"Why she must be the daughter of Philip Bellairs, the parson."
"She is! But how her father came to allow such an unprincipled scoundrel to carry off his daughter, passes me to understand. A creature not fit to touch the hem of her garment. I have a suspicion that he is——"
Mr. Worsley lowered his voice. It no longer reached the ear of the listener who had been cowering on the other side of the festooned pillar, hiding among its greenery. But Alfred Rayner had heard more than enough. With a flame of fury in his eyes, his long fingers clenched, he staggered forth to the nearest verandah. Leaning on its white balustrade he gazed with unseeing eyes on the peaceful, dark blue, star-bespangled vault, his heart a prey to misery and wrath.
"So I'm 'an unprincipled scoundrel,' am I?—not fit to touch the hem of my own wife's garment, forsooth! Well, he's given me my character anyhow! I know now what to expect from that quarter! No more white-flag business for me—all red, red, red!" he muttered, gnashing his teeth like a beast of prey. "I'll see Zynool to-morrow and put him up to a trick or two that will perhaps make Mister Felix Worsley squirm in his lounging chair!"
He stood motionless by the balustrade for some time, his haggard face resting on his long thin hands as he hatched his evil plot.
Perhaps it was the peace of the starry night that spoke to him, for there came stealing upon him at this unexpected juncture one of those moments of self-revelation which visit even the basest and shallowest of human hearts. Its searchlight seemed suddenly to reveal to the man vistas that stretched back even to childish days. He saw himself again the peevish, greedy little boy who wanted everything for himself only, and domineered over the smaller boys, who cringed to the bully; who lied and cheated on the class-bench and in the playground, hating better boys than himself and loving to hear his doting aunt assure him that there was no one so handsome or so smart as he. Yes, to be sure, Aunt Flo was responsible for a good deal! Had not fibs rolled from her speech as hairpins from her black shiny chignon? Had she not reared him to all kinds of petty deceptions till he became proud of successfully conducted small villainies? How spiteful was her attitude to any boy who seemed likely to outstrip him in the race at school or college, and how invariably she succeeded in inoculating him with her jealousy till he had not a single friend left to whom he could turn with frank loyal friendship!
What chance had he from the beginning with such an environment, he asked himself querulously. And now, after all his efforts to secure a good social and professional footing, he saw himself a distrusted man, for in other eyes he had been able to trace something of the same scornful aloofness which he saw in Mr. Worsley's. It was bitter indeed! And Hester, what of her? Perhaps it was too true that he was unworthy to touch the hem of her garment; but she, at least, had not turned the cold shoulder on him yet! Never again would he subject her to these vile ebullitions of temper. He would try to make her forget the scene of the other morning, he vowed, as he gazed on the moon-silvered landscape and drank in some of its peace.
He recalled Hester's look of kindness as they had driven home together on that last Sunday evening from the little mission church on the Esplanade to which she had been eager to take him, and he had thought himself exceedingly complaisant in agreeing, for once, to accompany her to the "unfashionable conventicle," as he called it, where Native Christians, not to speak of Eurasians, sat side by side with the little company of English folk.
The preacher that evening was a desperately earnest-looking man with searching eyes and a penetrating voice. He had unfolded to his hearers one of the old promises from the Sacred Book, the promise that to those who turned to Him, God would give back the years the cankerworm had eaten. As the organ-like voice of the gallant pleader for God had fallen on his ear, Alfred Rayner acknowledged to himself that he was giving more heed to a "parson's words" than he had ever done in his whole life. And there had been a soft pleading light in Hester's eyes as they met his, the silent meaning of which he could not mistake. What a pretty picture she had made as she sat with reverent uplifted face, her arm round a bright little English child whose parents had brought her to this evening service! The little maid had been assiduous in offering her hymn-book to the winning visitor, and as a supreme mark of confidence had finally deposited her doll on Hester's knee, and then sat nestling her fair shining curls against her arm. The picture came back to him now, a tableau graven on his memory. Would that a little flaxen head like that were their very own! What a changed man such a pledge of love would make of him! How truly the promise would then be fulfilled on which the preacher had dwelt in eloquent words! Then surely would the years eaten by the cankerworm be given back! But no, the dream was fading. He shivered as a light breeze blew softly through the verandah, and turned his gaze from the starry heavens, muttering bitterly:
"The cankerworm has fretted through and through! Old Worsley ain't so far wrong after all. I've got the making of a scoundrel in me. Ha, ha! On the make, am I? Well, I'll give him a sample of my wares by-and-by if Zynool will stir up! I declare this silly fit of introspection has made me quite nervy, or the draughty verandah has given me a chill. I must pull myself together."