“Oh! what in hell does it matter?” Lawless interrupted roughly. “I don’t know why I have grown so suddenly sensitive on the point of my honour... And what’s the use of words? You would probably skirt the question as nicely as a politician, but the fact remains—you distrust me still.”
Later, when he was alone, the Colonel pondered the subject for an hour while he smoked before retiring to bed. Did he absolutely distrust the man? Were not his suspicions wearing down? He had no knowledge what was wearing them—certainly not that ill-considered act on Lawless’ part in throwing up the formal agreement between them. He picked up the agreement, but instead of tearing it across, he locked it away in the desk. Its repudiation had been the final struggle after the respect he had spoken of as lost to him on the part of one who had wanted above all else to stand well in this man’s regard, and who felt that he had failed in that as in most things.
Chapter Twenty Two.
It is not only in the heroic moments of life that the depth of human feeling is sounded; occasionally in the simple and seemingly commonplace incident the stress of emotion is greater than at times of a higher mental tension. Tragedy passes often unsuspected, and the eye of the casual observer rests without recognition on many intimate crises in the destiny of the race. It is well that this is so. The heart that is wounded prefers to cover its scars, and the breast that holds a sorrow carries usually a jealous dread of discovery. For the eye of the world is unsympathetic towards what it fails to understand. As the searching light of the sun reveals not only the beauties of life but all its sordid inequalities, so the judgment of humanity rests upon the obvious and appraises and condemns with relentless indiscrimination. When Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she did not eat largely enough. We recognise Good and Evil, but we miss the liner shades.
It was but a commonplace incident that happened in the square close to Parliament buildings on the morning following Lawless’ return to Cape Town, but for the two people concerned it marked a moment of intense significance,—a moment during which for them their world stood still. Quite a number of eyes witnessed the meeting, but in the slight encounter there was nothing to excite the faintest interest or comment—merely the swift advance of a motor-car, to allow which to pass the tall man with the scarred face, who was crossing the square at the moment, was obliged to fall back a few paces, or risk being run down. The occupant of the car looked straight into his eyes for the fraction of time occupied in passing, and unsmiling, with white set face, slightly inclined her head. He raised his hat, his own face quite as gravely set, and standing where he was, with the dust of the road which the car had raised upon his clothes, looked after it till it whirled out of sight.
“Beastly things!” a stranger remarked to him sympathetically... “Jolly nice when you’re in ’em, but spoil the roads for pedestrians.”
Lawless nodded, and stepping on the pavement pursued his way. The spring sunshine poured warmly on the glaring white surface in the square, and bathed in a yellow radiance the fine façades of the block of buildings where the administrative affairs of the Colony are directed. It was still blowing from the south-east, and little whirlpools of dust rose in unexpected places, catching in their vortex any straying scrap of paper, whirling it giddily and then ejecting it, or subsiding with it in untidy heaps that the next gust disturbed and roused into fresh activity.
Lawless walked in aimless fashion along the street. Time, since he had nothing to do but wait, hung heavy on his hands. The men he had known before fought shy of him, less, he felt, for what he had done than the public manner of the doing. If one sin, sin secretly, was their gospel. And what he had done had been done in the light of day before the eyes of all men. It is easy when one lives in the world to become a cynic.