Every man there had become aware of the youth and beauty which, till that day, she had worn as if veiled, and they were paying the tribute that men will proffer until the end of time to those two gifts of the gods. She knew it without vanity, but also without embarrassment, for she had tasted triumph before in a world more difficult to please than this, surrounded by opponents worthier of her steel than Isabel van Cannan. The little triumph only pleased her in that she could offer it as a gift to the man she loved. For here is another eternal truth, that all men are one in pride of possession of that which excites envy and admiration in other men. All women know this with a gladness that is salted by sorrow.
Saltire's eyes were the only ones she could not meet with serenity. She felt his glance on her often, but always when she tried to lift hers to meet it, her lids seemed weighted by little heavy pebbles.
She meant to overcome this weakness, though, and look at him even as she had answered at noon; but, in the middle of dinner, while she yet strove against the physical inability, her resolution was disturbed by a strange occurrence. A wild scream of fear and horror came ringing from the nursery. Without a thought for anything but that it was Roddy's voice, Christine sprang from the table. Down the long passage and into the nursery she ran, and, almost bursting into the room, caught the boy in her arms. He was not screaming now, but white as death and staring with fearful eyes at the bed, on which the bedclothes were pulled back, with Meekie peering over it. The two little girls, round-eyed and frightened, were sitting up in their cots. For a moment, Roddy stayed rigid in her arms; then he hid his face against her arm and broke into convulsive sobs.
"It's a big spider—all red and black—like the one that bit Bernard!"
And, in fact, from where she stood, Christine could see the monstrous thing, with its black, furry claws, protruding eyes, and red-blotched body, still crouching there in a little hollow at the end of the bed. Only, the person leaning over examining it now was not Meekie but Saltire, who had reached the nursery almost on her heels.
"I put my foot against it and touched its beastly fur!" cried Roddy, and suddenly began to scream again.
"Roddy! How dare you make that abominable noise?"
Mrs. van Cannan's voice fell like a jet of ice-cold water into the room. Behind her in the doorway loomed the tall figure of Saxby, the manager, with McNeil and the others. Christine's warm heart would never have suggested such a method of quieting the boy, but it had its points. Roddy, though still shaking and ashen, stood up straight and looked at his mother.
"All about a silly spider!" continued the latter, with cutting scorn."I am ashamed of you! I thought you were brave, like your father."
That flushed Roddy to his brows.
"It has fur—red fur," he stammered.
"You deserve a whipping for your cowardice," said Mrs. van Cannan curtly, and walked over to the bed. "The thing is half dead, and quite harmless," she said.
"Half dead or half drunk," McNeil jocosely suggested. "I never saw a tarantula so quiet as that before."
"The question is how long would it have stayed in that condition?" saidSaltire significantly. "For you are mistaken about its harmlessness,Mrs. van Cannan. It is one of the most poisonous and ferocious of itstribe."
They had got the strangely sluggish beast off the bed by knocking it with a stick into an old shoe, and were removing it. Christine only vaguely heard the remarks, for Roddy hid his eyes while it was being carried out, and was trembling violently against her. It seemed amazing to her that Mrs. van Cannan did not realize that there was more than mere cowardice in his behaviour. The trouble was so plainly psychological—the memory of the loss of a loved little brother subtly interwoven with horror of that particular species of venomous insect. Christine herself had a greater hatred of spiders than of any creeping things, and well understood the child's panic of disgust and fear. It filled her with indignation to hear Mrs. van Cannan turn once more and lash the boy with a phrase before she swept from the room.
"Miserable little coward!"
In a moment, the girl was kneeling on the floor beside the unhappy child, holding him tight, whispering words of love and comfort.
"No, no, darling; it is only that she does not understand! We will explain to her—I will tell her later why you hated it so. Wait till your daddy comes back. I am sure he will understand."
So she strove to comfort him, while Meekie coaxed the little girls back to the horizontal attitude under their sheets.
"Don't make me go back into that bed," whispered Roddy fearfully.
"No; of course not. Don't worry; just trust me, darling!" She turned to Meekie. "I will stay with them now, Meekie. You may go."
"But has the missy had her dinner?" asked the Cape woman politely.
"I have had all I want, thank you, Meekie."
The thought of going back to the dinner-table—to eat and join in the talk and laughter while this small boy whom she loved stayed alone with his wretchedness revolted her. Perhaps later, when he slept, she might slip out into the garden for a while. In the meantime, she beguiled him over to her own bed, and having taken off the coverlet to show him that it held no lurking horrors, she made him get in and curl up, and she knelt beside him, whispering softly so as not to disturb the others, reassuring him of her belief in his courage whilst understanding his horror, confessing her own hatred of spiders, but urging him to try and fight against his fear of them. She told him stories of her own childhood, crooned little poems to him, and sang old songs softly, hoping and praying that he would presently fall asleep. But time slipped by, and he remained wide-eyed, gripping her hand tightly, and only by the slightest degrees relaxing the nervous rigour of his body under the coverlet. Suddenly, he startled her by a strange remark:
"If I could only get into the pink palace with Carol, I'd be all right."
The girl looked down into the distended pupils gazing so wistfully at her, and wondering what new psychological problem she had to deal with. She knew she must go very warily, or defeat her own longing to help him. At last, she said very tenderly,
"The world is full of pink palaces, Roddy, but we do not always find them until we are grown up."
He looked at her intently.
"Carol found one at the bottom of the dam," he whispered slowly. "He is there now; it's only his body that is buried in the graveyard."
She smoothed his hair gently with her hand.
"Carol is in a more beautiful palace than any we find here on earth, darling."
The secret, elfin expression crossed his face, but he said nothing.
"And you must not believe that about the dam," she warned him gravely. "There is nothing at the bottom of it but black mud, and deep water that would drown you, too, if you went in."
"Iknowthe palace is there," he repeated doggedly. "I have seen it. The best time to see it is in the early morning or in the evening. All the towers of it are pink then, and you can see the golden wings of the angels shining through the windows."
"That is the reflection of the pink-and-gold clouds in the sky at dawn and sunset that you see, dear silly one. Will you not believe me?"
He squeezed her hand lovingly.
"Mamma has seen it, too," he whispered. "You know she was with Carol when he fell in, and she saw him go into the door of the palace and be met by all the golden angels. She tried to get him back, but she cannot swim, and then she came running home for help. Afterward, they took Carol's body out and buried him, but, you know, he is really there still. Mamma has seen him looking through the windows—she told me—but you must not tell any one. It is very secret, and once I thought I saw him, too, beckoning to me."
Christine was staggered. That so dangerous an illusion had been fostered by a mother was too bewildering, and she hardly knew how to meet and loyally fight it. It did not take her long to decide. With all the strength at her command, she set to work to clear away from his mind the whole fantastical construction. He clung to it firmly at first, and, in the end, almost pleaded to be left with the belief that he had but to step down the dam wall and join his brother in the fair pink palace. She realized now what tragedy had been lurking at her elbow all these days. Remembering the day when she had caught him up at the brink of the dam, she turned cold as ice in the heat-heavy room. A moment later, she returned to her theme, her explanations, her prayers for a promise from him that never, never would he go looking again for a vision that did not exist. At last he promised, and almost immediately fell asleep.
As for Christine Chaine, she stayed where she was on the floor, her head resting on the bed in sheer exhaustion, her limbs limp. All thought of going into the garden had left her. Sitting there, stiff-kneed and weary, she thought of Saltire's eyes, and realized that there had come and gone an evening which she must count for ever among the lost treasures of her life. Yet she did not regret it as she rose at last and looked down by the dim light on the pale, beautiful, but composed little face on the pillow.
She lay long awake. Roddy's bed was too short for her, and there was no ease in it, even had her mind and heart been at rest. All the fantasies she had beguiled from the boy's brain had come to roost in her own, with a hundred other vivid and painful impressions. The night, too, was fuller than usual of disquietude. The wind, which had been rising steadily, now tore at the shutters and rushed shrieking through the trees. There was a savage rumble of thunder among the hills, and, intermittently, lightning came through the shutter-slats.
When, above it all, she heard a gentle tapping, and sensed the whispering presence without, her cup of dreadful unease was full. But she was not afraid. She rose, as she had done one night before, and put on her dressing-gown. For a while, standing close to the shutters, she strained her ears to catch the message whose import she knew so well. The idea of speaking to someone or something as anxious as herself over Roddy had banished all horror. She longed for an interview with the strange being without. There was nothing to do but attempt, as before, to leave the house by the front door.
Down the long passage and through the dining-room she felt her way, moving noiselessly. When she came to the door, she found it once again with the bar hanging loose. More, it was ajar, and stirring (sluggishly, by reason of its great weight) to the wind. But her hand fell back when she would have opened it wide, for there were two people in the blackness of the porch, bidding each other good-night with kisses and wild words. Clear on a gust of wind came Isabel van Cannan's voice, fiercely passionate.
"I hate the place. Oh, to be gone from it, Dick! To be gone with you, my darling! When—when?"
He crushed the question on her lips with kisses and whisperings.
Christine Chaine stole back from whence she came, with the strange and terrible sensation that her heart was being crushed between iron fingers and was bleeding slowly, drop by drop, to death. Once more, life had played her false. Love had mocked her and passed by on the other side.
Some of the men wondered, next day, how they could have had the illusion that Miss Chaine was a beautiful girl. The two Hollanders, who were great friends, discussed the matter after lunch while they were clipping feathers from the ostriches. One thing was quite clear to them both: she was just one of those cold Englishwomen without a drop in her veins of the warmth and sparkle that a man likes in a woman. Mrs. van Cannan now—she was the one! Still, it was a funny thing how they should have been taken in over Miss Chaine. Someone else had been taken in, too, however, and with a vengeance—that fellow Saltire, with his "sidey" manners.Hehad got a cold douche, if you like, at the hands of the proud one. They had all witnessed it. Thus and thus went the Dutchmen's remarks and speculations, and they chuckled with the malice of schoolboys over the discomfiture of Saltire. For it was well known to them and to the other men that the Englishman had ridden off, in the cool hours of the dawn, to Farnie Marais' place about ten miles away, to get her some flowers. He wanted to borrow an instrument, he said, but it was funny he should choose to go to Marais', who was more famous for the lovely roses he grew for the market than for any knowledge of scientific instruments. Funny, too, that all he had been seen to bring back was a bunch of yellow roses that must have cost him a stiff penny, for old Farnie did not grow roses for fun.
No one had seen Saltire present the roses (that must have happened in the dining-room before the others came in); but all had marked the careless indifference with which they were scattered on the table and spilled on the floor beside the governess's chair. She looked on calmly, too, while the little girls, treating them like daisies, pulled several to pieces, petal by petal. Only the boy Roderick had appeared to attach any worth to them. He rescued some from under the table, and was overheard to ask ardently if he might have three for his own. The answer that he might have them all if he liked was not missed by any one in the room, though spoken in Miss Chaine's usual quiet tones. It might have been an accident that she walked over some of the spilled roses as she left the room, but certainly she could not have shown her mind more plainly than by leaving every single one behind her. Roddy only, with a pleased and secret look upon his face, carried three of them away in a treasured manner.
Whatever Saltire's feelings were at the affront put upon him, he gave no sign. He was not one who wore his emotions where they could be read by all who ran, or even by those who sat and openly studied him with malice and amusement. His face was as serene as usual, and his envied gift of turning events of the monotonous everyday veld life into interesting topics of conversation remained unimpaired. He had even risen, as always, with his air of careless courtesy, to open the door for the woman who walked over his flowers.
The fact remained, as the manager said to the foreman after lunch, that he had certainly "caught it in the neck," and must have felt it somewhere. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he merely congratulated himself that the little scene when he had given the roses to Miss Chaine had been lost by everyone except the children, who were too young and self-engrossed to value its subtlety.
Either by accident or design, he had come to lunch a little earlier than usual, and as Miss Chaine and the children were always in their seats a good ten minutes before the rest of the party, it was quite simple for him, entering quietly and before she even knew of his presence, to lay the bunch of fragrant roses across her hands. A sweep of heavy delicious perfume rose to her face, and she gave a little rapturous "Oh!"
"I thought you might like them," said Saltire, with a sort of boyish diffidence that was odd in him. "They are just the colour of the dress you wore last night."
In an instant, her face froze. She looked at him, with eyes from which every vestige of friendliness or liking had completely disappeared, and said politely, but with the utmost disdain:
"Thank you, I do not care for them. Pray give them where they will be appreciated."
She pulled her hands from under the lovely blooms and pushed them away as if there were something contaminating in their touch. Some fell on the table, some on the floor. For a moment, Saltire seemed utterly taken aback, then he said carelessly:
"Throw them away if you like. They were meant for you and no one else."
She gave him a curiously cutting glance, but spoke nothing. As the sound of voices told of the approach of the other men, he walked to his place without further remark, and had already taken his seat when Mrs. van Cannan, followed by Saxby, entered. They were talking about Saxby's wife, and Mrs. van Cannan looked infinitely distressed.
"I am so sorry. I will go and sit with her this afternoon and see if I can cheer her up," she said.
"It will be very kind of you," said Saxby gratefully. "I have never known her so low."
"It must be the weather. We are all feeling the heat terribly. If only the rains would break."
"They are not far off," said Andrew McNeil cheerfully. "I prophesy that tonight every kloof will be roaring full, and tomorrow will see the river in flood."
"In that case, the mail had better go off this evening at six," said Mrs. van Cannan. "It may be held up for days otherwise. I hope everyone has their letters ready? Have you, Miss Chaine?"
"I have one or two still to write, but I can get through them quickly this afternoon."
Christine avoided looking directly at her. She felt that the woman must see the contempt in her eyes. It was hard to say which she detested more of the two sitting there so serenely cheerful—the faithless wife and mother, or the man who ate another man's salt and betrayed him in his absence. It made her feel sick and soiled to be in such company, to come into contact with such creeping, soft-footed, whispering treachery. She ached to get away from it all and wipe the whole episode from her mind. Yet how could she leave the children, leave Roddy, desert the father's trust? She knew she could not. But very urgently she wrote after lunch to Mr. van Cannan, begging him to return to the farm as soon as his health permitted and release her from her engagement. She expressed it as diplomatically as she was able, making private affairs her reason for the change; but she could not and would not conceal the fervency of her request.
There was a brooding silence in the room where she sat writing and thinking. Roddy, for once, tired out from the night before, slept under his mosquito-net, side by side with the little girls, and Christine, looking at his beautiful, classical face and sensitive mouth, wondered how she would ever be able to carry out her plan to leave the farm. Who would understand him as she did, and protect him? Even the father who loved him had not known of the secret, fantastic danger of the dam. And the woman who should have destroyed the fantasy had encouraged it! But God knew what was in the heart of that strange woman; Christine Chaine did not—nor wished to. All she wished was that she might never see her again. As for Saltire, her proud resolve was to blot him from her memory, to forget that he had ever occupied her heart for a moment. But—O God, how it hurt, that empty, desecrated heart! How it haunted her, the face she had thought so beautiful, with its air of strength and chivalry, that now she knew to be a mockery and a lie!
She sat in the shuttered gloom, with her hands pressed to her temples, and bitter tears that could no longer be held back sped down her cheeks. In all the dark hours since she had stolen back to the nursery, overwhelmed by the discovery of a hateful secret, she had not wept. Her spirit had lain like a stricken thing in the ashes of humiliation, and her heart had stayed crushed and dead. "Cold as a stone in a valley lone." Now it was wakened to pain once more by the scent of three yellow roses carefully placed by Roddy in a jug on the table. The scent of those flowers told her that she must go wounded all her life. She could "never again be friends with roses." He had even spoiled those for her. How dared he? Oh, how dared he come to her with gifts of flowers in his hands straight from a guilty intrigue with another man's wife?
The children stirred and began to chirrup drowsily, and she hastily collected herself, forcing back her tears and assuming the expressionless mask which life so often makes women wear. She was only just in time. A moment later, Isabel van Cannan came into the room with a packet of letters in her hands.
"Oh, Miss Chaine," she said, with her pretty, child-like air, "would it be too much to ask you to take down these letters to the store presently? The mail is to leave about four o'clock. I have to go out myself by and by, but the Saxbys' house is in the opposite direction, as you know, and I am really not able to knock about too much in this heat."
"Certainly I will take them," said Christine. "But the children?"
"They must not go, of course. Indeed, I would not ask you to go out in this blaze, but I don't like to trust letters with servants. There is no hurry, however. Finish your own letters first, then bring the children to my room. They will amuse themselves there all right."
By the time Christine had donned a shady hat and gloves, Mrs. van Cannan had made out a long list of articles she required at the store. The household things were to be sent in the ordinary way, but she begged Christine to choose some coloured cottons that she required for new pinafores for the little girls and bring them along, also to look through the stock of note-paper for anything decently suitable, as her own stock had given out. It was the type of errand Christine was unaccustomed to perform and plainly foreign to her recognized duties; but it was difficult to be unobliging and refuse, so she took the letters and the list and departed.
The store was a good half-mile off and the going (in hot weather) not very fast. Then, when she got there, the storekeeper was busy with his own mail, and she was kept waiting until various goods had been packed into the cart before the door and driven away with the mail behind four prancing mules. Looking out cottons and writing-paper occupied some further time. Stores on farms are poky places, and the things always hidden away in inaccessible spots. At any rate, the best part of an hour had passed before Christine was again on her way home, and she had an uneasy feeling that she had been too long away from the children, especially from Roddy. Suddenly, her haste was arrested by an unexpected sight. A tiny spot of colour lay right in her pathway on the ground. It was only a yellow rose-leaf, but it brought a catch in Christine's breath and her feet to an abrupt halt. How had it come there? If it had fallen from one of Roddy's roses, it meant that he had been out of doors since she left! That set her hurrying on again, but, as she walked, she reflected that of the many roses left in the dining-room, some might easily have been carried off by the servants and leaves dropped from them. Still, she was breathless and rather pale when she reached the house, wasting not a moment in finding her way to Mrs. van Cannan's room.
Rita and Coral were amusing themselves happily, winding up a tangle of bright-coloured silks. But Roddy was gone! Neither was Mrs. van Cannan there.
Christine sat down rather suddenly, but her voice gave no sign of the alarm she felt.
"Where is Roddy?"
"He went out," answered Rita, perching herself upon Christine. "Mamma is going to give us each a new dolly if we get this silk untangled for her."
"How long ago did Roddy go?"
"Just after you went. But you mustn't be cross with him; Mamma gave him permission."
"Mamma is gone, too, to see poor Mrs. Saxby," prattled Coral.
Christine put them gently away from her.
"Well, hurry up and earn your new dollies," she counselled, smiling;"I'll be back very soon to help you."
In the dining-room, she looked for the discarded roses and found them gathered in a dying heap on a small side-table. In the nursery, she found two of Roddy's roses in the jug. The third was missing!
Of one thing she felt as certain as she could feel of anything in the shifting quicksands of that house, and that was that Roddy had not gone to the dam, for he had promised her earnestly, the night before, that never again would he go there without her. Could he, then, have gone to the cemetery? Even that seemed unlikely, for he loved her to go with him on his excursions thither. Where else, then? The rose-leaf she had passed on the road stuck obstinately in her memory, and now she suddenly remembered that the place she had seen it was near the barn from whence she had once found Roddy emerging. Perhaps he had gone there to amuse himself in his own mysterious fashion. He might even have been there when she passed. Oh, why had she not looked in? But the omission was easily rectified. In two minutes she was out of doors again, walking rapidly the way she had come.
Roddy was not in the barn, however, and it seemed at a glance as harmless a place as she had thought it before. An end of it was full of forage, and one side piled high with old farm-implements and empty cases. Rather to the fore of the pile stood one large packing case, sacking and straw sticking from under its loose lid. Christine had just decided there was nothing here to warrant her scrutiny when, lying in front of this case, she saw something that drew her gaze like a magnet. It was another yellow rose-leaf.
"Roddy!" she cried, and was astonished at the sharp relief in her voice, for she had suddenly made up her mind that the boy was there hiding from her. There was no answer to her call. Very slowly then she went over and lifted the lid of the case. It was quite loose, and edged with a fringe of strong nails that had once fastened it to the box, but which now were red with rust. A quantity of sacking, of the kind used for winding about fragile goods, lay heaped at the top and came away easily to her hand, exposing that which lay firmly wedged at the bottom. What she had expected to find she did not know. What she did find astonished her beyond all things. It was a beautifully chiselled white marble tombstone in the shape of a cross. The whole of the inscription was clear of dust or any covering save one fading yellow rose. Awed, deeply touched, and feeling herself upon the verge of a mysterious revelation, Christine lifted Roddy's yellow rose and read the simple gold-lettered inscription:
The date of death was two years old.
Much that had been dark became clear to Christine. She understood at last. The woman whose sad fate was here recorded, cut off at twenty-seven—that fairest period in a happy woman's life—was Roddy's mother, the mother of all the little van Cannan children, living and dead. The woman who had ousted her memory from all hearts save loving, loyal Roddy's was the second wife and stepmother.
Much in the attitude of the big, blond, laughing woman who reigned now at Blue Aloes, false to her husband, careless of the fate of his children, was accounted for, too. The sorrows of the van Cannans had never touched her. How should they? Had not Christine heard from her own lips, the night before, the confession of her love for another, and her hatred of Bernard van Cannan's home. How, then, should she love Bernard van Cannan's children?
The cruel taunt of cowardice she had flung at Roddy was explained. The boy's sensitive, loyal nature was a book too deep for her reading, the memory of his loved ones too sweet and tenacious for her to tamper with. Nevertheless, she had understood him well enough to set a bond on his honour never to speak of the dead woman who slept in the unmarked grave while her tombstone lay in the rubble of an outhouse. The spell by which she had won the man to forgetfulness and neglect was not the same as that by which she had induced silence in the boy. A promise had been wrung from him—perhaps even under duress! Suddenly, terror swept over Christine Chaine. It was revealed to her, as in a vision, that the pink-and-white woman who laughed with such childlike innocence by day and whispered so passionately to her lover by night could be capable of many things not good for those who stood in the way of her wishes.
Why had two of the van Cannan sons died sudden deaths? Why was the lure of a pink palace at the bottom of the dam fostered in the third? How had the tarantula come into his bed, and why had someone said that it acted like a thing drugged or intoxicated, and that, when it woke up, it would have been a bad lookout for Roddy?
"God forgive me!" cried the distracted girl to herself. "Perhaps I am more wicked than she, to harbour such thoughts!"
Then, as if at a call that her heart heard rather than her ears, she found herself running out of the barn and across the veld in the hot, stormy sunshine, in the direction of the Saxbys' bungalow.
She had never been there before, though often, in their walks, she and the children had passed within a stone's throw of the little wood-and-iron building. The door was always shut, and the windows hidden by the heavy creeper that covered in the stoep. She had often thought what a drab and dreary life it must be for a woman to live hidden away there, and even the children never passed without a compassionate allusion to "poor Mrs. Saxby, always shut up there alone."
A dread of seeing the sad, disfigured creature seized her now, as she reached the darkened stoep, and held her back for a moment. She stood wondering why she had come and how she could expect to find Roddy there where the children had never been allowed to penetrate. But, in the very act of hesitation, she heard the boy's voice ring out.
"No, mamma;please don't make me do it!"
In a couple of swift steps she was in the stoep and her hand on the knob of the door. But the door would not open. There were two narrow windows that gave onto the stoep, and, without pause, she flew to the one that she judged to be in the direction of the child's voice and laid hands upon it. It was closed and curtained with thick blue muslin, but there were no shutters, and to her forceful push the lower part jerked up, and the curtains divided. She found herself standing there, the silent spectator of a scene in which all the actors were silent, too amazed or paralyzed by her unexpected appearance.
The room was a common little sitting-room with a table in the centre, at either end of which sat Mrs. van Cannan and Mr. Saxby. Roddy was between the table and the wall, and Christine's first glance showed him white-faced and staring with fascinated, fearful eyes at a large cardboard box, with a flat-iron on its lid, which stood on the table. The two elder people were each holding small knobkerries, that is, stout sticks with wired handles and heavy heads made by the natives. A revolver lay at Saxby's elbow.
The little tableau remained stationary just long enough for Christine to observe all details; then everyone acted at once. Roddy flew round the table and reached her at the window, sobbing:
"Oh, Miss Chaine! Miss Chaine!"
Saxby laid his knobkerrie on the table and lit a cigarette, and Mrs. van Cannan, rising from her seat with an air of dignity outraged beyond all bounds, addressed Christine.
"What is the meaning of this intrusion, Miss Chaine? How dare you come bursting into Mr. Saxby's house like this?"
"I heard Roddy call out," was the firm answer, "and I consider it my duty to protect him." She had the boy well within her reach now, and could easily have lifted him out of the low window, but it seemed an undignified thing to do unless it became absolutely necessary.
"Protect him! From what, may I ask?" The woman's voice was like a knife.
"I don't know from what. I only know that he was in grave fear of something you were about to do."
Saxby interposed with a soft laugh.
"You surely cannot suppose Roddy was in any danger from his mother,Miss Chaine—or that I would harm him?"
He certainly did not look very harmful with his full, handsome features and melancholy smile.
"Your action is both ridiculous and impertinent," continued Mrs. van Cannan furiously. "And I can tell you that I will not stand that sort of thing from any one in my house," she added, with the air of one dismissing a servant: "You may go. Roddy, come here!"
Roddy gave a wild cry.
"Don't leave me, Miss Chaine. They've got a snake in that box, and they want me to let it out."
There was blank silence for a moment; then Christine spoke with deliberation.
"If this is true, it is the most infamous thing I have ever heard."
Even Isabel van Cannan was silenced, and Saxby's deprecating smile passed. He said gravely:
"Mrs. van Cannan has a right to use what methods she thinks best to cure her boy of cowardice."
"Cowardice!" Christine answered him scornfully. "The word would be better applied to those who deliberately terrify a child. I am astonished at a man taking part in such a vile business."
She was pale with indignation and pity for the boy who trembled in her arms, and in no mood to choose her words.
Saxby shrugged his shoulders with a sort of helpless gesture toward his companion as if to say he had only done as he was told. Mrs. van Cannan gave him a furious glance before returning to Christine.
"Can't you see," she said violently, "that we have sticks here ready to kill the thing, and a revolver if necessary? Not that it is poisonous—if it had bitten that miserable little worm!" She cast a withering glance at Roddy. He shrank closer to Christine, who judged it time to pull him safely from the room to her side on to the veranda.
"There is nothing miserable about Roddy," she said fiercely, "except his misfortune in having a step-mother who neither loves nor understands him."
That blenched the woman at the table. She turned a curious yellow colour, and her golden-brown eyes appeared to perform an evolution in her head that, for a moment, showed nothing of them but the eyeball.
"That will do," she hissed, advancing menacingly upon Christine. "I always felt you were a spy. But you shall not stay prying here another day. Pack your things and go at once."
"Come, come, Mrs. van Cannan," interposed Saxby soothingly; "I am sure you are unjust to Miss Chaine. Besides, how can she go at once? There is nothing for her to travel by until the cart returns from Cradock."
But the woman he addressed had lost all control of herself.
"She goes tomorrow, cart or no cart!" she shouted, and struck one clenched fist on the other. "We will see who is mistress at Blue Aloes!"
Christine cast at her the look of a well-bred woman insulted by a brawling fishwife, and with Roddy's hand tightly in hers, walked out of the veranda without deigning to answer.
But though her mien was haughty as she walked away from Saxby's bungalow holding Roddy's hand, her spirits were at zero. She had burned her boats with a vengeance, and come out into the open to face an enemy who would stick at nothing, and who, apparently, had everyone at the farm at her side, including the big, good-natured-seeming Saxby.
It would be difficult to stay on at Blue Aloes and protect Roddy if his stepmother insisted on her departure, and she did not see how she was going to do it. She only knew that nothing and no one should budge her from the place. Something dogged in her upheld her from dismay and determined her to take a stand against the whole array of them. She was in the right, and it was her plain duty to do as Bernard van Cannan had besought, and not go until she could place Roddy in his father's hands with the full story of his persecutions.
"Tell me about it, Roddy," she said quietly, as they walked away. "Don't hide anything. You know that I love you and that your father has trusted you to my care."
"Yes," he assented eagerly; "but how did you know about my real mammie being dead?" His natural resilience had already helped him to surmount the terror just past, and he was almost himself again. "I wanted to tell you, but I had promised mamma not to tell any one."
It was as Christine had supposed. She explained her finding of the tombstone and the yellow rose, but not the rest of her terrible conclusions.
"I put it there," he said shyly. "She always loved yellow and red flowers. I was keeping the other two for her and Carol in the graveyard."
Christine squeezed the warm little hand, but continued her questions steadily.
"What happened after you had been to the outhouse?"
"Mamma was waiting for me on the stoep. She said she wanted me to come with her to see Mrs. Saxby." He added, with the sudden memory of surprise: "But wedidn'tsee Mrs. Saxby. I wonder where she was."
The same wonder seized Christine. Where could the unhappy, distraught creature have been hiding while the trial of Roddy was in process?
"What happened then?"
"We just went into the sitting-room, and Mr. Saxby got the box and the knobkerries and his revolver, and mamma said, 'Now, Roddy, there is a snake in that box, and I want you to prove you are not a coward like last night by taking off the lid.'" He shuddered violently. "But I couldn't. Oh, Miss Chaine, am I a coward?" he pleaded.
"No, darling; you arenot," she said emphatically. "Nobody in their senses would touch a box with a snake in it. It was very wrong to ask you to."
He looked at her gratefully.
"Then you opened the window. Oh, how glad I felt! It was just like as if God had sent you, for my heart felt as if it was calling out to you all the time. Perhaps you heard it and that made you come?"
"I did, Roddy," she said earnestly, "I ran all the way from the outhouse, because I felt you were in need of me."
They were nearly home when they saw Saltire and his boys close beside their path. Roddy was urgent to stop and talk, but Christine made the fact that heavy rain-drops were beginning to fall an excuse for hurrying on, and indeed in Saltire's face there was no invitation to linger, for, though he smiled at Roddy, Christine had never seen him so cold and forbidding-looking.
"He knows that I know," she thought, "and, base as he is, that disturbs him." The bitter thought brought her no consolation. She felt desolate and alone, like one lost in a desert, with a great task to accomplish and no friend in sight or sign in the skies. In the house, she collected the little girls, and they spent the rest of the afternoon together. The storm had broke suddenly, and the long-threatened rain came at last, lashing up the earth and battering on the window-panes amid deafening claps of thunder and a furious gale of wind.
When bath-time came for the children, Christine stayed with them until the last moment, superintending Meekie. She would have given worlds to avoid going in to dinner that night. No one could have desired food less, or the society of those with whom she must partake of it. Yet she felt that it would be a sign of weakness and a concession to the enemy if she stayed away, so she dressed as usual and went in to face the dreary performance of sitting an hour or so with people whom she held in fear as well as contempt, for she knew not from moment to moment what new offence she might have to meet. Only great firmness of spirit and her natural good breeding sustained her through that trying meal.
Saltire did not put in an appearance, for which small mercy she was fain to thank God. Deeply as he had wounded and offended her, she hated to see his face as she had seen it that afternoon. Mrs. van Cannan, oddly pallid but with burning eyes, absolutely ignored the presence of the governess, and her lead was followed by all save Andrew McNeil, who was no man's man but his own, and always treated the girl with genial friendliness. As a matter of fact, there was but little conversation, for the sound of the rain, swishing down on the roof and windows and tearing through the trees without, deadened the sound of voices, and everyone seemed distrait.
Christine was not the only one who finished her meal hurriedly. As she rose, asking to be excused, Mrs. van Cannan, rising too, detained her.
"I wish to make arrangements with you about your departure tomorrow, Miss Chaine," she said, loudly enough for everyone's hearing. "Kindly come to my room."
There was nothing to be gained by not complying. Christine did not mean to leave the next day, and this seemed a good opportunity for stating her reasons and intentions; she buckled on her moral armour as she followed the trailing pink-and-white draperies down the long passage, preparing for an encounter of steel on steel.
"Close the door," said Isabel van Cannan, and went straight to a table drawer, taking out a small bag full of money.
"I shall give you a month's salary instead of notice," she announced, counting out sovereigns, "though, as a matter of fact, I believe you are not entitled to it, considering the scandalous way you have behaved, plotting and spying and setting the children against me."
Christine disdained to answer this lying charge. She only said quietly:
"It is useless to offer me money, Mrs. van Cannan. I have no intention of leaving the farm until Mr. van Cannan returns."
"What do you mean? How dare you?" began the other, with a return of her loud and insolent manner.
"Don't shout," said Christine coldly. "You only degrade yourself and do not alarm me. I mean what I have said. Mr. van Cannan engaged me, and entrusted his children to my care, not only when I came but by letter since his departure. I do not mean to desert that trust or relegate it to any hands but his own."
"He never wrote to you. I don't believe a word of it."
"You are at liberty to believe what you choose. I have the proof, and shall produce it if necessary. In the meantime, please understand plainly that I do not intend to be parted from Roddy."
A baffled look passed over the other's features, but she laughed contemptuously.
"We shall see," she sneered. "Wait till tomorrow, and we shall see how much your proofs and protests avail you."
"As we both know each other's minds and intentions, there is no use in prolonging this very disagreeable interview," answered Christine calmly, and walked out.
The dining-room was silent and dim. The men had evidently braved the rain for the sake of getting early to their own quarters, and no one was about. In the nursery, the lamp by which she sometimes read or wrote at her own table had not been lighted. Only a sheltered candle on the wash-hand stand cast a dim shadow toward the three little white beds under their mosquito-nets. Meekie had gone, but the quiet breathing of the children came faintly to the girl as she sat down by her table, thankful for a little space of silence and solitude in which to collect her forces. She saw violent and vulgar scenes ahead. Mrs. van Cannan, now that her true colours were unmasked, and it was no longer worth while to play the soft, sleepy rôle behind which she hid her fierce nature, would stick at nothing to get rid of Christine and set the whole world against her. Though the girl's resolution held firm, a dull despair filled her. How vile and cruel life could be! Friendship was a mockery; love, disillusion and ashes; nothing held sweet and true but the hearts of little children. An arid conclusion for a girl from whom the gods had not withdrawn those two surpassing and swiftly passing gifts—youth and beauty.
"To be a cynic at twenty-two!" she thought bitterly, and looked at her white, ringless hands. "I must have loved my kind even better than Chamfort, who said that no one who had loved his kind well could fail to be a misanthrope at forty. And I thought I had left it all behind in civilized England! Cruelty, falseness, treachery! But they are everywhere. Even here, on a South African farm in the heart of a desert, I find them in full bloom."
She bowed her head in her hands and strove for peace and forgetfulness, if for that night only. In the end, she found calmness at least, by reciting softly to herself the beautiful Latin words of her creed. Then she arose and took the candle in her hand for a final look at the children before she retired. The day had been terrible and full of surprises, but fate had reserved a last and staggering one for this hour. Roddy's bed was empty!
The shock of the discovery dazed her for a moment. It was too horrible to think that she had been sitting there all this time, wasting precious moments, while Roddy was—where? O God, where, and in what cruel hands on this night of fierce storm and stress? When was it that he had gone? Why had not Meekie been at her post as usual? She caught up the light and ran from the nursery into one room after another of the house.
All was silent. The servants were gone, the rooms empty. No sound but the pitiless battering of the rain without. At last she came to Isabel van Cannan's room and rapped sharply. There was no answer, and she made no bones about turning the door-handle, for this was no time for ceremony. But the bedroom, though brightly lighted, was empty. She did not enter, but stood in the doorway, searching with her eyes every corner and place that could conceivably hide a small boy. But there was no likely place. Even the bed stood high on tall brass legs, and its short white quilt showed that nothing could be hidden there. One object, however, that Christine Chaine had not sought forced itself upon her notice—an object that, even in her distress of mind, she had time to find extraordinary and unaccountable in this house of extraordinary and unaccountable things. On the dressing-table was a wig-stand of the kind to be seen in the window of a fashionablecoiffeur. It had a stupid, waxen face, and on its head was arranged a wig of blond curly hair with long golden plaits hanging down on each side, even as the plaits of Isabel van Cannan hung about her shoulders as she lay among her pillows every morning. The thing gave Christine a thrill such as all the horrors of that day had not caused her. So innocent, yet so sinister, perched there above the foolish, waxen features, it seemed symbolical of the woman who hid cruel and terrible things behind her babylike airs and sleepy laughter.
Atop of these thoughts came the woman herself, emergingen déshabilléfrom her adjoining bathroom. The moment she saw Christine, she flung a towel across her head, but too late for her purpose. The girl had seen the short, crisp, almost snowy curls that were hidden by day under the golden wig, and realized in an instant that she was in the presence of a woman of a breed she had never known—mulatto, albino, or some strange admixture of native and European blood. The golden hair, assisted by artificial aids to the complexion, and her large golden-brown eyes had lent an extraordinary blondness to the skin. But the moment the wig was off, the mischief was out. The thickness of eyelids and nostril, and a certain cruel, sensuous fulness of the lips and jaw told the dark tale, and Christine wondered how she could ever have been taken in, except that the woman before her was as clever as she was cruel and unscrupulous. A tingling horror stole through her veins as she stood there, sustaining a malignant glance and listening dumfounded to an insolent inquiry as to what further spying she had come to do.
"I beg your pardon," she stammered. "I knocked, and, getting no answer, opened the door, hardly knowing what I did in my distress. Roddy is missing from his bed, and I don't know where to look for him."
The other had turned away for a moment, adjusting the covering on her head before a mirror. She may still have believed that her secret remained unrevealed.
"I haven't the faintest notion of Roddy's whereabouts," she said, "and if he is lost out in this storm, perhaps drowned in one of the kloofs, yours will be the blame, and I will see you are brought to book for it." She spoke with the utmost malice and satisfaction. "Now, get out of my room!"
Christine went. Indeed, she was convinced that for once the woman spoke truth and that Roddy was not there or anywhere in the house. It was out-of-doors that she must seek him. So back to her room on winged feet to get a waterproof and make her way from the house. For once, the front door was barred! Outside, the rain had ceased as suddenly as it had burst from the heavens. Only the wind swished and howled wildly among the trees, tearing up handfuls of gravel to fling against the doors and windows. Afar off was a roaring sound new to her, that, later, she discovered to be the rushing waters in the kloofs that were tearing tumultuously to swell the river a few miles off. Clouds had blotted out moon and stars. All the light there was came intermittently from whip-like lightning flashes across the sky. It helped Christine a little as she stumbled through the darkness, crying out Roddy's name, but she found herself often colliding with trees, and prickly-pear bushes seemed to be rushing hither and thither, waving fantastic arms and clutching for her as she passed. The idea had come to her suddenly to seek Andrew McNeil and ask for his help. He was the only friendly soul of all those on the farm that she could turn to. True, another face presented itself to her mind for one moment, but she banished it with scorn, despising herself for even thinking of Dick Saltire.
She fancied that McNeil lodged at the storekeeper's place, and set herself to find the route she had taken that afternoon—no easy task in the darkness that surrounded her. But at last she saw a twinkle of light, and, approaching closer, found that, by great good luck, she had indeed happened on the store. The door stood open, and she could see the man behind the counter talking to McNeil, who, seated on an upturned case, was smoking peacefully. Someone else was there too—someone whose straight back and gallant air was very familiar to her. Saltire was buying tobacco from the storekeeper. But Christine had no word for him. She went straight to McNeil with her story.
"Roddy is lost!" she cried. "You must please come and help me find him."
The men stared, electrified at her appearance. White as a bone, her beautiful violet eyes full of haunting fear; her hair, torn down by the wind and flickering in long black strands about her face, far below her waist, she looked like a wraith of the storm.
"Roddy lost!" McNeil and the storekeeper turned mechanically as one man to Saltire. It was only the girl who would not turn to him.
"Come quickly!" she urged. "He may be drowning somewhere, even now, in one of the swollen streams." She imagined the tragedy to herself as she spoke, and her voice was full of wistful despair.
"Get her a hot drink." Saltire, flinging the command to the storekeeper, spoke for the first time. "I'll round up the boys and get lanterns for a search." In a few moments there was a flicker of lanterns without, and the murmur of voices.
"Come along, Niekerk!" commanded Saltire, and the storekeeper began to put his lights out. "McNeil, you take Miss Chaine back to the farm."
"No, no; I must come, too!" she cried.
"Impossible," he said curtly. "You will only be a hindrance."
"Then I will go home alone," she said quietly, "and free Mr. McNeil to accompany you."
"Very well—if you think you can find your way. Here is a lantern."
She took it and went her way while they went theirs. Long before she reached the garden round the house, the lantern in her unskilful hands had gone out and she was groping by instinct.
All the weariness and strain of the day had suddenly descended upon her in a cloud. She knew she was near the end of her tether. This life at Blue Aloes was too much for her, after all; she must give it best at last; it was dominating her, driving her like a leaf before the wind. These were her thoughts as she crept wearily through the garden, but suddenly she heard voices and was galvanized into hope, tinged with fear. Perhaps Roddy was found! Perhaps her terror and suffering had been unnecessary. She listened for a moment, then located the speakers close to her in the stoep.
"Dick," a voice she knew was saying, "I am sick of it. Bernardmaydie down in East London, but we shall never get rid of the boy while that English Jezebel is here. And she knows too much now. We had better go. Blue Aloes will never be ours to sell and go back to our own dear island. Everything has gone wrong."
"Nonsense, Issa. You are too impatient. Van Cannan will never come back. He is too full of antimony. As for Roddy, poor kid, he is probably drowned in one of the kloofs and speeding for the river by now—just the sort of adventure his queer little mind would embark on. No one can blame us forthat, at least. You are far too easily discouraged, my darling. Wait till the morning." The voice was the soft, sonorous voice of Saxby, and a lightning flash revealed to the girl cowering among the trees that it was he who held Isabel van Cannan in his arms.
There were two "Dicks" at Blue Aloes, and Christine, not knowing it, had been guilty of a grave injustice to Richard Saltire! Aghast as she was by the revelation, all her love and faith came tingling back in a sweet, overwhelming flood. For a moment or two she forgot Roddy, forgot where she was, forgot all the world but Saltire, and her attention was withdrawn from the pair in the stoep—indeed, she had no desire to hear their words, now that she was sure they knew no more of the boy's whereabouts than she herself. But the muffled clang of the bar across the front door broke through her thoughts, and she became aware that Saxby had left and Mrs. van Cannan gone in. She was alone in the gaunt darkness, barred out, and with no means of getting into the house; all other doors were locked, as well she knew, and all shutters firmly bolted, including those of the nursery. However, the fact did not worry her greatly, for the thought of being snug and safe while poor Roddy roamed somewhere in the blackness had no appeal for her. Out here, she seemed, somehow, nearer to him, and to the man whom she now knew she had deeply wronged. Lanterns, twinkling like will-o'-the-wisps in every direction, told of the search going forward, and she determined to stay in the summer-house and wait for what news might come. It was very obscure there, and she knew not what loathly insects might be crawling on the seats and table, but, at any rate, it was shelter from the rain, which now again began to fall heavily.
It seemed to her hours that she sat there while the storm swept round her and the rushing of many waters filled her ears. As a matter of fact, it was less than half an hour before she determined that inactivity was something not to be borne another moment and that she must return and join in the search for Roddy. So out she stumbled across the veld again, in the direction of the lanterns, evading as best she could the prickly-pear bushes, stubbing her feet against rocks and boschies, drenched and driven by the storm. It was old Andrew McNeil whom she found first, and he seemed an angel from heaven after the vile and menacing loneliness, although he was but ill pleased to see her.
"You should be in your bed, lassie," he muttered. "The poor bairn will never be found this night. We've searched everywhere. There's nothing left but the water."
"Oh, don't say that!" she cried woefully, and peered, fascinated, at the boiling torrent rushing down a kloof that but yesterday was an innocent gully they had crossed in their walks, in some places so narrow as to allow a jump from bank to bank. Now it was a turbulent flood of yellow water, spreading far beyond its banks and roaring with a rage unappeasable. While they stood there, staring, Saltire came up.
"You, Miss Chaine! I thought I asked you to return to the farm." His tones, were frigid, but his eyes compassionate. No one with any humanity could have failed to be touched by the forlorn girl, pale and lovely in the dim light.
"I had to come. I could not stay inert any longer."
"We have searched every inch of the land inside the aloes," he said. "He has either fallen into one of the streams or got out beyond the hedge into the open veld—which seems impossible, somehow. At any rate, we can do no more until it is light." He dismissed the natives with a brief: "Get home, boys.Hamba lalla!" then turned to McNeil. "Take Miss Chaine's other arm, Mac; we must see for ourselves that she goes indoors."
She made some sound of remonstrance, but he paid no attention, simply taking her arm, half leading, half supporting her. There was a long way to go. They walked awhile in a silence that had hopelessness in it; then Christine asked:
"Did you search every outhouse and barn?"
"Every one, and the cemetery, too," answered Saltire. "There's not a place inside or out of the farm-buildings we haven't been over—except Saxby's bungalow, and he's hardly likely to be there."
"He was there this afternoon," said Christine slowly. It seemed to her time to let them into the truth.
"What!"
Both men halted in amazement. Such a thing as any one but Mrs. van Cannan going to Saxby's was unknown. Briefly she recounted the incidents of the afternoon. The men's verdict was the same as hers had been.
"Atrocious!"
"Infamous! After that, we will certainly visit Saxby's," decidedSaltire. "But, first, Miss Chaine must go home."
"No, no; let me come," she begged. "It is not far. Imustknow."
So, in the end, she got her way, and they all approached the bungalow together. It was in utter darkness, and the men had to rap loud and long before any response came from within. At last Saxby's voice was heard inquiring who the deuce, and what the deuce, etc., etc., at that time of the night—followed by his appearance in the doorway with a candle.
"We want to come in and look for Roddy," said Saltire briefly, and, without further ado, pushed the burly man aside and entered, followed by McNeil. Christine, too, entered, and sat down inside the door. She was very exhausted. Saxby appeared too flabbergasted to move for a moment. Then he remonstrated with considerable heat.
"What do you mean by this? You don't seem to know that you are in my house!"
But the other two had already passed through the empty sitting-room to the one beyond, and were casting lantern-gleams from side to side, examining everything.
"You must be crazy to think the boy is here," Saxby blustered, as they re-emerged. They paid not the slightest attention to him, but continued their search into the kitchen, the only other room of the house.
"No," said Saltire, very quietly, as he came back into the room and set the light on the table; "the boy is not here. But where is Mrs. Saxby?"
Saxby's face had grown rather pallid, but his jaw was set in a dogged fashion.
"That ismybusiness," he said harshly.
It was Saltire whose face and manner had become subtly agreeable.
"Oh, no, Saxby; it is all of our business at present. What I find so strange is that nowhere in the house is there any sign or token that a woman lives here, or has ever lived here. It seems to me that needs a little explaining."
"You'll get no explanation from me," was the curt answer.
"I think you had better tell us something about it," said Saltire pleasantly. He held the lantern high, and it lighted up a shelf upon which stood some curious glass jars with perforated stoppers. "I see you have a fine collection of live tarantulas and scorpions. I remember now I have often seen you groping among the aloes. Curious hobby!"
"Get out of my house!" said Saxby, with sudden rage.
"And is the snake still in the box?" asked Saltire, approaching the table where the cardboard box still occupied its central position, with the heavy iron on top of it.
"Don't touch it, for God's sake!" shouted Saxby, lunging forward to stop him, but the deed was already done, though Saltire himself was unprepared for what followed on his lifting the iron. The lid flew up, and, with a soft hiss, something slim and swift as a black arrow darted across the air, seemed to kiss Saxby in passing, and was gone through the open door into the night.
The big man made a strange sound and put his hand to his throat. He swayed a little, and then sank upon a long cane lounge. Christine noticed that his eyes rolled with the same curious evolution as the eyes of Mrs. van Cannan had performed that afternoon. It was as though they turned in his head for a moment, showing nothing but the white eyeball. She wondered why the other men rushed to the sideboard and opened a brandy-bottle, and while she stayed, wondering, Saxby spoke softly, looking at her with his beautiful, melancholy brown eyes.
"I shall be dead in half an hour. Fetch Isabel. Let me see her face before I die."
She knew him for a bad man, false friend, one who could be cruel to a little child; yet it seemed he could love well. That was something. She found herself running through the darkness as she had never run in her life, to do the last behest of Richard Saxby.
When she and Isabel van Cannan returned, they found him almost gone. Saltire and McNeil had worked over him until the sweat dripped from their faces, but he who has been kissed by the black mamba, deadliest of snakes, is lost beyond all human effort. The light was fast fading from his face, but, for a moment, a spurt of life leaped in his eyes. He held out his aims to the woman, and she fell weeping into them. Christine turned away and stared out at the darkness. Saltire had been writing; a sheet of paper upon which the ink was still wet lay upon the table, and in his hand he held a packet of letters.
"I have told everything, Issa," muttered the dying man. "I had to clean my soul of it."
She recoiled fiercely from him.
"'Told everything?'" she repeated, and her face blanched with fury and despair. It seemed as if she would have struck him across the lips, but McNeil intervened.
"Have reverence for a passing soul, woman," said he sternly. "Black as his crimes are, yours are blacker, I'm thinking. He was only the tool of the woman he loved—his lawful wife."
"You said that?" she raved. But Saxby was beyond recriminations. That dark soul had passed to its own place. She turned again to the others, foaming like a creature trapped.
"It is all lies, lies!"—then fell silent, her eyes sealed to the newly written paper on the table under Saltire's hand. At last, she said quietly: "I must, however, insist upon knowing what he has said about me. What is written on that paper, Mr. Saltire?"
"If you insist, I will read it," he answered. "Though it is scarcely in my province to do so."
"It is only fair that I should hear," she said, with great calmness.And Saltire read out the terse phrases that bore upon them the stamp ofDeath's hurrying hand.
"I am a native of the island Z—— in the West Indies. Isabel Saxby, known as van Cannan, is my wife. While travelling to the Cape Colony on some business of mine, she met van Cannan and his wife and stayed with them at East London. When she did not return to Z——, I came to look for her and found that, Mrs. van Cannan having died, she had bigamously married the widower and come to live at Blue Aloes. I loved her, and could not bear to be parted from her, so, through her instrumentality, I came here as manager. The eldest boy was drowned before my arrival. The youngest died six months later of a bite from one of my specimen tarantulas. The third boy is, I expect, drowned tonight. I take the blame of all these deaths and of Bernard van Cannan's, if he does not return. It was only when all male van Cannans were dead that Blue Aloes could be sold for a large sum enabling us to return to Z——. We would have taken the little girls with us.
"With my dying breath, I take full blame for all on my shoulders. No one is guilty but I.
"[Signed.] RICHARD SAXBY."
"Poor fellow!" said the listening woman gently. "Poor fellow to have died with such terrible delusions torturing him!" She passed her hands over her eyes, wiping away her tears and with them every last trace of violence and anger. Subtly her face had changed back to the babylike, laughing, sleepy face they all knew so well—the face that had held the dead man in thrall and made Bernard van Cannan forget the mother of his children.
"You will please give me that paper, Mr. Saltire," she pleaded, "and you will please all of you forget the ravings of poor Dick Saxby. It is true that I knew him in the past, and that he followed me here, but the rest, as you must realize, are simply hallucinations of a poisoned brain."
Andrew McNeil's dour face had grown bewildered, but softened. Christine—if she had not seen a little too much, if she had not known that lovely golden hair hanging in rich plaits about the woman's shoulders covered the crisped head of a white negress, if she had not overheard impassioned words at midnight, if she had not loved Roddy so well—might have been beguiled. But there was one person upon whom the artist's wiles were wasted.
"I'm afraid it can't be done, Mrs. Saxby," said Saltire gravely. "The testimony of a dying man is sacred—and Saxby's mind was perfectly clear."
"How could it have been? And do not call me 'Mrs. Saxby,' please." She still spoke patiently, but a smouldering fire began to kindle in her eyes.
"You see," he continued, exhibiting the packet of letters to which he now added the testimony, "I have here the certificate of your marriage to Saxby six years ago in the West Indies—and also proof of the possession by you of a large amount of antimony. You may, of course, be able to explain away these things, as well as Saxby's testimony, but you will understand that I cannot oblige you by handing them over." A silence fell, in which only her rapid breathing could be heard. "There is one thing, however, you can do, that will perhaps help a little. Tell us where Roddy is—if you know."
The smouldering fires leaped to flame. She glared at him like a tigress.
"Oh, you, and your Roddys!" she cried savagely. "If I knew where he was, I would kill him! I would kill any one I could who stood in my way—do you understand? That is how we are made in my land. Oh, that I ever left it, to come to this vile and barren desert!"
She gave one swift, terrible look at the dead man and swept from the house. That was the last time any one of them ever saw her.
When, a little later, Saltire, McNeil, and Christine came out of the dead man's house and left him to his long silence, the black wings of night were lifted, the storm was past, and a rose-red dawn veiled in silver bedecked the sky. The hills were tender with pearl and azure. The earth smelled sweet and freshly washed. A flock of wild duck rose from the dam and went streaking across the horizon like in a Japanese etching. All the land was full of dew and dreams. It was almost impossible to despair in such an hour. Christine felt the wings of hope beating in her breast, and an unaccountable trust in the goodness of God filled her.
"Joy cometh in the morning," she said, half to herself, half to the men who walked, sombre and silent, beside her, and the shadow of a smile hovered on her lips. They looked at her wonderingly. The night of terror had taken toll of her, and she was pale as the last star before dawn. Yet her white beauty framed in hanging hair shone like some rare thing that had passed through fire and come out unscathed and purified in the passing. "Il faut souffrir pour être belle" is a frivolous French saying, but, like many frivolous phrases, has its basic roots in the truth. It was true enough of Christine Chaine in that hour. She had suffered and was beautiful. Dour old Andrew McNeil gave a sigh for the years of life that lay behind him, and a glance at the face of the other man; then, like a wise being, he said,