“Jealousy is Cruel as the Grave.”
Warren was seated in his office at Gydisdorp, and his whole power of mind and thought was concentrated on a letter.
It lay on the table before him. It was not externally a pleasing object. It was covered with thumb marks; the writing was in a laboured, unformed hand; the spelling and grammar were vile and the contents cryptic. Yet to him who now sat dwelling upon it the communication was of so jubilant a nature that his only misgiving was that it might be premature or not true. This was strange, for the gist of the document was to announce the death of one who had been his friend.
“Jealousy is cruel as the grave,” sings the Wise Man. Warren was not familiar with the quotation but he instinctively, if unconsciously, realised its purport as he sat there conning the greasy, ill-spelt missive whose contents he knew by heart. And yet so paradoxically logical was his own particular temperament that side by side with the wild jubilation that thrilled his whole being over the certainty that the one obstacle in his way was in it no longer, never would be in it again, ran a vein of real regret for the man for whom under any other circumstances he would have felt a genuine friendship. That he, Gilbert Warren, sat there, in intent, at any rate, a murderer, was the last thing in the world to occur to him. In intent only, as it happened, for the main substance of the communication lay in one sentence, penned in an utterly uneducated style. To be exact it ran thus:
“Wivern and jo fletwood have bin kild by the Usootos.”
And then followed further particulars.
Warren had little doubt as to the genuineness of the missive. It was matter of common report that there had been serious disturbances in the remoter parts of Zululand between the faction which cleaved to the captive and exiled King, and that which did not, to wit that influenced by most of the thirteen kinglets appointed under the Wolseley settlement. Wyvern and his friend had somehow got mixed up in one of these ructions, and—there was an end of them.
Unlocking a drawer he got out the portrait of Lalanté, and set it upright before him. She was his now; not all at once of course, but when she began to get over her loss, when the first sense of it began to be bluntened. He was far too cautious in his knowledge of human nature to hurry matters; to seem to “rush” her in any way. His was the part of earnest sympathiser. He would sound the dead man’s praises in every way, and on every available opportunity. He would make himself necessary to her by doing this when other people had practically forgotten that any such person had ever existed. In time she would turn to him, not for a long time it might be—Warren was shrewd enough to realise this—but time was nothing and he could afford to wait, even as he had waited already, and he knew full well that next to Wyvern there was no man living of whom Lalanté held a higher opinion than himself.
The river incident had had much to do with cementing this. Fervently Warren blessed that incident, and had done his best to make the most of it; not by dwelling on it in any way, on the contrary if it was ever mentioned he would pooh-pooh it and change the subject. But he was more than ever welcome at Le Sage’s, and made a good deal of his welcome by being frequently there. Moreover he knew that in Le Sage himself he had a powerful and steadfast ally.
All this ran through his busy mind as he gazed at the portrait in a perfect ecstasy of love and passion; taking in the splendid outlines of the form, the straight glance of the fearless wide-opened eyes, the seductive attractiveness of the face, firm, yet so sweet and tender. His! his at last I and yet he would need all his patience. Then a tap at the door brought him back to the practicalities of the hard, business world again. Drawing some papers over the portrait, he sung out: