She was lying back against her pillows now, deadly pale, eyes closed. I made a step to the door to call her nurse, but she detained me with a few more words like shrivelled-up dry leaves blowing through the room.
“His wife died about six months before you came to Africa.” Ah! That was something. Spikenard in that to lay upon an old wound. A streak of gold to embroider in a banner of belief I had always waved in the faces of those who cried him down. I would not even thank her for confirming my faith. She looked in my face and read my thought.
“Oh! yes—your faith was great enough to remove the mountains he had piled up round himself. You weren’t like Anna Cleeve who thought she adored him, yet at the first word of doubt failed. When I told her of his marriage I did not know of his wife’s death—he never told me until you were in Fort George. He came straight to me when he returned from the Transvaal, and told me, and thanked me then, for my ‘kindly offices’ with Anna. Cleeve—for saving him from a woman who had so tawdry a belief in the inherent decency of a man—but, he told me too he would have no more interference—he had found ‘a stream of crystal clear water’—he needed no more ‘friendly offices’ of me. I understood very well what it meant when I saw him looking at you on the tennis-court. Good-bye, Deirdre Saurin. You and I will not meet again.”
I don’t know how I came to be on my knees beside her bed. Perhaps my thought was to cry some prayer for her and myself and for all women who love; but though many words were in my heart none came to my lips. And presently an unexpected thing happened. I felt a hand on my hair, and a voice most subtly different to that I had been listening to, said brokenly, and softly, some words that sounded almost like a blessing.
“Why should I mind that he loved you best? If I had ever had a son I should have wished him to love a girl like you.”
Mr Valetta was waiting for me in the verandah. He said:
“I think I must insist on seeing you home, Mrs Stair. There seems to be some disturbance in the town.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t exactly know—but I have seen men running about in an excited way, and there has been some cheering. I fancy I heard your husband’s name. Is he in the town to-night? At any rate all the ruction has moved over in the direction of the camp. Look at the lights flashing in your huts.”