In the meantime, she eased her anger a little by snubbing Tryon, when he came to claim a waltz she had given him early in the week. Looking at him with cool and lovely disdain as she leaned on the arm of the great politician who still lingered with her, she disclaimed all recollection of any such engagement.
"You should be careful not to make such mistakes, Mr. Tryon," she said haughtily.
"Soit! The mistake is mine as well as the loss," he murmured gracefully, knowing very well what was his real crime. "But prophets must be prepared for losses. In olden days they have even been known to lose their heads for prophesying too truly." And on that he made a bow, and returned to Gay, whom he had left in their sitting-out place, which was his car. She had danced but little all the evening and seemed lost in dark thoughts.
"Tired?" he asked, leaning on the door beside her.
"No; but I'm sick of this dance," she said fiercely. "Take me for a spin, Dick."
"Right. But the roads are pretty bad in the dark, you know."
Gay pondered a moment.
"The Selukine road isn't bad"—she paused a moment, then slowly added, "and the road to Glendora."
It was Tryon's turn to ponder. The road to the Glendora was the worst in the country, but it didn't take him long to read the riddle.
"Come on, then!" he said abruptly. "Shall I get your cloak?"
"No; let me wear your things, Dick." She took up a big motor-coat and deer-stalker from the driving-seat and slipped into them. The rose-pink gown disappeared and was lost under the darkness of tweed, and the cap covered her bright hair. She sat well back in the shadows of the tonneau.
Tryon set the car going, climbed moodily into the lonely driving-seat, and steered away into the darkness just as the music stopped and a crowd of dancers came pouring out of the ballroom.
The Glendora lay west of the town, and the road to it ran past the club. As luck would have it, a man coming from the latter place, and pushing a bicycle before him, almost collided with them, causing Tryon to pull up short.
"Is that you, Emma Guthrie?" he called irritably.
"Yep!" came the gloomy answer.
"Seen anything of Lundi?"
"Nope!" on a deeper tone of gloom. Gay touched Tryon's shoulder.
"Make him come, too," she whispered.
"I'm just taking a run out to the Glendora," announced Tryon. "Want to come?"
"I do," said Guthrie, with laconic significance, and climbed in beside the driver. They flipped through the night at thirty miles an hour, which was as much as Tryon dared risk on such a road. The Glendora was about ten miles off. Gay, furled in the big coat and kindly darkness, could hear the two men exchanging an occasional low word, but little was said. It was doubtful whether Guthrie knew who Tryon's other passenger was.
In time, the clanking and pounding of a battery smote their ears, and the twinkling myriad lights of a mining camp were spread across the darkness. One large wood-and-iron house, standing alone on rising ground, well back from the road, was conspicuously brilliant. The doors were closed, but lights and the sound of men's voices raised in an extraordinary uproar streamed from its open, unblinded windows and fanlights. Abruptly Tryon turned the car so that it faced for home, halted it in the shadow of some trees, and jumping out, strode toward the house, followed by Guthrie and Gay.
Almost as they reached it, the door was flung open, and a man came out and stood in the light. He was passing his hand over his eyes and through his hair in an odd gesture that would have told Gay who he was, even if every instinct in her had not recognized Druro. The pandemonium in the house had fallen suddenly to a great stillness, but as Guthrie and Tryon reached the house, it broke forth again with increased violence, and a number of men rushed out and laid hands on Druro as if to detain him. He flung them off in every direction; a couple of them fell scrambling and swearing over the low rail of the veranda. Then, several spoken sentences, terse, and clean-cut as cameos, fell on the night air.
"Come on home, Lundi; we have a car here."
"I tell you he has killed Capperne! Capperne is dead as a bone!"
"All right!" came Druro's voice, cool and careless. "If he's dead, he's dead. I am prepared to accept the consequences."
The Australians stood off, grouped together, muttering. Guthrie and Tryon moved to either side of Druro, and between them he walked calmly away from the house. When they reached the car, he took the seat beside Tryon, Guthrie climbed in next to Gay, and they drove away without a word being spoken. The whole nightmare happening had passed with the precision and ease of a clockwork scene played by marionettes. Now the curtain was down, and nothing remained but the haunting, fateful words still ringing in the ears of them all. Small wonder they sat silent as death. As the car entered the precincts of the town, Druro said to Tryon:
"I must go to the police camp and report this thing, Dick. But, first drive to the 'Falcon,' will you? I've just remembered that I had an appointment there and must go and apologize."
They drew up at a side entrance of the hotel and Druro stepped out and turned almost mechanically to open the door for those behind. So far he had shown no knowledge of Gay's presence, but he now looked straight into her eyes without any sign of surprise. He held out his hand to help her to descend, and, in the same instant, swiftly withdrew it.
"I forgot," he said, and, for an instant, stood staring at his palm and then at her in a dazed, musing sort of way. "There is blood upon it!"
Gay could not speak. Her heart felt breaking. It seemed to her that, in that moment, with the shadow of crime on him, he had suddenly changed into a bright-haired, innocent, wistful boy. She longed, with an infinite, brooding love that was almost maternal, to shelter and comfort him against all the world. But she could do nothing. Even if she could have spoken, there was nothing to say. Only, on an impulse, she caught the hand he had drawn back, and, for a moment, held it close between her warm, generous little palms. Then she slipped away into the darkness, and he went into the hotel, walking like a man in a dream.
Cold-blooded nerve, otherwise intrepid cheek, is a much admired quality in that land of bluffs andblaguescalled Rhodesia. Therefore, when Lundi Druro walked into Mrs. Hading's ballroom in his old grey lounge suit, with ruffled hair and the distrait eyes of a man dreaming of other things, and proceeded, in casual but masterly fashion, to detach his hostess from the tentacles of a new admirer, Wankelo silently awarded him the palm of palms. But no one who saw Mrs. Hading's face as she walked out of the ballroom by his side envied him his job of conciliation.
However, they could not know that her cold looks were for their benefit rather than Druro's. Banal upbraidings would not bring off thecoupshe had planned, and she did not intend to employ them. When she and Druro were out of earshot in a far corner of the veranda, the face she turned to him wore nothing on it but an expression of lovely and tender pain that he found much harder to contend with than anything she could possibly have said.
Contritely he proffered his profound apologies and regrets. But when all was said and done, it boiled down to the same old lame duck of an excuse that was yet the simple and shameful truth.
"I forgot all about it."
Like Gay under similar circumstances, she was infuriated by the combined flimsiness and sincerity of the plea. But, unlike Gay, she was too clever to give herself away and ruin her plans by an outburst of indignation. She only fixed her sad and lovely dark eyes on his and said quietly:
"Is that all you have to say to me, Lundi? With everyone laughing at my humiliation and disappointment—my foolishness!"
He flushed at the use of his name, the tone of her voice, the inference in her words.
"I am most frightfully sorry," he repeated, deeply embarrassed. "It was unutterably caddish of me. I can never forgive myself, or expect you to forgive me."
"I think you know by now that I can forgive you anything," she answered, in a low voice.
His embarrassment increased.
"I'm not worth a second thought from any woman," he asseverated firmly.
"But if I think you are?" There was a little break in her voice, and suddenly she put out her hands toward him. "If I cannot help——"
"Mrs. Hading," he interposed hastily, "you don't know what you are saying. I am a blackguard—a scamp, unfit to touch a woman's hand."
"Let me be judge of that," she said.
"I have not even told you everything about tonight. When you hear what has happened, you won't want to speak to me again." She suddenly took out a little lace handkerchief and began to cry. He stared at her with haggard eyes. "Do you know that I have killed a man tonight?" he said sombrely.
That gave her pause. Her nerves went taut and her face rigid behind the scrap of lace. Evenhercold soul balked at murder, and her plans of mingled revenge and self-advancement rocked a little. She looked at him direct now, with eyes full of horrified enquiry.
"I did not mean to distress you with the story," he said. "But I struck a man over the card-table, and they say he is dead."
It seemed to her that she caught a sound of relief, even triumph in the statement—almost as though he was glad to have such a reason for stemming the tide of her words, and not taking the clinging hands she put out to him. Her keen mind was on the alert instantly. What was at the bottom of it all? Perhaps the man was not dead. Perhaps this was just a little trick of Druro's to slip the toils he felt closing round his liberty—her toils! Being a trickster herself, she easily suspected trickery in others. Rapidly she turned the thing over in her mind. She had no intention of involving herself with a man who had got to pay the penalty for committing a crime—but nothing simpler for her than to repudiate him if anything so unpleasant should really arise. On the other hand, in case he was juggling with the truth, she must establish a hold, a bond that, being a man of honour, he would not be able to repudiate. The situation called for the exercise of all the finesse of which she was mistress. She put away her handkerchief and looked at him gravely.
"There must be some dreadful mistake."
He shrugged his shoulders rather wearily.
"I don't think so." His manner inferred, "And I don't much care, either."
"But you must care," she said urgently. "You must fight it, Lundi. If you won't do it for your own sake"—she came a step nearer to him—"I ask you to do it for mine." He was staring moodily into the gloom of the night and the deeper gloom of his own soul. "To make up to me for the humiliation you have put upon me tonight," she said, almost in a whisper, "I think I have a right to claim so much."
That jerked him from his dreams. He looked her straight in the eyes.
"If anything I can say or do will make up to you for that, you will have no need to claim it," he said firmly, and, bowing over her hand, took his leave. People who saw him go thought he looked more haggard than when he came. But this was accounted for when, within the hour, news of the happenings at Glendora sped like wildfire through the town.
Before morning, however, there were certain hopeful tidings to mingle with the bad, and Marice Hading had cause to congratulate herself on her foresight in establishing her bond. Capperne was not dead. And there was hope of saving him. Half his teeth were knocked down his throat; in falling he had struck his head and cut it open; his heart, weakened by dissipation, had all but reached its last beat, and lung complication had set in. But the chances were that, being a worthless, useless life, precious to no one but himself, he would pull through and live to "sharp" another day. The doctors, at any rate, worked like tigers to insure this end. For there was no doubt that, if he died, the consequences must be extremely unpleasant for Druro. It was highly improbable that the latter would pay the penalty with his life, but a verdict of manslaughter against him could scarcely be avoided. He had struck Capperne down after a violent dispute in which the Australian, accused of sharping, had given him the lie, and Capperne's friends, the only witnesses of the fracas, were prepared, if Capperne died, to swear away Druro's life and liberty. As it was, they moved heaven and earth to have him put under arrest—"in case of accidents"—but their efforts were crowned with neither appreciation nor success, and Druro went about much as usual, careless, amusing, and apparently not unduly depressed. Still, it was a dark and doubtful period, and that his future hung precariously in the balance, he was very well aware, and so were his friends.
The only thing noticeably unusual in his habits was a certain avoidance of the Falcon Hotel and the society of womankind; and this, of course, was very well understood. It was natural that a man under a storm-cloud that might burst any moment and blot him out should wish to keep out of the range of women's emotional sympathy. Men's sympathy is of a different calibre. Even when it is a practical, living thing that can be felt and built on, it is often almost cold-bloodedly inarticulate and undemonstrative, which is the only kind of sympathy acceptable to a man in trouble, especially a man of Druro's type, who did not want to discuss the thing at all, but just to take what was coming to him with a stiff lip.
One good result of it all was that now, at last, his mine was getting a little attention. Once more he donned blue overalls and a black face and embroidered his pants with cyanide burns. And Emma Guthrie was content, or as content as Emma Guthrie could be. Rumour now said that crushing would be commenced on the mine in two months' time, and that ten stamps were to be added to the milling-plant already existing. This looked good for Druro's financial prospects, however gloomy his social ones might be. But he never talked. Emma Guthrie was the man who did all the bucking about the mine and its future. Rumour did the rest handsomely, and it was unanimously accorded that fate would be playing a shady trick indeed on Lundi Druro if, just when his future was painting itself in scarlet and gold with purple splashes, he was to be put out of the game by the death of a waster like Capperne.
On the day, then, that Capperne was at last pronounced to be out of the wood, there was almost general rejoicing in Wankelo. The little township threw its hat up into the air, and everyone burst into bubbles of relief and gaiety. In the club and hotels men valiantly "breasted the bar," vying with each other in the liquid celebration of Druro's triumph and the defeat of the enemy at Glendora, and all the women rushed to tea at the "Falcon" to discuss the news and, incidentally, to see how Mrs. Hading took it, and whether any further developments would now arise with regard to herself and Druro.
As soon as Mrs. Hading realized that Druro meant to absent himself from the felicity of her society during his period of uncertainty, she had thought out a pose for herself and assumed it like a glove. It was the pose of a woman who withdraws a little from the world to face her sorrows alone—or almost alone. A few admiring friends were admitted into her semi-devotional retreat. Mrs. Hallett was allowed to read to her awhile every day, and Berlie to arrange her flowers. Major Maturin brought her the English papers and any news that was going. A quiet game of bridge was sometimes indulged in, but Marice spent much of her time reading and writing, and a straight-backed chair with a cushion before it and a beautifully bound book of devotions lying on it hinted at deeper things. A certain drooping trick of the eyelids lent her an air of subdued sadness and courage that was attractive. A pose was always dearer to Marice Hading than bread, and this one gave her special pleasure—first, because it was becoming; secondly, because it was a restful way of getting through the hot weather, and, thirdly, because it conveyed to people the idea to which she wished to accustom them—that she and Druro were something to each other. She was no longer to be seen in the lounge. Having successfully impressed Mrs. Hallett with her sorrowful mien, that lady had placed her sitting-room, the only private one in the hotel, at Marice's disposal, and it was there, surrounded by flowers and books of verse, that she received the few friends she allowed to see her and wrote a daily letter of great charm and veiled tenderness to Druro. He nearly always responded with about three lines, making one note answer three letters, sometimes more. Druro was no fancy letter-writer. He could tell a woman he loved her, fervently enough, no doubt, either on or off paper, if the spirit moved him. But he never told Marice anything except that he was all right, and chirpy, and pretty busy at the mine, and hoped to see her one of these days when the horizon looked a little clearer. Brief and frank as were these missives, she studied them as closely as if they had been written in the hieroglyphics of some unknown language, and had often nearly bitten her underlip through by the time she reached the end of them.
With the growing conviction that Capperne would recover, her letters to Druro grew more intimate and perhaps a shade insistent on his over-sensitiveness in absenting himself for so long from the society of his best friends. It was natural that, when the good news was definitely confirmed, she should expect him to present himself, and perhaps that was why she came down to the lounge that day for tea, instead of having it served in the private sitting-room as usual.
She was looking radiant. The systematic rest-cure, combined with the services of her maid, a finishedmasseuse, had done wonders for her, and a gown of chiffon shaded like a bunch of pansies and so transparent that most of her could be seen through it successfully crowned her efforts.
Druro felt the old charm of lamp-posts stealing like a delicate, narcotizing perfume over his senses as he took her hand and listened to her soft murmurs of congratulation. After all, it is true that almost any woman can marry any man if she has a few looks, a few brains, and the quality of persistence. Besides, Marice had him safely bonded. The shrouded figure at the back of his mind that was waiting for some quiet hour in which to discuss the mess he was making of his life would have to be narcotized, too, or denied and driven forth.
Gay Liscannon came in with a riding party of noisy people, who clattered over, clamouring for tea and clapping Druro on the shoulder with blithe smiles. She gave him a friendly hand-clasp and said:
"Glad to see you're all right again, Lundi."
That was the spirit of all their welcomes. No one said openly: "Hooray! You're out of the jaws of the law." But they welcomed him like a long-lost brother turned up from the dead, and immediately began to talk about getting up some kind of "jolly" for him. It must be admitted that Rhodesians are always on the look-out for an excuse for a jolly, but this really seemed a reasonable occasion. They told him he looked gloomy and needed a jolly to cheer him up.
"A picnic is the thing for you," said Berlie Hallett, who loved this form of diversion better, even, than flirting. "Let us give him a picnic in his own district, Selukine."
A thoughtful look crossed Marice Hading's face.
"What about his own mine?" she said. "Can't we come and picnic there,Lundi? I have never seen the Leopard."
The idea was ardently welcomed.
"Yes—the Leopard mine! We'll take our own champagne and baptize the new reef and Lundi's future fortunes. It shall be the great Leopard picnic—the greatest ever!"
It was furthermore suggested that, as there was a moon, it should be a moonlight picnic with a midnight supper at the mine.
Lundi was fain to submit, whether he liked, it or not. He wondered a little what Emma Guthrie would say at having the mine invaded, but personally he did not care a toss. The narcotizing spell had fallen suddenly from him again, and life and his future fortunes looked uninterestingly grey. He became aware of the shrouded figure tapping for attention at the back of his brain. Gay was the cause of it, somehow. He abruptly got up to go, saying he must get back to the mine.
"Emma will want some talking over before he will allow any picnicking around there," he said. "I think I had better go and start on him right away."
"Oh, don't go yet!" they cried, and Marice Hading looked at him chidingly. But he had no heart for their gay arrangements, and took himself off after finally hearing that the date was fixed for two nights later, all cars to be at the "Falcon" at eight o'clock in the evening and the start to be made from there.
Only a legitimate reason would have kept Gay away from a jolly given in Druro's honour. But she expected to have that reason in the indisposition of her father, who had been ailing for some time. She was not sorry, for she felt a shrinking from what the picnic might bring forth, just as she had felt on the night of Mrs. Hading's dance.
However, fate was not inclined to spare her anything that was due to her. Colonel Liscannon was so much better that he could easily be left, and, moreover, an old crony had come in from the country to spend a couple of days with him. So there was no chance of Gay's evasion without a seeming rudeness to Druro. But she was very late in arriving at the "Falcon," where she was to be a passenger in Tryon's car.
At the last, it was a matter of ordering something at the chemist's for her father and sending off a telegram that detained her, and she did not reach the hotel until nearly a quarter to nine. Long before she got there, she saw that all the cars were gone except one which she easily recognized as Tryon's.
"Dear old Dick! He is always to be relied on," she said, and had a half-finished thought that she would rather be with him that night than any one, except——
Then she went quickly into the lounge, where, no doubt, he would be waiting, and found him indeed, but sitting around a little table with coffee and liqueurs in the company of Druro and Mrs. Hading, the latter looking none too pleased.
"Ah," said she, with acerbity, as Gay came in, "at last! We were beginning to think you were never coming."
"But why did you wait for me?" inquired Gay, politely bewildered. "I thought Dick——"
"Some idiot has walked off with my car," explained Druro. "So Tryon is taking us all."
"And we are waiting for petrol as well as you," smiled Tryon; "so sit down." He put a chair for her next to Mrs. Hading, but that lady, after a swift glance into a mirror on the wall, skilfully manoeuvred her seat until she was opposite instead of next to the girl. Gay, in a little white frock of soft mull, with a cascade of lace falling below her long, young throat, resembled a freshly-gathered rose with all the fragrance and dewiness of the garden of Youth upon her. When Marice looked at her, she felt like a Borgia. She would have liked to press a cup of poison to the girl's curved red lips and force her to drink. In that glimpse in the mirror, she had seen that her own face, above a delicate shroudy scarf with long flying ends, rose like some tired hothouse orchid, beautiful still, but fading, paling, passing; and she hated Gay's youth and freshness with a poignant hatred that was like the piercing of a stiletto. She wondered why she had been such a fool as to wear that gown of purplish amethystine tulle tonight. It was a colour that made her face look hard and artificially tinted. True, her bare neck and shoulders, which were of a perfection rarely seen outside of an art gallery, showed at their best through the mazy shroudings, and her throat looked as if it had been modelled by some cunning Italian hand and sculptured in creamy alabaster. Her throat, indeed, was Marice Hading's great beauty, and her pride in it the most sinful of all her prides. She spent hours in her locked room massaging it and smoothing it with soft palms, working snowy creams into it, modelling it with her fine fingers, as though it were of some plastic material other than flesh and blood. She watched for the traces of time on it and fought them with the art and skill of a creature fighting for its life. Indeed, when a woman makes a god of her beauty, it is her life for which she is fighting in the unequal battle with time.
Night was naturally the time at which this reverenced beauty of hers shone most effectively to the dazzlement of women and the undoing of men. Day was not so kind. The South African sun is ruthless to exposed complexions, and has an unhappy way of showing up the presence of thick pastes and creams which have been worked into contours in danger of becoming salients. So, although Marice never wore a collar, but always had her gowns cut into a deep V both back and front, she invariably shrouded herself with filmy laces and chiffons. She drew these about her now and rose wearily. It seemed to her she had noticed Druro looking at Gay with some strange quality in his glance.
"If we don't make a move, we shall never get there at all," she said sharply.
Everything was going wrong tonight. Here she was stuck with two people whom she detested, after specially planning to make the drive alone with Druro!
"Come along; I expect the car is fixed up by now," said Tryon, and they all moved out. A black porter was patrolling the stoep.
"Has my boy been here with petrol for the car?" asked Tryon.
"Yas, sar."
"And filled it?"
"Yas, sar."
They approached to get in, and a fresh annoyance for Mrs. Hading arose.Druro said casually:
"How are we going to sit?"
"You are driving, of course," stated Marice, in an authoritative tone.
"No," said Tryon dryly; "I never let any one handle my car but myself."
Now, nothing would make Marice renounce the comfort of the front seat. Even if she would have done it for the sake of sitting with Druro, she knew that the jarring and jolting so unavoidable on African roads would put her nerves on edge for the evening. So there was nothing further to be said, but she felt, as she flung herself into the seat beside Tryon, that this was verily the last straw. For a time she showed her displeasure with and disdain of Tryon by sitting half turned and conversing with Druro, who was obliged to lean forward uncomfortably to answer her remarks. But she soon tired of this, for the strong wind caused by the car cutting through the air tore her flatly arranged hair from its appointed place and blew it over her eyes in thin black strings. This enraged her, as the dishevelment of a carefully arranged coiffure always enrages a fashionable woman. She loathed wind at any time; it always aroused seven devils in her. She longed to box Tryon's ears. But the best she could do was to sit in haughty silence at his side, while the wind took the long ends of her scented tulle scarf and tore it to rags, fluttering them maliciously in the faces of the two silent ones behind. Every now and then Druro mechanically caught hold of these ends, crumpled them into a bunch, and stuffed them behind Mrs. Hading's shoulders, but a few minutes later they would be loose again, whipping the wind. Once, when he was catching the flickering things from Gay's face, his hand touched her cheek, and once, when they both put out their hands together, they clasped each other's fingers instead of the fragile stuff. But they never spoke. And their silence at last began to weigh on the two in front. They found themselves straining their ears to hear if those two would ever murmur a word to each other. And if they did not,why didn't they?
"Has he got his arm round her?" wondered Tryon savagely. (He too had counted on tonight and the long, lonely drive with Gay, and was in none too pleasant a mood with life.)
"Is he holding her hand?" thought Marice Hading, and ground her teeth."Has there ever been anything between them?"
But Druro and Gay were doing none of these things—only sitting very still, and thinking long, long thoughts. And whatever it was they thought of, it put no gladness into their eyes. Any one who could have peered into their faces in the pale moonlight must have been struck by the similarity in the expression of their eyes, the vague, staring misery of those who search the horizon vainly for something that will never be theirs, some lost city from which they are for ever exiled.
The African horizon was wonderfully beautiful that night. As they came out from the miles of bush which surround Wankelo into the hill-and-valley lands of Selukine, the moon burst in pearly splendour from her fleecy wrappings of cloud and showed long lines of silver-tipped hills and violet valleys, and, here and there, great open stretches of undulating space with a clear view across leagues and leagues to the very edge, it seemed, of the world. As one such great stretch of country rolled into view from a rise in the road, Druro spoke for the first time, in a low voice, vaguely and half to himself.
"There is the land I love—mycountry!"
With his hand he made a gesture that was like a salute. After all, he was a Rhodesian, and this was his confession of faith. The story of the lamp-posts was only a bluff put up to disguise the hook Africa had put in his heart, the hook by which she drags all those who love her back across the world, denying, reviling, forswearing her even unto seventy times seven, yet panting to be once more in her adored arms. All Rhodesians have this heart-wound, which opens and bleeds when they are away from their country, and only heals over in the sweet veld air.
Gay did not answer. He had hardly seemed to address the remark to her; yet it went home to her heart because she, too, was a Rhodesian, and this was the land she loved.
Suddenly they swept down once more into a tract of country thick with bush and tall, feathery trees. Here the rotting timbers of some old mine-head buildings and great mounds of thrown-up earth inked against the sky-line showed that man had been in these wilds, torn up the earth for its treasure, and passed on. Near the road an old iron house, that had once been a flourishing mine-hotel, was now almost hidden by a tangle of wild creepers and bush, with branches of trees thrusting their way through gaping doorways and windows.
"This was the old Guinea-Pig Camp. It is 'gone in' now, but once it was a great place—this old wilderness," said Tryon to Mrs. Hading, and misquoted Kipling.
"They used to call it a township once,Gold-drives and main-reefs and rock-drills once,Ladies and bridge-drives and band-stands once,But now it is G. I."
He stopped, and the car having reached the foot of the hill that led out of the valley stopped, too, as if paralysed by its owner's efforts at parody. It had been jerking and bucking like a playful mustang for some time past, and behaving in an altogether curious manner, but now it was stiller than the dead. Tryon waggled the levers to no avail, then flung himself out of the car and got busy with the crank. Not a move. Druro then got out and had a go at the crank. No good. Thereafter, the two made a thorough examination of the beast, but poking and prying into all its secret places booted them nothing. As far as the eye of man could see, nothing was wrong with the thing but sheer obstinacy. It was more from habit than a spirit of inquiry that Druro finally gave a casual squint into the reservoir. Then the mischief was out. It was empty; the boy had never filled it. It was doubtful whether he had put in any petrol at all. The two men stared at each other aghast.
"Well, of all the rotten niggers in this rotten country!" breathed Tryon, at last, and, with the words, expressed all the weight of the white man's burden in Africa, mingled with rage at his present powerlessness to smite the evil-doer. Druro grinned. It was not his funeral, and, to the wise, no further words were necessary. But Mrs. Hading had not been long enough in Africa to be wise. This final calamity seemed all part and parcel of the mismanagement of the evening, and she did not care to conceal her annoyance.
"I cannot imagine any one but a fool allowing himself to be placed in such a predicament," she said, looking at Tryon with the utmost scorn.
He shrugged his shoulders, dumb with mortification. Druro, smiling with his usual native philosophy, now got his portion.
"Is there anything to do besides standing there smirking?" she inquired acridly.
"I should think we had better foot it to the Guinea-Pig." To do him justice, he had been thinking as well as smirking, but Marice was in no mood to be just. "A fellow called Burral lives there and has a telephone. He may have some petrol. All may not yet be lost!" He continued to smile. Not that he felt cheerful—but the situation seemed to him to call for derision rather than despair.
"Foot it? Do you mean walk through this wild bush? Good Heavens! How far is it?"
"Only about a mile or so, and there is quite a good path. Still, if you think it better to stay here in the car with Tryon while I go——"
"No; I'll go," said Tryon hastily.
"No you don't," persisted Druro. "I know the way better than you do." But Mrs. Hading put an end to the argument as to who should escape her recriminations.
"I refuse to be left in this wild spot with any one," she declared, and flung one last barb of hatred at Tryon. "How could you be such a fool?"
But Tryon's withers could be no further wrung. He merely felt sorry for Druro. The widow was showing herself to be no saint under affliction. Not here the bright companion on a weary road who is better than silken tents and horse-litters!
They started down the path to Burral's, Druro and Mrs. Hading ahead. Gay and Tryon following at a distance too short not to hear the widow's voice still engaged in acrid comment.
"What a fuss to make about nothing!" said Gay, a trifle disdainfully. "I'm afraid Africa won't suit her for long, if that's how she takes incidents of every-day life."
"I don't think she'll suit Africa," rejoined Tryon savagely. "Still, I'm not denying that I am a first-class fool to have trusted that infernal nigger. I could kick myself."
"Kick the nigger instead, tomorrow," laughed Gay, adding in theRhodesian spirit, "what does it matter, anyway?"
The path now became narrower and overhung with wandering branches and creepers. The brambles seemed to have a special penchant for Mrs. Hading's flying ends of tulle and lace, and she spent most of her time disengaging herself while Druro went ahead, pushing branches out of the way. Poor Marice! Her feet ached in their high-heeled shoes, and her French toilette was created for a salon and not out-of-door walking. Truly, she was no veld-woman. What came as a matter of course to Gay was a tragedy to her.
"How stupid! How utterly imbecile!" she muttered bitterly. "A hateful country—and idiots of men!"
"Cheer up!" said Druro, with an equability he did not feel. Nothing bored him more than bad temper. "We'll soon be dead—I mean, we'll soon be at Burral's."
"I find your cheerfulness slightly brutal," she remarked cuttingly, "and the thought of Burral's does not fill me with any delight."
"I'm sorry," he began, but his apology and the stillness of the night were both destroyed by a sudden loud crack of a rifle.
"By Jove! Who's that, I wonder?" exclaimed Druro. "There's nothing much to shoot about here." Then, to Mrs. Hading, "Stand still a minute—will you?—while I reconnoitre." He went a few yards ahead and gave a halloo. They all stood still, listening, until the call was returned in a man's voice from somewhere not far off. At the same time, a soft cracking of bushes was heard near at hand.
"It must be Burral out after a buck!" called out Tryon. He and Gay were still some way behind. Marice half-way between them, and Druro was apparently trying to disentangle her flickering, fluttering chiffons from a fresh engagement with the bushes when the terrible thing happened. The lithe, speckled body of a leopard came sailing, with a grace and swiftness indescribable, through the air and, leaping upon the fluttering figure, bore her to the ground. A scream of terror and anguish rent the night, and Gay and Tryon, galvanized by horror, powerless though they were to contend with the savage brute, rushed forward to the rescue. But Druro was there before them. They saw him stoop down and catch the huge cat by its hind legs, and, with extraordinary power, swing it high in the air. Snarling and spitting, it twisted its flexible body to attack him in turn, and, even as it went hurtling over his head into the bush behind, it reached out a paw and clawed him across the face. At the same moment, a man with a gun came crashing through the undergrowth, followed the flying body of the leopard into the bush, and with two rapid shots gave the beast its quietus. Reeking gun in hand, he returned to the party in the pathway.
"Got the brute at last," he panted. "Only wounded him the first shot; that's why he came for you people. My God! Who's hurt here?"
No one answered. Mrs. Hading lay moaning terribly on the ground, withTryon and Gay bending over her. Druro was stumbling about like adrunken man. "Is it you, Lundi Druro? Did that devil get you, too?Where are you hurt?"
"It's Burral, isn't it?" said Druro vaguely. "Yes; I got a flick across the eyes. Never mind me. Get that lady to your place, Burral, and telephone to Selukine. Tell them to send a car and a doctor and to drive like mad."
"My throat—oh, my throat!" keened Marice Hading. Tryon supported her. Gay was tearing her white skirt into strips and using them for bandages. Druro came stumbling over to them.
"For God's sake, get her to Burral's place, Dick!" said he. "Burral's wife is a nurse and will know what to do. Can you two fellows carry her? I would help you—but I can't see very well. I'll come on behind."
Gay helped to lift Marice into the two men's arms, and they went ahead with their moaning burden; then she came back to Druro, who was staggering vaguely along.
"Let me help you, Lundi. Lean on me."
He put out an arm, and she caught it and placed it around her shoulders.
"I can't see, Gay," he said, in a voice that was quite steady yet had in it some quality of terrible apprehension. She peered into his face. The moon had become obscured, but she could see that his eyes were wide open with torn lids. There was a great gash down his cheek.
"Come quickly!" she cried, her voice trembling with tears. "Oh, come quickly, Lundi! We must bathe and dress your wounds as soon as possible. Leopard wounds are terribly poisonous."
"All right," he said. "Sure you don't mind my leaning on you? I hope they get a doctor at once for Mrs. Hading."
They went forward slowly, he taking curiously uneven steps. She was tall, but he had to stoop a little to keep his hold on her.
"There hasn't been a leopard in these parts for nearly two years," he mused. "The last was shot on my mine the day we struck the reef—that is why we called it the Leopard. You remember, Gay? Do you think Mrs. Hading is badly wounded?"
"Her throat and chest are very much torn, but I don't think the wounds are deep."
"Poor woman! Good Lord; what bad luck!"
"Try and hurry, Lundi."
"But I can't see. Perhaps if I could wipe the blood out of my eyes,Gay—where the deuce is my handkerchief?"
"Here is mine—let me do it for you. Sit down for a moment on this ant-heap."
She knelt by his side and gently wiped away the blood. By the sweat that was pouring down his face, she knew that he must be suffering intense pain, and was almost afraid to touch the wounded eyes.
"Is that better? Can you see now?" she asked fearfully.
"No," he said quietly. There was a moment of anguished silence between them, then he laughed.
"Cheerful if I am going to be blind!"
The words tore her heart in two, appealing to all that was tender and noble in her nature, and to that brooding maternal love that was almost stronger in her than lover's love. She seemed, as once before when trouble was on him, to see him as a bright-haired boy with innocent eyes, whom life had led astray, but who was ready with a laugh on his lips to face the worst fate would do. And she cried out, with a great cry, tenderly, brokenly:
"No, no, Lundi; you shall not be blind!"
She put her arms round him as if to ward off the powers of darkness and evil, and he let his bloody face rest against the soft sweetness of her breast. Leaning there, he knew he was home at last. Her warm tears, falling like gentle rain upon his wounded eyes, slipped down into his heart, into his very soul, cleansing it, washing away the shadows that had been between them. Now he knew what the shrouded figure at the back of his mind had waited for so long to say to him—that he loved this girl and should make his life worthy of her. He had always loved her, but had been too idle and careless, too fond of the ways and pleasures of men to change his life for her. Now that he held her in his arms, and could feel the blaze of her love burning through the walls of her, meeting the flame in his own heart, it was too late. Fate, with lightnings in her hand, had stepped between them, and a woman who held his promise intervened.
"Gay," he said gently, her name felt so sweet on his lips, "by a terrible mistake I have destroyed your happiness and mine. Forgive me."
"There is no question of forgiveness, Lundi," she whispered; "I will help you to stand by it."
He held up his blurred eyes and torn, bleeding lips, and she kissed him as one might kiss the dead, in exquisite renouncement and farewell. Only that the quick are not the dead—and cannot be treated as such. A more poignant misery waked in both their hearts with that kiss. He could not see her—that was terrible—but the satiny warmth of her mouth was so dear, so exquisitely dear! He suddenly remembered her as she was that night in her little rose-leaf gown with all the dewdrops twinkling on her. He wondered if he would ever see her again in all her beauty.
"You were so sweet that night of the dance, Gay," he said, "in your little pinky gown, with the dewdrops winking on you!"
She understood that he was wondering if he should ever see her again.
"You shall—you shall!" she cried. "Oh, hurry! Come quickly! Let us get to the house and to help."
The serene and careless philosophy characteristic of him came back.
"If I am to be blind, all right," he said quietly. "I'll accept it without a kick, because of this hour."
Once more they stumbled deviously and slowly on. A light showed nearer now, in a house window, and presently the other two men were on their way to meet them with lanterns and a brandy-flask. In a short time, Druro was established in Mrs. Burral's sitting-room, having his eyes bathed and bandaged by her skilful hands.
"What about Mrs. Hading?" had been his first question. Marice's low moans could be plainly heard from behind the curtain which divided the one room of the little iron house.
"Her throat and shoulders are very much lacerated," said Mrs. Burral. "I think we have avoided the danger of blood-poisoning for you both, as I was able to clean the wounds so quickly with bichloride. But she will be dreadfully scarred, poor thing! And you, Mr. Druro, I'm afraid—I'm afraid your eyes are badly hurt."
It seemed years to them all, though it was scarcely more than half an hour before assistance came from Selukine. All tragedies take place in the brain, it has been said, and poignant things were happening behind several foreheads during that bad half-hour of waiting. Marice Hading, lying on Mrs. Burral's bed, hovered over by that kind woman, was suffering more acutely in the thought of her ravaged beauty than from the pain of her wounds. Druro's bandaged eyes saw with greater clearness down the bleak avenues of the future than they had ever seen in health. Tryon was afraid to look at Gay. He was outwardly attentive to Burral's tale of the leopard's depredations—chickens torn from the roost, a mutilated foal, a half-eaten calf—and of the final stalking and unlucky wounding of the beast, rendering it mad with the rage to attack everything it met; but his brain was occupying itself with a thought that ran round and round in it like a squirrel in a cage—the thought that Gay was lost to him for ever. He had seen her looking at Lundi Druro with all her tortured soul in her eyes. Now she stood at the window, staring into the night.
When, at last, the whir of motor-wheels was heard on the far-off road, each of them hastened to recapture their wretched minds and drag them back from the lands of desolation in which they wandered, to face once more the formalities of life behind life's mask of convention. There came a sound of many voices—subdued, deploring, anxious, inquiring. The picnickers had heard of the accident and were returning in force to succour the lost ones. It was a sorry ending to the great Leopard picnic.
Mrs. Hading and Druro were driven to the Wankelo Hospital, and doctors and nurses closed in on them. Specialists came from Buluwayo and the Cape, and, after a time of waiting, it was known that the danger of blood-poisoning was past for both of the victims. But whether Lundi Druro was to walk in darkness for the rest of his days could not be so quickly told or what lay behind the significant silence concerning Mrs. Hading's injuries. It was known that her condition was not dangerous, but she saw no one, and, in the private ward she had engaged, she surrounded herself with nurses whose business it was not to talk, and doctors, even in Rhodesia, do not gratify the inquiries of the merely curious. So, for a long period of waiting, no one quite knew how the tragedy was all to end.
In another part of the hospital, Druro sat in his room with bandaged eyes and Toby on his knees, gossiping with the friends who came to beguile his monotony, giving no outward sign that hope had been dragged from his heart as effectively as light had been wiped from his eyes. From the black emptiness in which he sat, he sent Marice Hading a daily message containing all the elements of a mental cocktail—a jibe at fate, a fleer at leopards in general, and a prophecy of merrier times to come as soon as they were out of their present annoyances. In reply, she wrote guarded little notes (that were read to him by his nurse), making small mention of her own injuries but seeming feverishly anxious concerning his sight. All he could tell her was that he awaited the arrival and verdict of Sir Charles Tryon, the famous eye-specialist, now somewhere on his way between Madeira and Wankelo. It was Dick Tryon, who, knowing that his brother was taking a holiday at Madeira, had cabled asking for his services for Druro.
Poor Dick Tryon! He blamed himself bitterly for the whole catastrophe on the grounds that, if he had only looked into the petrol-tank instead of taking a Kafir's word, the car would never have been held up or the encounter with the leopard occurred. It was no use Lundi Druro's telling him that such reasoning manifested an arrogant underrating of the powers of destiny.
"You are a very clever fellow, Dick, but even you can't wash out the writing on the wall," philosophized the patient, from behind his bandage, "nor scribble anew on the tablet of Fate, which is hung round the neck of every man. If the old hag meant me to be blind, she'd fixed me all right without your assistance."
But Tryon could not be reasoned with in this wise. Perhaps it was the shipwreck in Gay's eyes that would not let him rest. Druro could not see that; but it was part of Dick Tryon's penance to witness it every day when he fetched Gay and her father in his car to visit the hospital. She always came laden with flowers and cheery words, and left an odour of happiness and hope behind her. But Tryon had seen what was in her eyes that night at Burral's, and behind all her hopeful smiling he saw it there still. He realized that she and Druro had found each other in the hour of tragedy, and that for him there was no rôle left but that of spectator—unless he could prove himself a friend by helping them to each other's arms, in spite of Marice Hading. As for Druro and Gay, they had never been alone together since that night—and never meant to be. They had had their hour.
Another of Tryon's self-imposed jobs was to motor to Selukine and bringback Emma Guthrie to see his partner. For there were moments whenDruro could stand no one's society so well as the bitter-tonguedAmerican's.
"Go and bring in Emma to say a few pleasant words all round," he would enjoin, and Emma would come, looking like a wounded bear ready to eat up everything in sight. But, strange to say, after the first two or three visits, his words were sweeter than honey in the honeycomb, and all his ways were soothing and serene. He had nothing but good news to dispense. The novelty first amused then exasperated Druro, and he ended up by telling Guthrie to clear out of the hospital and never come back.
Emma did come back, however, and every time he showed his face, it was to bring some fresh tale of the sparkling fortunes hidden in the bosom of his Golconda. The mine was a brick, a peach, a flower. Zeus dropping nightly showers of gold upon Danaë was nothing to the miracles going on at the Leopard.
One evening after dinner, while Druro was sitting alone with his own dark thoughts, a message was brought to him—a message that Mrs. Hading would be glad to see him. It appeared that she had been up and about her room for some days, and was as bored as he with her own society.
Leaning on the arm of his nurse, he walked down the long veranda and came to her big, cool room, delicately shaded with rose lights and full of the scent of violets and faint Parisian essences. He could not see her of course, or the rose lights, but he sensed her sitting there in her long chair, looking languorous and subtle, with colours and flowers and books about her. The nurse guided him to a seat near her and left them together.
"Well, here we are, Lundi—turned into a pair of wretched, broken-down crocks!"
The words were light, but the indescribable bitterness of her voice struck at him painfully.
"Only for a little while," he said gently. "We'll both be back in the game soon, fitter than ever."
"Never!" There was the sound of a shudder in the exclamation. "How can one ever be the same afterthat——"
"You've been a brick! You mustn't give way now, after coming through so bravely."
"How I hate Africa!" she exclaimed fiercely.
Druro could not help smiling.
"Poor old Africa! We all abuse her like a pickpocket and cling to her like a mother."
"I don't cling. All I ask is never to see her again."
"I don't wonder. She has not treated you too well."
The smile faded from his lips, leaving them sombre. It was like looking into a dark window to see Lundi Druro's face without the gaiety of his eyes. At the same time, their absence threw up a quality of strength about his mouth and jaw that might have gone unobserved. He was conscious of her attention acutely fixed upon him, but he could not know with what avid curiosity she was searching his features, or guess, fortunately for him, at the cold, clear thought that was passing through her mind.
"How awful to have to drag a blind husband about the world! Still—the money will mitigate. I can always pay people to——" Then a thrill of pleasure shot through that bleak and desert thing which was her heart. "He will never see me as I am now."
Yes; this reflection actually gave her pleasure and content in Druro's tragedy. He, of all the world, would still think of her as she had been before the leopard puckered her throat and scarred her cheek with terrible scars. At the thought, her vanity, which was her soul, suddenly flowered forth again. Her voice softened; some of the old glamour came back into it.
"Will you take me away from this cruel country, Lundi—as soon as we are both better?"
To leave Africa, and that which Africa held! All Lundi Druro's blood called out, "No," but his firm lips answered gently:
"Yes; if you wish it," then closed again as if set in stone.
"And never come back to it again?"
"That is a harder thing to promise, Marice," he said. "One never knows what life and fate may demand of one. My work might call me back here."
"Yes, yes; that is true," she said peevishly. "The main thing is that you will never expect me to come back. But, of course, if you are blind, it will not be much use your coming either."
The blow was unexpected, but he did not flinch.
She was the first person who had taken such a probability for granted; but he had long faced the contingency himself.
"If I am to be blind, we must reconstruct plans and promises, Marice.They are made, as far as I am concerned, conditionally."
"No; no conditions!" she cried feverishly. "I am going to marry you, whether your eyes recover or not. Promise me you won't draw back, if the worst comes?"
She could not bear to lose him—this one man in all the world who would still think her beautiful. All her soul which was her vanity cried out passionately to him.
"Of course I will promise you, dear, if you think it good enough," he said, "if you still want me and think a blind man can make you happy."
"Yes; I want you blind," she answered strangely. "You can make me very happy." Then she reached for the bell-button and pressed it. Her nerves were giving out, and she needed to be alone. But the future was arranged for now, and she could rest. She made a subtle sign to the entering nurse, and Druro never guessed that he was being evicted by any one but the latter in her professional capacity. To be deceived is doubtless part of the terrible fate of the blind.
She had succeeded in deceiving Druro in more than this. Confirmed now in the belief that he was necessary to her happiness and that to fulfil his promises to her was the only way of honour, he knew that he must thrust the thought of Gay out of his mind for ever. Even in the grey misery of that decision, he could still feel a glow of gratitude toward the woman who loved him enough to face the future with a blind man. Because his mind was a jumble of emotions fermented by the humility born of sitting in darkness and affliction, for many days he spoke a little of it to Tryon, who came, as was now his custom, to help pass away the evening. So Tryon was the first person in Wankelo to hear of Marice Hading's greatness of heart—and the last person in the world to believe in it. But he did not say so to Druro. He had long ago sized up Marice Hading's subtle mind and shallow soul, and it was not very difficult for him to read this riddle of new-born nobility. Druro and his rich mine were to pay the price of her lost beauty. What booted it if he were blind? So much the better for the vanity of a woman who worshipped her beauty as Mrs. Hading had done. It was certain that, blind or whole, she meant to hold Druro to his bond, and that she would eventually make hay with his life, Tryon had not the faintest doubt. Destruction for Druro—shipwreck for Gay! A woman's cruel, skilful little hands had crumpled up their happiness like so much waste paper, and Tryon, with the best will in the world, saw no clear way to save it from being pitched to the burning. The best he could do, for that evening at least, was to shake Druro's hand warmly at parting and tell him that he was a deuced lucky fellow.
Two days later, Sir Charles Tryon arrived, a short, square man with most unprofessional high spirits and a jolly laugh that filled everyone with hope. It was late in the afternoon when he got to Wankelo, and, after a cursory test of Druro's eyes, he announced himself unable to give a decisive verdict until after a more complete examination the following day. He then departed to his brother's house for dinner and a good night's rest after his long journey.
No sooner had Dick tucked him safely away than he was back again at the hospital, for he had a very shrewd notion of the brand of misery Druro, condemned to a night's suspense, would be suffering. And he guessed right. Emma Guthrie, just arrived, was in the act of "cheering him up" with an account of the mine's output from the monthly clean-up that day.
"How many ounces?" asked Druro indifferently. The prosperity of the mine bothered him far less than the fate of his eyes, for he knew himself to be one of those men who can always find gold. If one mine gave out, there were plenty of others.
"Five hundred, as usual," said Guthrie jubilantly. "Here it is—feel it; weigh it."
From a sagging coat pocket he abstracted what might, from its size and shape, have been a bar of soap but for the yellow shine of it, and placed it in Druro's right hand. The latter lifted it with a weighing gesture for a moment and handed it back.
"That's all right."
"All right! I should say!" declaimed the bright and bragful Emma. "Two thousand of the best there, all gay and golden! I tell you, Lundi, we've got a peach. And she hasn't done her best by a long chalk. She's only beginning. You buck up and get your eyes well, my boy, and come and see for yourself." He began to hold forth in technical terms that were Greek to Tryon concerning stopes, cross-cuts, foot-walls, stamps, and drills. Every moment his voice grew gayer and more ecstatic. He seemed drunk with success and unable to contain his bubbling, rapturous optimism, and that Druro sat brooding with the sinister silence of a volcano that might, at any instant, burst into violent eruption did not appear to disturb him. Fortunately, some other men came in and relieved the situation; when Guthrie took his leave, a few moments later, Tryon made a point of accompanying him to the gate. He was getting as sick as Druro of Emma's perpetual gaiety and came out with the distinct intention of saying so as rudely as possible.
"What do you mean by bringing your devilish good spirits here? Have you no bowels? Kindly chuck it for once and for all."
Guthrie, squatting on his haunches, feeling his bicycle tyres, turned up to him a face grown suddenly rutted and haggard as a Japanese gargoyle.
"That drum-and-fife band is only a bluff, Dick," he said quietly. "The Leopard is G. I., and if that boy loses his eyes as well, neither of us will ever climb out of the soup again."
Tryon came out of the gate and stared at him interestedly.
"What do you mean? How can the Leopard——"
"I mean that the reef is gone—for good, this time."
"The reef gone?" reiterated Tryon stupidly. "Why—good Lord, I thought you'd found it richer and stronger than ever!"
"So we did. But, my boy, mining is the biggest gamble in the world.It pinched out, sudden as a stroke of apoplexy, a few days afterLundi's accident. We've got a month's crushing in hand now, and whenthat's gone, we'll have to shut down. We're bust!"
"But what about that five-hundred-ounce clean-up you handed him?"
"All bluff! I drew two thousand quid for native wages and threw it into the melting-pot. That lovely button goes back to the bank tomorrow. They've got to be bluffed, too, until Lundi's able to stand the truth."
"I don't know if he'll thank you for it, Emma," said Tryon, at last.
"I don't say he will; I don't say Lundi can't take his physic when he's got to, as well as any man. But I can reckon he's got an overdose already. I'll wait."
Tryon stared a while into the shrewd, wizened face, then said thoughtfully:
"I think you're quite right. There are moments when enough is too much, and I haven't a doubt but that a little extra bad luck would just finish what chance he has of seeing again. Keep it up your sleeve anyway, until we hear my brother's verdict."
"Oh, I'll keep it," said Emma grimly. "Once his bandages are off, we'll let the hornets buzz, but not before."
"Meantime," remarked Tryon, "if you like to make me a present of the information, I will promise to use it carefully and for nothing but Druro's benefit."
Guthrie gave him a long, expressionless glance.
"There are worse things than having your eyes clawed out by a leopard," continued Dick enigmatically.
"What worse?"
"You might, for instance, have your heart plucked out by a vulture while you're lying helpless."
"Poison the carcass!" Emma elegantly advised. "That'll finish the vulture before it has time to gorge full." And, as he straddled his battered bicycle, he added a significant remark, which showed that he very well knew what he was talking about. "Lundi'll always be blind about women, anyway."
Tryon did not return to Druro's room, but went thoughtfully toward that wing of the hospital in which he knew the quarters of the young and pretty matron to be situated. Having found her, he put before her so urgent and convincing an appeal for an interview with Mrs. Hading that she went herself to ask that lady to receive him. A clinching factor was an adroit remark about his brother's interest in Druro's chances. He guessed that such a remark repeated would bring him into Marice Hading's presence quicker than anything else, and he was right. Within five minutes, he was in the softly shaded, violet-scented room where Druro had groped his way some nights before—the difference being that he could see that which Druro had mercifully been spared.
The beauty of the woman sitting in the long chair had been torn from her like a veil behind which she had too long hidden her real self. Now that she was stripped, a naked thing in the wind, all eyes could see her deformities and read her cold and arid soul. The furies of rage and rancour were grabbling at her heart, even as the leopard had scrabbled on her face. It was not the mere disfigurement of the angry, purplish scars that twisted her mouth and puckered her cheeks. A shining spirit, gentle and brave in affliction might have transformed even these, robbing them of their hideousness. But here was one who had "thrown down every temple she had built," and whose dark eyes were empty now of anything except a malign and bitter ruin. It was as though nothing could longer cover and conceal her cynical dislike of all things but herself. The face set on the long, ravaged throat, once so subtly alluring, had turned hawklike and cruel. It seemed shrivelled, too, and, between the narrow linen bandages she still wore, it had the cunning malice of some bird of prey peering from a barred cage.
Tryon looked once, then kept his eyes to his boots. He would have given much to have fled, and, in truth, he had no stomach for his job. It seemed to him uncommonly like hitting at some wounded creature already smitten to death. But it was not for himself he was fighting. It was for Gay's sweet, upright soul, and the happiness of a man too good to be thrown to the vultures of a woman's greed and cruelty. That thought hardened his heart for the task he had in hand.
Marice came to the point at once. It seemed that, with her beauty, she had lost or discarded the habit of subtle attack.
"What does Sir Charles think of his chances?"
It was Tryon who had to have recourse to subtlety. Juggling with his brother's professional name was a risky business, and he did not mean to get on to dangerous ground.
"He can't tell yet—he was afraid to be certain, tonight—is going to have another go at them tomorrow. But——"
"But?" She leaned forward eagerly. "There is not much hope?"
There was no mistaking her face and voice. It was as he had guessed;she did not want Druro to recover. Tryon had no further qualms.
"Iam not going to give up hope, anyway," he said, with that air of dogged intent which is often founded on hopelessness. She gave a little sigh and sat back among her cushions, like a woman who has taken a refreshing drink.
"Dear Druro, it is very sad for him!" said she complacently, and presently added, "but I shall always see that he is taken care of."
Something in Tryon shuddered, but outwardly he gave no sign, only looked at her commiseratingly.
"It is that we are thinking of—Guthrie and I. Are you strong enough physically and well-enough off financially to undertake such a burden?" She regarded him piercingly, a startled look in her eyes. "Doubtless you are a rich women—and, of course, no one could doubt your generosity. Still, a blind man without means of his own——"
"What?" She fired the word at him like a pistol-shot.
"He does not know," said Tryon softly. "We are keeping it dark for some days yet. The two shocks together might——" He paused.
"What—what?" she panted at him, like a runner at the end of his last lap.
"The mine is no good. They are dropping back into it every penny they ever made, and the reef has pinched out. Guthrie told me this tonight on his oath." The woman gave a long, sighing breath and lay back painfully in her chair. But Tryon had a cruel streak in him. He would not let her rest. "He is a ruined man, and may be a blind man, but, thank God, he has you to lean on!"
"You are mad!" said she, and burst into a harsh laugh. Tryon's face was full of grave concern as he rose.
"Shall I send your nurse?"
She pulled herself together sharply.
"Yes, yes; send her—but, before you go, promise me, Mr. Tryon, never to let Druro know you told me."
("Is it possible that she has so much grace in her?" he pondered.)
"Never!" he promised solemnly. "He shall find out the greatness of your love for himself."
Like fate, Tryon knew where to rub in the salt. As he went down the veranda, he heard the same harsh, cruel laugh ringing out, somewhat like the laugh of a hyena that has missed its prey.
After Sir Charles had gone, Druro sat for a while silent, elbows on the table, thinking. He had insisted upon getting up as usual, though they had tried to keep him in bed. He was not going to take it lying down, he said. So now he sat there, alone, except for Toby, who sat on his knee and, from time to time, put out a little red tongue and gently licked his master's ear.