Still she did not look up. She could not, she dared not. There was a rustle as the surrounding branches were parted, a sound as of retreating footsteps, and he was gone. Then, as the last of his footsteps died away, Lilian fell prone to the ground, and, with her face buried in her hands, sobbed as if her heart was reft in twain. She had driven him away—driven him from her with scornful words and with a lie—he, whose love was to her as something more than life. Now she had kept her promise. She had been true to that sacred bond, but at what a cost! She had torn out her own heart, and her act of self-immolation was complete. Never again in life would she see him whom she had now sent from her. Ah God! it was terrible.
So she lay with her face to the earth, watering it with her tears. Yet the sun continued to shine above; the sky was all cloudless in its azure glory; bright butterflies glanced from leaf to leaf; birds piped blithely and called to each other; all nature rejoiced in the golden forenoon; and there, prostrate on the grass, lay the beautiful form of that stricken woman pouring out her very heart in tears. For the light of her life had gone out, and her own was the hand that had quenched it.
Volume One—Chapter Twenty Four.
Forth—a Wanderer.
After that last heart-breaking farewell, Claverton tried to walk quickly away, but in vain. Several times he paused to listen. Once he turned and retraced his steps a few yards, feeling sure he had heard his name called. But no. It was only the rustle of the leaves as a bird fluttered among them, or the murmur of a tiny whirlwind which now and again whisked round a few leaves and bits of stick in the stillness of the summer morning. On, on he strode, whither he knew not nor cared, his lips drawn tight over his set teeth, a tumult of desperate thoughts raging wildly in his breast, a glare almost of mania in his eyes, dragging his steps heavily as one who staggered beneath a load. This dream which he had been cherishing, this sweet hope which had made a new man of him, was dashed from his grasp, and so cruelly, so mercilessly. Ah, good God! how he had loved her—how he did love her! He had never loved any living thing before, and now the long-pent-up torrent had burst its barrier and overwhelmed him; and he tried to look into the black, bitter future till his brain reeled and all was confusion again—wild, surging, chaotic thoughts—as he strode on through the shadeless glare of the burning veldt. Shade or bud, what was it to him? But human endurance has its limits. Even his iron frame, weakened by the mental strain, began to fail after hours of tramping beneath that fierce sun, and he sank to the ground nearly exhausted at the foot of a small mimosa-tree. He was desperately hard hit, if ever man was.
“Why, Arthur! What on earth brings you here? I thought you were away at Driscoll’s!” said a voice behind him.
In his preoccupation he had not heard the tramp of a horse’s hoofs. Turning quickly, he saw Mr Brathwaite.
“Oh, I didn’t go there after all—and I’ve been taking a little stroll,” he answered, with a ghastly attempt at a laugh, and in a voice so harsh and strange that the old man, looking at him, began to think he had had a sunstroke, and was a little off his head.