Chapter Eighteen.
Lawless stood in the sunshine and watched the departure of this strange aggregate of human limitation setting forth on its journey into the infinitudes. The clumsy waggon, drawn by its team of four mules, with the dirty faded hood of yellowish green shading the wain, bumped and rumbled over the uneven ground. The jingling of the harness, the creaking of the heavy wheels, and the loud and too frequent cracking of the long whip, struck separate and not inharmonious notes of sound in the stillness of the morning air. And above these sounds a strong voice rang out heartily:
“Good-bye, Grit.”
The men in the waggon started to sing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” The rude music of their voices came back strongly to Lawless’ ears, and then grew fainter, and yet more faint, until only the silence reigned about him, and the waggon showed smaller and smaller as it trailed slowly across the veld, farther and farther into the illimitable blue distance. Hayhurst had ridden off some time before, taking an opposite direction to that followed by the waggon. The occupant of the shanty was left alone. The world seemed to have emptied suddenly and to have overlooked himself in its indiscriminate sweeping away of all life.
He gazed about him at the solitudes—waste land on all sides, stretching away league upon league in one great sameness,—vast, unchanging open spaces of veld, green and brown and orange, in which the yellow stones shone warmly in the sunshine, and the dew that lay heavily on the ground like a veil of silver flashed a prismatic defiance with the fire of myriads of gems.
He turned about and went into the house. The advent of these men had been unwelcome, their departure left a blank feeling of desolation behind. He had had as much of the solitudes as was good for him, he decided; if Van Bleit arrived, he would settle matters with him speedily and return to the beaten track. He felt depressed, and knew not that it was the influence of Graves’ personality working upon his mind. This man who had stirred up thoughts of failure by his talk, who in his person stood for waste—the result of neither competition nor intellectual incapacity, but of his own ineffectually—had set him thinking of the purposelessness of his life, its want of aim, of every high and right intention that once had actuated him, and which he had flung aside and trampled on in weak resentment against the tide of circumstances he had himself set loose and made no attempt to stem. He also stood for waste—the waste of powers which had left him stunted mentally and morally enervated. It is waste that is responsible for the world’s great failures.
He made an effort to shake off the mood that held him, and moving across the littered room surveyed the disordered breakfast-table with disgust. Empty bottles stood upon the table, and lay under it where they had been rolled the night before when they had yielded the last drop of their contents. They had been thirsty souls, these men who had happened out of the darkness and vanished again with the light,—failures, in a certain sense, each one of them,—a queer conglomerate of misdirected energy.
Lawless had a feeling that he ought to reduce the muddle to order, but he had only a vague idea how to set about it. He caught up the empty bottles, and going outside with them flung them out upon the veld.
“It’s no use, Grit, playing Aunt Sally with those bottles. You can’t hide your debauch from me.”
He turned his face with a laugh and a look of quick relief in the direction of the voice, and there stood Tottie in her short tweed skirt, with a golden lock straggling rakishly over one eye, and her lips unusually pallid.
“You! Gods! I’m glad,” he cried.
“Don’t stare at me like that,” she exclaimed,—“look somewhere else, can’t you? I won’t have the eye of man upon me until I have attended to my toilet. There wasn’t the vestige of a glass in the hut, you lunatic.”
He followed her into the house.
“What an orgy!” she exclaimed, with a swift glance round the untidy room. Her wandering gaze came back to his face and rested upon it curiously. “Reaction!” she murmured.
“Eh?” he said.
She put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him towards the door.
“You’re looking cheap. Clear out of this. I’ll put things right. Come back in half an hour, and you’ll find breakfast ready.”
“I’ve breakfasted,” he answered indifferently.
“Have you? Then you can return in half an hour and repeat the performance with me.”
“I want to ride into town,” he said.
“Yes, of course. I’ll go with you. You might put in your time now grooming the horses. It’ll keep you out of mischief, anyhow... It may be the last ride we’ll take together for many a day.”
He looked swiftly at her. She was trying to hide her feelings, but it was evident that the near termination of this life in the wilds which he had been contemplating with satisfaction, affected her differently. She had enjoyed the uneventful weeks with only his society to companion the long days. It had been a fresh experience which a really strong affection for him had made altogether agreeable. She turned her back on him, and putting up a hand jerked back the straying lock of hair impatiently.
“Get out, Grit. You’re in the way,” she said.
He faced about, and without a word strode out into the sunshine.
It was rather a silent ride they took—that last ride together into Stellenbosch. Lawless was preoccupied, and the woman too appeared busy with her thoughts. She asked him once what he purposed doing if Van Bleit decided not to come up, and he answered shortly:
“If he doesn’t come to me, I go to him.”
She looked him straight in the eyes.
“You mean to best him, Grit,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Remember, I’m your lieutenant.”
“Yes,” he said again. And they fell into silence as before.
Van Bleit’s answer acted somewhat as a set-back to their plans. Lawless had never contemplated the addition of Denzil to their numbers. It came altogether as a surprise.
“This complicates matters,” he said. “Looks fishy... rather as though he had his doubts of me. And yet I’ll swear when I last saw him—”
He broke off and thought about the matter.
“It won’t be so easy to outwit two,” he said. Then a smile of satisfaction dawned in his eyes. “It’s safe to predict, if they’re both up here, we shall have a chance of seeing those letters...”
Van Bleit and Denzil on their arrival hired a Cape cart from the town and drove the twenty miles across the veld. They congratulated themselves long ere they reached their destination on the foresight that had decided them to bring only a small amount of luggage.
“No man,” Van Bleit observed to his companion, “could stick it here for long. What a cheek the fellow has to imagine a woman—and such a woman—is going to find his companionship sufficient to reconcile her to this sort of thing! It’s not surprising Tottie scooted.”
Denzil looked out across the unvarying scene with increasing dissatisfaction.
“Lots of chaps have the Turk in them. They’d like to veil their women,” he returned, with no particular interest in the subject.
He was watching without appreciation the wonderful effects of the sunshine on the inimitable blending of colour in the veld, and the slowly moving shadows that swept across it where the clouds veiled the golden light. A soft wind was blowing, a wind that had the warm feel of the spring in it with its promise of early summer. The Cape winter was passing, going its way unmarked, even as it had come. But here on the high veld the nights were cold yet, and the crispness of the mornings still reminded a man of the feel of an English spring.
Van Bleit examined his finger-nails—which was a habit with him—and laughed.
“That would be all right if the women didn’t prefer being looked at,” he said. “The Turk will have to awake to the fact one day that the veil is out of fashion.”
It was afternoon when they reached the shanty. They had had three stoppages on the journey owing to the breaking of different parts of the harness, that was, native fashion, repaired with string. The horses were outspanned, and left to graze, while the coloured driver flung himself face downwards in the full rays of the sun to sleep for a couple of hours before making the return journey. Van Bleit settled with him, and bade him return for them in three days.
“Make it four,” urged Lawless. “You’re in a devil of a hurry to quit.”
“I should think so,” Van Bleit responded. But he made the alteration in the time. “What on earth do you do with yourself up here? I’d want to cut my throat if I stayed a week.”
“Oh! it hasn’t been half bad. I was getting a bit sick of my own company, though.”
“All alone, eh?”
“All alone,” Lawless answered. “It was all right while she was here; but the life was too domesticated for her taste. I was on the point of chucking it myself when I sent you that wire. It occurred to me that this might suit your book.”
“Awfully decent of you,” Van Bleit replied. But his eyes narrowed vindictively. He had a score to pay off against this man. His treatment at the hands of Mrs Lawless was, he felt convinced, attributable to him somehow. Grit had played him false in more ways than one.
“It’s not a bad little hutch,” he said, as he looked round the interior.
“Oh! it’s all right... A bit cramped.” Lawless threw open a door. “The bedrooms lead out,” he explained,—“two of them. Boxes, of course; but they serve for single rooms. You and Denzil can make shift for a few nights. I’ll bunk up in here.”
Van Bleit walked into the bedroom.
“Nonsense!” he replied decidedly. “We aren’t turning you out of your room. Denzil and I will sleep together. I’ll not hear of any other arrangement, Grit.”
“As you like,” Lawless answered.
Van Bleit went into the inner room.
“Check number one, Master Grit,” he murmured. Aloud he said: “I’d like a wash, old man. And then, if you’ve anything to eat, we won’t say no.”
When they were alone together, Van Bleit drew Denzil’s attention to the thinness of the partition between the two rooms, and laid a significant finger upon his lips.
“Leaks,” he said, and winked expressively.
He put his eye to a crack in the boarding.
“That’s where he’ll spy upon us when he thinks we’re unsuspecting,” he whispered, coming back. Then, whistling cheerily, he divested himself of his coat and plunged his face into a basin of cold water.
Later, when, having eaten, they sat outside smoking and talking, while the sun dipped below the horizon and the low wind died away, Van Bleit spoke of his trial and the night at the bungalow, giving a word picture of the shooting which by constant repetition he was beginning to believe. The recital made him something of a hero, but it did not reflect well on Colonel Grey.
“It was a damned trap,” he finished, and blew a cloud of smoke into the quiet air. “People who set traps for me are apt to find themselves ensnared.”
“I knew Simmonds. He seemed a decent, harmless sort of chap,” Lawless remarked after a pause. “I can’t associate him with traps, somehow. He lent me ten pounds once, and never bothered me to return it. I’m glad to remember now that I settled my account with him.”
“I’ve settled my account with him too,” Van Bleit rejoined... “I don’t go back on my word whatever the consequences.”
He was growing excited. Denzil, whose impulses did not lead him into indiscretions, brought him up suddenly with the quietly uttered remark:
“No one could have been more upset than you were over Simmonds’ death, dear fellow.”
“That’s a fact,” Van Bleit returned readily. “It was a shock to me. But it was my life against his. I fancy most men value their own lives more highly than another’s. Simmonds tricked me to the bungalow, and he paid the cost. He meant mischief. It isn’t wise for any man to attempt that sort of game with me.”
Lawless smoked in silence, and Denzil, under the pretext of getting a light for his pipe, nudged his friend significantly. Van Bleit in his excitement was giving himself away.
“Well, anyway,” Van Bleit resumed more collectedly after a pause, “he’s gone, poor devil! Let him Rip. My resentment doesn’t cross the border.” He laughed. “I require a certain amount of the commodity this side the Styx... most chaps do. I reckon you’ve got an enemy or so yourself, Grit?”
“I’m pretty well at enmity with all mankind,” Lawless answered. “And my greatest enemy, I take it, is myself.”
“That’s rot,” Van Bleit returned. “Every man has at least a sneaking affection for himself, and no enemy entertains the slightest regard for the object of his animosity.”
“There is something in that,” Lawless agreed, and thought for a moment. “Nevertheless, a man who makes enemies has an enemy in himself,” he added with conviction. “It is so much easier to win friends.”
“My experience hasn’t tended to that conclusion,” Van Bleit replied. “Friends are like the diamonds men dig out of the bowels of the earth at great expense of time and labour, valuable on account of their scarcity.”
“You’ve had some good friends yourself, Karl,” Denzil interposed with a wink. “Take Lawless, for instance. How many men would stay on in this God-forsaken hole solely to accommodate another?”
“There wasn’t much sacrifice in that,” Lawless replied. “The house is mine till the end of the month. So long as I can get anyone to bear me company there isn’t any incentive to leave it. When you go I clear out also. I can’t stick it here alone. The place has served its purpose. I’ve had a good time on the whole. But, as anyone can see, it’s not intended for a single man. In all these weeks I haven’t seen a soul besides yourselves, except for a party of prospectors who outspanned one night.”
He rose and knocked the ash from his pipe. Away in the distance he had seen a pinpoint of light like a dull star low down upon the horizon, and he knew that Tottie had lighted her candle in the lonely hut a quarter of a mile away. He planted himself between Van Bleit’s vision and the hut.
“It’s getting chilly,” he said. “I’ve no particular fancy for watching the stars: Have you?”
“No,” Van Bleit answered, and he and Denzil rose and accompanied their host indoors.
“It’s a dashed sight more comfortable inside,” he remarked.
Lawless drew the outer door to and fastened it. Neither of them had observed that pinpoint of flickering yellow light that was more like the elusive glimmer of a firefly than the luminous brilliance of a star. He wondered how he would have explained it had they remarked on the unexpected illumination in the hut.