“No, I put in about a month at a place called Barabastadt, with my old friends the Van Stolzes. He’s R.M. up there now.”
“Van Stolz? I know him,” said the captain. “He used to be in the Customs, or something, at Port Elizabeth years ago. He was only there a little while though. A thick-set, brisk, jolly little man, isn’t he?”
“Yes. That’s him.”
“I remember him. Good sort of chap, although he’s a Dutchman.”
“Good sort of chap!” echoed Roden. “I should rather say he was. He’s a rare specimen in this world, I can tell you. One who once a man’s friend remains so for life.”
Mona bent down over her plate to hide the sudden rush which welled to her eyes. He was too cruel. The tone—light, easy, cynical—conveyed no special meaning to the other listener. But to her—ah! she felt the full force of its lash. During the foregoing, the other passengers had fallen into their own conversation, leaving this to the trio who are our special acquaintances. But if Roden edged his words with a bitter sting, discernible only to the ears of the one who knew what lay behind them, it was that he felt bitter at that moment—cruelly, remorselessly bitter. Why had she thus risen up before him to revive the sweet and witching mockery of that utterly hollow past? There she sat, in all the bewildering beauty of her splendid form, all grace and seductiveness; she who had so passionately, so fervidly vowed herself his—his for ever in life and in death. There she sat, only the width of the narrow table between them, yet as far removed as though an impassable gulf a thousand miles in breadth divided them. For she had fallen away from him in the hour of trial, and his faith in her was killed. ‘For ever in life and in death!’ had been the hollow ringing vow. ‘In death?’ Ah! that might be; in life, never. And then a strange, weird, ghostly presentiment came upon him, like the black edge of a shadow, as he sat there satiating his eyes with this vision of a most entrancing embodiment of deception, the while mechanically sustaining his share or the conversation.
The saloon was brilliant with light and life, cheerful with voices, for the crowded diners had now found their tongues, presumably about halfway down the gradually decreasing bottles. Laughter?—Oh yes, plenty of that—airy feminine laughter—with the explosive male guffaw. Knives and forks clattered, corks popped. Oh, plenty of light and life here; but without—the dark waters, deep and wide, the dim expanse of unfathomable ocean lying black beneath the stars. “For ever—in life and in death.”
“And how many big nuggets did you pick up on the gold-fields, Musgrave?” said the captain presently.
“Nuggets? Fever’s more plentiful around there than nuggets, and dust than gold-dust,” answered Roden wearily. “The place is a fraud.”
His vis-à-vis was watching him now. Yet the feeling which she had so valiantly repressed came near overpowering her once more, as she noted the change which had crept over his appearance. He seemed to have aged, to have grown leaner and browner, as though he had gone through a hard, hard struggle, bodily and mental, of late. And from the bronzed complexion, wind-swept, sun-tanned by months of open-air life, of toil and exposure, the strange double scar seemed thrown out more prominent, more livid than ever. It was marvellous, well-nigh miraculous, that they should have met again thus.