Meanwhile, she waited and watched.
In his intercourse with Lilian, too, he was all that was kind and thoughtful—scarcely ever referring to the past, and only then with a half regretful, half aggrieved air that was the perfection of acting. But somehow or other he was seldom away from her. If she went out, she was sure to meet Truscott; if she stayed at home, he was sure to call; or Payne would pick him up in the street—of course, by chance—and bring him home to lunch; and though she avoided him as much as she possibly could, without being rude, yet somehow it seemed to her that she was never seen in public without this man at her side, till at last the gossips used to say to each other, with a wink and a smile, that “it was a very convenient arrangement to have a lover away at the front, my dear, whose place could be so well supplied; and that really Miss Strange, for all her demureness, was no better than the rest,” and so on. Which tattle, however, fortunately or unfortunately, never reached Lilian’s ears; and the intimacy between Truscott and the house of Payne grew apace. Not that this state of things had come about all at once—Truscott was far too cautious for that; on the contrary, it had been one of the most gradual growth—so gradual, indeed, that the plotter had been inclined to blame himself for dilatoriness; but it was a fault in the right direction. So he bided his time, and was rewarded. Things were progressing as smoothly as he could wish.
To Lilian herself, his attentions are a terrible source of annoyance, and at times she feels as if the toils were closing in about her. She has never mentioned this new trouble in her letters to Claverton, thinking—and rightly—that it would bring him to her side at once; and she does not wish that, for his sake, if it can be avoided; but for her own, oh, how she longs for it! Why should this man, whom she had thought never to see again, return to persecute her? Had he not escaped—by a hair’s breadth merely—blighting her whole life, after embittering some of the best years of it? She feels that she is beginning to hate him; and it is while in this vein that she goes down to the drawing-room one afternoon to fetch a book, for she has taken to remaining in her room when the Paynes are out, as they are now. To her intense mortification, Truscott is there.
“Ah! At last!” is his greeting, in a tone which to her ear is provoking in its cool assurance. “I knew I should find you here, Lilian mine. The rest of the world has gone picnicking, hasn’t it?”
She had intended to make some excuse, and to leave him at once; but that possessive alters her plan. Now, once and for all, he must be made to understand her position, and that this tacitly assertive air of ownership which he has chosen to set up over her must cease.
“I don’t know why you should know anything of the sort,” she replies, very coldly.
“Don’t be angry, Lilian. You never used to fly out about trifles. What I meant was, we’ve had so little opportunity for a quiet talk together of late, that when I heard you had not gone with the others I thought it would be a capital opportunity for one now.”
It happened that that day a picnic in a small way had been organised; but Lilian, somewhat to the Paynes’ surprise, excused herself from going. She felt she could not take part in anything approaching to a festivity at such a time as this. It might be only a silly fad of hers, she said, and no one need know of it; still, she would rather stay quietly at home.
“But Lilian, child,” objected Mrs Payne. “It’ll do you a world of good, and, after all, it’s a very mild form of festivity—not like a ball, you know. And I’m sure Arthur wouldn’t wish you to mope yourself to death just because he is away.”
“It isn’t because he’s away, but because he’s away as he is,” she answered. “He may be risking his life every moment, while I am enjoying myself as if no one I cared for in the world was in danger. Only think, he might be lying shot down in the bush at the very moment we are all laughing and joking,” and her voice sank to an awed whisper. “No. I’d rather stay at home quietly to-day.” And the good-hearted little woman had kissed her, and vowed she was perfectly right; and then they had gone, and Lilian had her way and the house to herself, instead of accompanying them to rove about the deep rocky recesses of Fern Kloof and to eat a scrambling luncheon beneath its tangled shade, looking down, as in a splendid panorama, on the sunlit plains of Lower Albany.
The consciousness of this, in conjunction with Truscott’s remark, causes her face to flush with something very like anger, and she answers, icily:
“In other words, you thought I had remained at home to receive visitors in Mrs Payne’s absence. Thank you. I might have remembered—were it not that our acquaintance was a matter of such a long time ago—that that would be just the interpretation Ralph Truscott might be expected to put upon my actions.”
“Why will you always harp upon that string, Lilian? You know it wasn’t my fault. You would run away from every one and bury yourself in this beastly country among Dutchmen, and niggers, and all that sort of thing, where it has taken me years to find you; and now, when I have found you, you turn the cold shoulder on me. But, perhaps, you don’t believe that I have done this?” he concludes, dashing his tone of sorrowful reproach with a touch of irony.
“No. I do not.”
She looks him straight in the face, and there is a shade of contempt in the calm eyes. Why should the man tell her such a pitiful falsehood?
“Oh, you don’t?” he says, staring at her from the arm-chair in which he is lounging, fairly startled by her straightforwardness.
“No. But why talk about that?” she answers. Her hands nervously grasp the back of a chair as she stands, speaking in a low, rapid voice. “It is past, and there is an end of it. What I have to say to you now is of the present, and it is best said frankly and without reserve. You have come here and assumed a kind of possession over me, which I must ask you to discontinue. Of course I have no actual right to request you to drop your intimacy with the Paynes, but I have a moral right as a defenceless woman appealing to a gentleman, and therefore presumably an honourable man, to ask you to discontinue those very marked attentions by which you have made me conspicuous of late. Whatever has been is past and done with, nothing can alter that, and under the circumstances there can be no question even of intimacy between us. I do not wish to say anything unkind, but it would be better for us not to meet again, much better, believe me.”
All this time Truscott’s countenance has been wearing an expression of blank and well-feigned amazement.
“Better not to meet again? No question of intimacy between us? Good Heavens! Why, Lilian, what do you suppose I’ve come from one end of the world to the other for, then?”
“I don’t pretend to guess. But it must be even as I say, and I am sure you will agree with me that it is best so.”
“Indeed, I am sure I shall do nothing of the sort,” he cries. “You are only playing with me, Lilian, only doing this just to try me. You are; say you are, my darling. It is not kind of you after I have come far to find you.”
For all reply she shakes her head, sadly but firmly, and Truscott can see that every particle of faith she ever had in him is dead and buried.
“But your promise!” he cries. “I have your promise, at all events. You cannot get out of that, nor do I intend to let you.”
“My promise!” she answers, and there is a scornful curve in the beautiful lips and a hard ring in the rich voice. “My promise! To a man who woos in prosperity and deserts in adversity; who sees an unprotected girl thrown upon the world, lonely and unfriended; and makes no sign. Who, when she departs to live among strangers in a far-off land, suffers her to go without so much as a word of farewell and encouragement; and that, too, the girl whom in palmier days he professed to love. No, Ralph Truscott, you have cancelled my promise by your own act, and, even if no other bar existed its conditions should never be yours.”
Truscott’s face is white with rage. He sees that his game is played out—that there is not a chance. He was prepared for some reproaches; in short, a good deal of unpleasantness, but not for such decision as this. His whole being quivers beneath a sense of overwhelming defeat, mortification, disappointment—nay, despair—and now, as he sees the prize slipping from his grasp, he is not sure whether he hates or loves her most.
“So the good, the pious, the saintly Lilian Strange can perjure herself in a way the most unregenerate would shrink from,” he sneers. “The privilege of godliness, I suppose. Oh, so a ‘bar’ does exist, does it? You should have told me that before.”
“It is impossible that you could not have known of it,” she replies, gently, but with quiet dignity. “That I am plighted—to another.”
His answer is a harsh, jeering laugh.
“Oh, I have heard some nonsensical story of the kind, but I knew it couldn’t be true. I thought you were only amusing yourself, in fact, knowing that anything serious was impossible, considering. So, of course, I didn’t believe it.”
“What do you mean?” says Lilian, outwardly calm, but with indignation and contempt in her voice, for there is something so maliciously significant in his tone that she is disturbed in spite of herself. “Don’t deal in hints and innuendoes. Speak out—if you dare.”
“If I dare? Well, then, I will speak out,” answers Truscott, stung to madness by her scornful look. He will bring her to her knees, he thinks. “This is what I mean,” dropping out his words deliberately. “I knew it couldn’t be true, because I knew it was impossible that Lilian Strange could be engaged to an ex-pirate, a murderer, and what, in her eyes, is probably much worse.”
“Do you know of whom you are speaking?”
“Of the man who calls himself Arthur Claverton.”
There is dead silence. The clock on the mantelpiece ticks loudly; the crack of a waggon-whip in the High Street, and the harsh, long-drawn shout of the driver, sound plainly though distant through the still afternoon, and in the little garden the bees hum drowsily.
“You must be mad?”
Every vestige of colour has fled from Lilian’s face, as she stands cold and statuesque, looking down upon her lover’s traducer. But she is perfectly calm, for she does not believe one word of this, though the bare suggestion has upset her. He shall speak more plainly, though.
“Of course you don’t believe me,” he says. “I wasn’t fool enough to expect you would—without proof. To begin, then. How much has this Claverton told you of his antecedents?”
“As much as I wish to know. But this is not proof.”
“Wait a bit. All in good time. He came to South Africa four years ago; quite so. Now has he by chance ever told you where he spent the two previous years—what he was doing?”
In spite of herself Lilian feels her heart sink somewhat. It happens that concerning that very portion of his career her lover has been conspicuously reticent. But she says carelessly:
“I dare say he has.”
“Indeed! You surprise me. Then it will be no news to you to learn that he was in Central Africa?”
“I believe he has been there. Go on.”
For Truscott pauses. He is watching her narrowly—playing with her in devilish malice. But he goes on in affected commiseration.
“Lilian, Lilian. I don’t think I’ll tell you any more. Forget what I have said. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps my informants are mistaken as to the man. Let it pass.”
“No. You have made charges against one who is absent; you must not leave this room until you have proved them. Otherwise the gallant Captain Truscott will stand branded as a liar and a coward.”
He stares at her in amazement, quite nonplussed. He never could have given Lilian Strange credit for so much firmness, he thinks. Yet there she stands over him, calm, even judicial, as she awaits his answer.
“You would not dare to say these things if he were here,” she adds.
“If he is wise he will not give me the chance,” is the prompt reply. “To be brief, then, our friend, at that period of his history, in company with seven other spirits more wicked than himself, let us say, dealt in ebony. Slaves, you understand.”
“Go on.”
“He made a good thing of it, I’m told—a very good thing. But then, unfortunately, by British law, and, indeed, by international law, slavery is piracy; and piracy is—a hanging matter.”
“I see,” she answers in a dry, stony voice. “We have disposed of the piracy, now let us get on to the murder; after that to the other thing.”
Truscott’s astonishment knows no bounds. “Upon my word, Lilian, you have a judicial mind. Why, you ought to be a Q.C.,” he says, admiringly.
She smiles slightly—a hard, defiant smile.
“Well, then,” he continues, “you recollect the affair with the Sea Foam? In case you don’t, I’ll just go over the facts again. The Sea Foam, then, was a gunboat stationed in Zanzibar waters, where there was a good deal of dhow-running just at that time—in fact, several captures were made. But it so happened that on one occasion four dhows got clean off, beating back the boats’ crews with a loss of three men killed and several wounded. It was a secret expedition, betrayed to the captain of the man-of-war by a spy, and, but for one man, the whole concern would have been captured red-handed. That man was Arthur Lidwell—the commander of the slavers—now known as Arthur Claverton. The authorities, at that time, did not know who the leader was whose coolness and daring caused their retreat, with loss; but they suspected him to be a renegade European, and a price was set on his head; but, with his usual luck, our friend escaped. Three men were killed, I say; and recollect our friend is a good shot, and, moreover, not likely to stand by with his hands in his pockets while fighting is going on,” concludes Truscott, significantly.
Lilian remembers the circumstance perfectly. She had listened shudderingly while her stepfather read out the details from the newspaper, one evening years ago in the cosy, lighted drawing-room at Dynevard Chase, expressing a hope, as became “a fine, old English gentleman,” that the scoundrels would all be caught and hanged, and especially their rascally leader. And now this same leader—but it is incredible—her brain is dazed. Her eyes are fixed on Truscott’s face, but she does not speak.
“For the other thing,” he goes on, narrowly watching her, “the next time you see Claverton ask him what became of Anita de Castro. Ask him, at the same time, what made him suddenly give up so paying a thing as the slave trade.”
Lilian becomes a shade whiter, and Truscott, noting it, feels a fiendish delight in having at length disturbed her equanimity.
“Who is Anita de Castro?” she asks, still in a firm voice.
“The daughter of the chief of the gang. Spanish or Portuguese; but, they tell me, a lovely girl. Our friend Claverton, to do him justice, is a man of taste, and, these Spaniards are terribly revengeful when you take an undue advantage of them.”
Lilian stands in the same attitude as before. Her fingers clutch more nervously the back of the chair; but that is the only sign she shows of having even heard. She would fain not believe this; but then, how confidently this man speaks! He cannot have invented such a story, the way in which he tells it is enough to show that. And, in spite of herself, recollections crop up of more than one hint which Claverton has let fall to the effect that there is a chapter in his life’s history which he would fain forget; mere nothings at the time, and which on one or two occasions she even gently rallied him about, but now with what fell significance do they stand out! She knows his bold and daring disposition, his coolness and powers of administration or command; his cynical vein, which might under adverse circumstances render him unscrupulous and even cruel; and all this seems to lend likelihood to the other’s statements. But, ah! how she loves him! Even if every word of what she has just heard is true, she feels that, in spite of it all, she loves him if possible ten times more dearly than she did before. She remembers his neglected and uncared-for childhood and youth which might palliate, if not excuse, far worse crimes than these; and her whole soul goes out in a pitying, tender yearning to make his life so different, so happy with her love, and in time to lead him gradually and gently to what she reckoned a more lasting source of joy. She hardly sees Truscott; she is looking out through the open window beyond him with a soft, pensive expression that is wondrously lovely, and he who watches her gnaws his lip in fury, and the very fiend of mad burning jealousy shakes his soul. This prize was within his grasp once, but he threw it away.
“Well?” he says, impatiently.
She brings down her eyes to his, calm and serene as before. “Quite a romance. But, as yet, we are no farther than when we started. You have given me no proof.”
“Romance, eh? Well, like many romances, it may have a tragic ending. I have two witnesses. You remember the man you saw following you in the crowd at King Williamstown?”
Again Lilian grows ashy white. It was something more than instinct, then. And, like a flash, she remembers the troubled look which had come over her lover’s face when they met the man on the road during their ride, and how the two had been conversing under her window that last Sunday morning. Doubtless the fellow had been trying to trade on his knowledge. Merciful heavens! That ruffian—and Arthur in his power!
“Yes, I see you do. Now for the other. You don’t suppose Anita de Castro would spare him?”
Lilian gives an imperceptible shudder. “All this may, or may not be,” she replies. “But in the former event, it all happened years ago, and the bare word of these people would go for nothing here. The idea is absurd.”
“Ha, ha, ha! Really I shall have to retract what I said just now about your having a judicial mind,” sneers Truscott. “The bare word of these people would go for just this much here. It would make out a strong prima facie case for the committal of this precious scoundrel—bail refused, of course—pending the making of inquiries and the procuring of more witnesses at Zanzibar, when he would be put upon his trial for piracy—piracy in its worst phase, mind—and murder. What do you think of that, Lilian Strange? In either case a conviction is certain, and in either case with the same result—the rope. So that is the fate in store for our gallows-bird before six months are over—a dance on nothing—and I shall get a pass to go into the gaol-yard and witness the fun.”
He has risen and is standing before her, his features working with a livid rage that is absolutely devilish. Suddenly the full, awful force of the situation sweeps across Lilian’s mind, and with a low cry, like that of a stricken animal, and a shrinking motion, she drops her face into her hands.
“Ah, good God! Spare him!” she moans. “Why will you harm him? He never injured you!”
Heaven help her! She has let down her guard, and the enemy is prompt to rush in over it. From that moment she is completely at his mercy.
“Never injured me? What is she dreaming of? Good heavens! hasn’t he robbed me of you—of you? Isn’t that enough?” is the harsh, pitiless reply. “Ha, ha! Six months about will do it. It’ll be winter then—June or July. The mornings are cold then. Perhaps, as a last kind act, I’ll give the poor wretch a ‘nip’ out of my flask, before he’s swung off, just to keep his spirits up, you know.”
“Demon,” whispers Lilian, hoarsely, gazing at him in set, stony despair.
“I am just what you and he have made me. It is your own doing. You know I was never one of your godly lot. If a man does me an ill turn I repay it with interest, that is, if I am in a position to do so, which, in this case, fortunately I am. Five o’clock”—glancing at his watch—“I shall just have time to beat up my informant and take him round to the Public Offices before the magistrate goes away, or the Clerk of the Peace will do as well; and by making his deposition this evening we can get a warrant out and save the whole night by it. So you will soon see our friend again, Lilian, sooner than you expected, eh? Now good-bye for the present. I am sorry you have driven me to this, but—” and he moves towards the door. Before he can reach it, she throws herself in front of him. He cannot leave the room without actual violence.
“Stop! Have you no mercy? No pity—for me—for me whom you once professed to love?” and the clear accents of her voice are wrung with despair—with a sense of her utter helplessness.
“None for him. None. Less than none. I hate the man who has robbed me of you. He shall die, and I will go and witness his last struggles.”
“No. Spare him, Ralph, spare him! In killing him you will be killing me. Ah, God! Why was I ever sent into this world? I am the destruction of all whom I would gladly die for!” and she presses her hands tightly upon her temples, and a tremor of hopeless agony shakes the tall, beautiful figure.
Even the heart of that fiend in human shape smites him as he witnesses her awful grief, listens to her wild, despairing accents. But she is playing into his hands now—perfectly. At one time he almost thought the game a lost one, and was about to throw it up, when lo! one false move, and it is entirely his own.
“All whom you would gladly die for,” he repeats, echoing her words. “Would you, then, die for this fellow?”
“God knows I would—a hundred times over,” she wails.
“Well then, listen. I will not require you to do that. What I require you to do is to live for him.”
She looks up quickly—her face transformed in wonderment, which is on the point of breaking out into joy. He is relenting.
“I mean, to live for him by living without him. That is the only way in which you can save his life.”
Her head droops again, and a shudder runs through her frame at this alternative, and Truscott, watching her, gloats over her anguish, remembering how she defied him at first.
“The conditions are not so hard as they might be,” he continues. “I only stipulate that you shall never see him again, never hold another word of communication with him, either orally, on paper, or through a third person, henceforth from this moment. On those conditions I spare his life—otherwise—well, you know the alternative.”
“May I not even write him one line of farewell?” she asks, with a look in her dry, tearless eyes that would melt a stone. Her tormentor sees it, and turns his glance away, fearing for his resolution. One word of communication might undo the whole plot. At all costs he must separate them now and for ever. So again he invokes the demon of jealousy to his aid, and goads and lashes himself to his fiend-like work.
“No. I will spare his life, but nothing else. Those are my conditions. Accept them or not. In three minutes it will be too late,” and he stands holding his watch in his hand.
Lilian is beside herself. An awful numbing sense of fatalism creeps over her. Is it to be? Ah, well, she will give her life for his, for this will kill her.
“Well? In another moment it may be too late.”
“I give in,” she says, in the same dreamy, hopeless tone.
“And you promise to hold no further communication whatever with Arthur Claverton from this day forward?”
“I promise!”
The agony of that moment, as with her own lips she dooms herself and him!
“If I were inclined to be hard, Lilian, I might remind you that you are not wholly superior to the weakness of breaking your promises; but let that pass. You will find my conditions are not so hard. I only ask that one thing.” By-and-by he intended to ask one other thing—and to obtain it, too. For the present she had been tried as much as she was capable of bearing. She would get used to the idea in time, and then, with the same hold on her as he had now, he would snatch the prize for which he had risked so much and plotted so wickedly.
“Now I must go. Don’t look like that, Lilian,” he says in a kinder tone. “You have gained one great object at any rate, and in this world we must be thankful for small mercies. So keep up your spirits.”
She makes no answer to this, at best, cruel mockery. She is leaning against the wall, with her hands still clasped over her face. Not a tear falls, her grief is too great for that. He glances uneasily at her again, for he is anxious to get away. He has already been here more than two hours; and it would never do, under the circumstances, for him to be here still when the Paynes return. Besides, she might faint, and that would still further complicate the situation.
“Good-bye,” he repeats. “Remember, now—everything depends on you.” And she is left alone.
How long she stands thus she cannot tell. At length the sound of familiar voices, with many a happy laugh, approaching down the street, warns her of the return of the party, and gaining her room with staggering, uneven steps, she locks herself in, and, throwing herself on the bed, yields herself unrestrained to her terrible, hopeless agony. “Oh God!” she prays, “let me die! let me die!” And beneath, the house is filled with merry voices, laughing and talking all at once; and there in the golden eventide, while the soft flush gathers in its purpling suffusion over the western mountains where fades the sun, the riven heart quivers and throbs in its voiceless despair.