CHAPTER III.
A
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 seemedto 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, onlyat 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 thesolemn 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 ofthatidea; and if he were false, what did it signify to herwhooccupied 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 theworst 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 themselvesin 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 herown 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 convinceher 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 slightform 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 wantyou. I want—your—your—father.’
‘My father is at home, dear. He will see you at once if you wish it. But why didn’t you send for him, Maraquita, if you felt ill? Why did you take the trouble to come down here to see him?’
But all the answer Maraquita madewas to utter another heartrending moan as she swayed backwards and forwards with pain.
‘Oh, my dearest girl, you are really ill! You must come to the bungalow at once, and let father prescribe for you. Lean on me, Maraquita, and let me support you. Only a few steps farther, and we shall be there.’
The girl she spoke to appeared to have no alternative but to accede to her request. She leaned heavily on Liz’s arm, and with many a moan dragged her feet across the threshold of the Doctor’s house, where she sank exhausted into a chair.
She was a beautiful creature, who had just attained her eighteenth year. Her fair-haired English father had imparted to her a skin of dazzling whiteness, with a complexion like the heart of a maiden-blushrose, and her Spanish mother had given her eyes dark as the sloe and soft as velvet, with languishing lids and curled lashes, and hair of rippling raven. Maraquita’s form was slight and supple; her hands and feet small and childlike. She was in all points a great contrast to the Doctor’s daughter, who regarded her as the loveliest girl she had ever seen. As little children they had been the most intimate companions and playmates, Lizzie acting as an elder sister and protector to the little Maraquita, who toddled all over the plantation under her care. When older, too, they had studied together, or rather Liz had tried to impart the knowledge she derived from her father to Quita; but the latter had never advanced beyond the rudiments of learning. Her indolent, half-educated mother, who lounged aboutin a dressing-gown all day, and had no thoughts beyond her Sunday attire and her evening drive, considered schooling quite unnecessary for her beautiful little daughter, and much preferred to see her running about the White House in a lace frock and blue ribbons, with her rosy, dimpled feet bare, to letting her be cooped up in the bungalow studying grammar and geography.
So Maraquita had grown up to womanhood about as ignorant as it is possible for a young lady to be—about also as vain and foolish as it is possible for a woman to be. Yet Liz loved her—spite of it all—for the sake of those early memories. She had never relinquished her intimacy with Quita, and when they met, they were as familiar as of old, but they did not meet so often as before. The last two years, during which MissCourtney had been introduced to the society of San Diego, had much separated them. The pleasant evenings which they had been used to spend together, wandering through the coffee plantation, were gone for ever. Quita was always engaged now, either to a dinner, or a ball, or to go to the theatre with her friends, and Liz had ceased to expect to see her. And since the fever had broken out amongst the coolies, they had never met, and she was content, for Quita’s sake, that it should be so. And now to find her wandering about the plantation at night and evidently so ill, filled Liz’s breast with alarm. There was but one solution of the riddle. Quita had contracted the fever in its worst form, and had come to them in her delirium. Liz had no time to do more than think the thought before she deposited Quita in a chair andrushed to wake her father, and summon him to her relief.
‘Father,’ she exclaimed hurriedly, as she roused Dr Fellows from his sleep, ‘I am so sorry to disturb you, but it is absolutely necessary. Quita is ill—very ill, and you must come to her at once. I met her wandering about the grounds, evidently in great pain, and she says she wants to see you. I am afraid she is delirious. Oh, father, do come to her at once!’
‘Maraquitahere?’ said the Doctor, as he rose from his bed and prepared to quit the room. ‘And without her parents? Impossible.’
‘Oh, father, I am sure she is not in her right senses, though she is too ill to speak much. What will Mr and Mrs Courtney say?’
‘We must send word to them at once,’exclaimed the Doctor, as he preceded his daughter to the sitting-room. But as soon as he had felt Maraquita’s pulse, and listened to her moans, the expression of his face changed from concern to the deepest dismay. ‘This is much worse than I anticipated,’ he whispered to his daughter. ‘We must carry her into my room at once.’
‘Dr Fellows,’ cried the sick girl, as she clutched at his coat sleeve, ‘save me, for God’s sake—save me! I came to you because you are so good and kind, but—but—I think I am dying.’
‘No! No! my dear! it will be all right by-and-by,’ replied the Doctor soothingly; ‘but you must be good now, and do as I tell you, and you will soon be well. Liz and I are going to move you into my bedroom.’
‘And shall I be alone with you?’ she asked, with scared eyes.
‘Yes!—quitealone! Now, Lizzie, take her feet, and I will carry her head and shoulders, and we’ll have her on the bed in no time.’
‘Is it the fever?’ inquired Liz, with a white face, for she knew that Maraquita’s constitution was very fragile.
‘Yes! yes! Now, go and leave us, and tell this to no one.’
‘But, father, let me undress her first.’
‘I wish you to go at once and leave us alone,’ repeated the Doctor firmly.
Liz obeyed her father’s orders at once. She was too well used to work under him as an assistant, to dream of disputing them. But she was very much astonished to hear him send her away from her adopted sister’s side.
‘Shall I run up to the White House and tell Mr and Mrs Courtney that Quita is with us, father? They will be terribly alarmed if they find out she has gone.’
‘Go nowhere, and speak to no one,’ replied Dr Fellows authoritatively. ‘They aremy orders, remember. Remain in the sitting-room, and let no one enter the house. When I require you, I will call you.’
Liz walked out of the bed-chamber at once, and left her father with his patient. She could not understand him this evening, and his action alarmed as much as it puzzled her. Maraquita must indeed be ill, to make him look and speak with such complete dismay; he who was generally so cool and self-collected, and who appeared to look on death, whenever it occurred, as a kindly note of release from avery troublesome world. She drew out her work (for whatever her mental perplexities, Liz was never idle) and sat down to sew and practise patience. She could not help hearing the low moans that forced their way through the wooden partitions of the building, and her father’s soothing tones, but she could gain no knowledge of what was passing there. At last, after the space of an hour, although it had seemed much longer, Dr Fellows entered the room in which she sat, and went to his cupboard in search of some medicine. His daughter looked up anxiously as he appeared.
‘Only tell me if she is better,’ she urged.
‘She is not better yet,’ replied her father; ‘but there is every hope she soon will be.’
‘Thank Heaven for it! But I cannothelp thinking of her poor parents. Perhaps they have discovered her absence, and are searching the island for her. It is cruel to keep them in suspense.’
‘I think if you look at the matter from a sensible point of view, Liz, you will see thatwhenthey miss Maraquita,mybungalow is the first place they will visit. But I do not think theywillmiss her, at least not yet. Meanwhile I want to speak to you. Can you give me your serious attention?’
‘Unless Quita should want you,’ replied Liz, looking anxiously towards the bed-chamber.
‘She will not do so for some little time, for I have given her a soothing draught, and she is asleep; and I can hear the least sound from where I stand. But it is necessary you should listen to me.’
‘I am all attention, father.’
‘You have spent the best part of your life in San Diego, Liz; has it ever struck you as strange that I, an Englishman, and a certificated doctor, should have chosen to make my home in this island, and live, as it were, on the bounty of Edward Courtney?’
‘I don’t know that I have thought itstrange, father, for you might have had a thousand reasons for settling in this beautiful island, but I have felt for a long time past that you have some secret trouble, to make you shun the curiosity or the publicity of the world.’
‘You are right, Liz, and you are old enough now to share that sorrow—or rather thatshame.’
‘Oh! no, no, father, don’t saythat!’ cried Lizzie, as her work dropped intoher lap. ‘Whatever it may be, it is notshame.’
‘My dear, I cannot conceal the fact any longer, for without it you will never understand what I am about to tell you. The very name we bear, Liz, is not our own. I was compelled to adopt the name of Fellows, in order to escape—’
‘What?In Heaven’s name,WHAT?’ she exclaimed, clutching at his sleeve.
‘Transportation,’ replied Dr Fellows, in a low, strained voice.
She was about to scream out, to protest her horror of the disgrace attached to them,—her indignation that he should have brought it on their heads,—but a glance at her father’s pale, pained face restrained her. In a moment she realised the awful effort it must have been for him to confess his guilt before his daughter, and womanlycompassion took the place of her first resentment.
‘My poor father,’ she said, in a low voice, as she took his hands in hers. ‘Mypoorfather! Surely it was not deserved. Theremusthave been some mistake.’
‘No, Lizzie, there was no mistake. Since I have told you so far, you must hear all! I am a forger.’
She hid her face in her hands then, for she did not care to look at him, lest he should read the contempt she felt her features must express.
‘This is the secret of the friendship between me and Mr Courtney. I owe him more than my life. We were boys at school together, Liz, and chums at college, and always the best of friends. But he was rich—the only son of a wealthy planter—and I was very poor,and had nothing to depend on but my wits. He led me into extravagances which I was too ready to follow, but whilst he had the means to defray his debts, I had no power to do the same by mine. At last, in an evil moment, to prevent a bill coming upon my old father which would have broken up his humble home and sent him to the workhouse, I forged my friend Edward Courtney’s name, as a temporary relief. Before I could make up the money, the paper fell into his hands, and he might have ruined me; instead of which, Liz, he forgave me freely; but the rumour had got abroad, and I was a ruined man. I was married, and set up in a small practice. I lost it all, and it preyed so on your poor mother’s mind that when you were born, she faded out of life, and left me alone with my disgrace. I took you away fromthe place, and tried to establish a practice in various parts of England without success—the whispered scandal followed me everywhere—until Mr Courtney came into his father’s property, and settled out in San Diego; then he wrote and begged me for the sake of our old friendship, to let the past be forgotten between us, and to come out here and hold an appointment on Beauregard as medical overseer to the plantation. As soon as I could bring down my pride to accept a benefit from the man I had so deeply wronged, I brought you over here, and we have been dependants on Edward Courtney’s bounty ever since. Lizzie, what do we owe the man who has placed us under such an obligation?’
‘Our lives, should he require them,’ she answered, in a low voice.
She was deeply humiliated by what shehad heard. She had never dreamt that the evident trouble under which her father laboured could be the brand of shame. Her proud independent spirit writhed under the knowledge that she had been reared on the bread of charity,—that the very name she passed by was not her own, and that the best spirit which she and her father could claim from their benefactor, was one of tolerance only. She could have cried out to Dr Fellows then and there, to take her away from the surroundings which had become hateful to her, because they must evermore be associated with the bitter story of his guilt. But she only hung her head, and spoke in a whisper. Her father had been sufficiently degraded by having to tell her such a story, and he had been very good to her, and it was not his daughter’s part to add to his suffering. But she threwthe full depth of its meaning into the answer she returned him, and he caught at it eagerly.
‘You are right, Liz. Our lives, and all we have, should be at his disposal, in return for all his goodness to us. You cannot feel that more deeply than I do. And now I want to hear you take a solemn oath to that effect.’
‘An oath!’ cried Lizzie, startled at the idea.
‘Yes! an oath before Almighty God. Nothing short of it will satisfy me, and set my mind at rest.’
‘Ah, father!’ she exclaimed, remembering another oath which she had heard that evening, ‘will not my promise do as well? You know that I would not dare to break it. It would be as sacred to me as any oath.’
‘No, Lizzie—no! I am not asking thisfor myself, but for another—for my friend Edward Courtney, to whom we owe so much, and nothing short of an oath will do. Say, “I swear before Almighty God, and by all my hopes of salvation, that I will never repeat what I may see, or hear, or suspect this night.”’
‘Oh, father! you frighten me! What terrible thing is going to happen?’
‘Are you a child, to be scared by a few words? If you will not swear it, Lizzie, I will send you out of the bungalow this minute, to the house of our next neighbours, and you shall not return until I fetch you. But I want your assistance, and if you will do as I require you, you can stay and help me.’
‘For Quita’s sake then, father, “I swear before Almighty God, and by all my hopes of salvation, that I will neverrepeat what I may see, or hear, or suspect this night.”’
‘That is my brave, good daughter,’ said the Doctor, as he laid his hand for a moment on her head, before he gathered up the medicines he had selected, and left the room.