AS she re-entered the sitting-room, she passed at once to the entrance which led on to the verandah. All the windows were wide open, and the shaded lamp upon the table, round which myriads of insects were hovering, conveyed no heat to the apartment, yet it seemed to stifle her for want of air. Her head and her heart seemed both on fire, and she could recall nothing of the events of the evening, except that Henri had denied he was untrue to her, and yet had left without giving her any proof of his fidelity. The world seemed to be crumbling beneath her feet as she stepped out of the open door, and lifted up her face to the star-spangled sky. How calm and peaceful and steadfast it appeared! What a contrast to her own turbulent spirit, and how she longed to be at peace also—anywhere, anyhow, only at peace!
Liz was passing through the cruellest phase of a disappointment in love—when merciless doubt obtrudes its fang into the heart, and poisons the whole being. How we despise and hate ourselves for doubting, and yet how painfully we go into the minutiæ of our loathsome suspicion, and dissect every reason that forbids our casting it from us!
Liz felt as if she dared not think about it. As she recalled De Courcelles’ words and manner that evening, she saw that he had not said or done a single thing calculated to set her mind at rest. Except the solemn oath which he had sworn, and somehow, though she loved him, Liz derived no comfort from remembering that oath, and even wished he had not taken it. That he might not have deserted her for the sake of Maraquita Courtney was true—as he had attested it, she was bound to believe it was true—but he was changed to herself. All the oaths sworn under heaven could not disabuse her mind of that idea; and if he were false, what did it signify to her who occupied the place which she had lost? The brave woman who could set a broken limb, or lance an abscess without wincing, shook like an aspen leaf at the prospect of losing her handsome lover. Her love was so knit to him, that she believed she could never disentangle it, but would have to live on, with her live warm heart beating against his dead cold one, until death came to release them. That is the worst of finding out the unworthiness of those whom we have believed in,—we cannot all at once tear our hearts away, and we despise ourselves for being so weak as to let them bleed to death by inches, instead of freeing them with one wrench.
Liz was ready to despise herself as she walked a little way from the bungalow. It stood in the centre of the coffee plantation, but a considerable space round it had been set with ornamental shrubs and trees. The glossy-leaved creamy-white magnolias, with their golden centres, shed their powerful perfume on the night air, and a clump of orange trees in full blossom mingled their scent with the magnolia. The night-blowing cistus and the trumpet flowers wound themselves up the supports of the verandah; the insects, with many a birr-r and whiz-z, disported themselves in the lemon grass, and from the covert of the plantation came low-toned murmurs from the sleepy love-birds, or the shrill cry of a green parrot startled from its bower of bud and blossom. Liz lifted her heated face to heaven, as though she would draw inspiration from its majestic calm.
Far off, from the cluster of negroes’ huts, which bordered the property, she could distinguish the crooning wails of the mourners, preparing their dead for burial at sunrise, and her heart bled for the poor black mothers who had been compelled to part with the babies at their breast. Death and sorrow seemed to surround her, and her spirits sunk down to their lowest ebb. The stillness was intense. It was a night when one seemed lifted up from this lower earth, and capable of holding communion with the Unseen.
But absorbed as Liz Fellows was in her own trouble, she was startled after a while by the sound of a low faint moan that came from the surrounding thicket. Her first idea was that it proceeded from Rosa mourning over her dead child—poor wild Rosa, who was so heedless as to be almost half-witted, and who had fallen a ready prey to some loafing young sailor who had spent a few days near the plantation. Liz had felt deeply interested in this girl. She had been shocked and horrified to find she had so little sense of decency or respect for her womanhood as to succumb to the first temptation offered her, but she had not slighted nor reproached the girl in consequence. Such things were common enough amongst the coolies. It was not Liz’s vocation to preach but to console. She had indeed, whilst watching over Rosa and her baby, tried to convince her of the wrong she had committed, both to her child and herself, but the yellow girl had paid no attention to her words, until the fever had carried off little Carlo. Then they had come back upon her mind with double force, and she had resented them by insulting her benefactress. But Liz bore no malice. She was only anxious to console, as far as possible, the poor bereaved young mother, and when she heard the low moans, which she fancied came from Rosa, she plunged into the thicket whence they proceeded. She had gone but a few steps when she came upon a female figure leaning against the trunk of a mango tree, as though she had no strength to proceed further. But the first glance, even though given in the dusky light, showed Lizzie that this was no coolie girl—yellow, or otherwise. The slight form was enveloped in a black mantle, which covered it from head to foot, but the hood had fallen back, and in the white face turned up to the moonbeams, Liz recognised, to her dismay, the features of Maraquita Courtney.
‘Quita!’ she exclaimed, rushing forward, ‘my dear Quita, are you ill?’
But Maraquita shrunk from the kindly hand which was laid upon her, as if it had been the sting of a serpent.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she murmured; ‘I could not bear it. I don’t want you. I want—your—your—father.’