Chapter Three.Mrs Cork would not even look at her the next day. She was thrown abruptly upon her own society, for Quelch, too, without hail or farewell, disappeared from the horizon. This was a relief in a way, though it could not be denied that she missed him as one misses the glow of a fire from a Town. But something had gone wrong with life altogether, somehow, and the flavour of it was dry on her tongue. She began to weary of Kimberley and the monotonous existence in the luxurious hotel. More than ever she was obsessed by the diamonds. Yet the pink god often seemed to mock her when she took it from its shrine, and she began to realise that though it is sweet to look upon the image of yourself suitably decked with jewels, it is sweeter still to let the world look upon you and admire. In fact, there did not seem to be much object in jewels that you had to wear hidden. Something, too, was missing from the diamonds—some quality or spirit that Pat’s pearls possessed, sad as they were compared with the stones. She could not think what it was, and did not try very hard to discover, for the pearls had a reproach for her. Time was when she could linger over them daily, looking into their little lustrous faces, almost knowing each one of the three hundred and sixty-five singly. Now she locked them away, and with them the beautiful pearl rings Pat had given her. She longed to have the rose-pink diamond set in a ring and to wear it blazing alone on her hand. But greatly daring as she was, she did not dare that, in this hotel and town which belonged to De Beers, to whom the stone also belonged, though they did not know it was in her possession.At about eleven o’clock that morning she was in the lounge taking tea after the pleasant and refreshing custom of the country. Mrs Cork and some gambling cronies were bridging as usual at another table, and there were various people scattered about, reading and gossiping. Only Loree Temple was alone and a little lonely. It was with pleasure that she saw young Dalkeith walk in. He had brought her a book they had been discussing at the ball, but to her disappointment could not stay, as he had a business engagement. She poured him out a cup of tea and he lingered a few moments, gossiping. Then, for the first time since the ball, she heard spoken reference to the tragedy of Frederick Huffe.“I have just come from the inquest,” said Dalkeith. “Awful, wasn’t it?”“Terrible.” Loree closed her eyes and shivered a little. She did not like sad things.“And I don’t care what any one says,” went on the boy. “He was one of the best. Even if his financesdidgo a bit astray in the stress of life he was one of the best. Didn’t you think so, Mrs Temple?”“I?” said Loree opening her eyes in surprise. “I did not know him.”“No, of course you didn’t know himwell, but you were dancing with him a lot after I introduced him to you, and I thought you seemed to like him. Everyone liked old Freddy and found him charming.”Loree, who had turned very white, sat staring at him, her lips slightly apart.“WasthatFrederick Huffe?” she whispered at last. “That nice man who went away and never came back for the dance I had promised him?”“My God! didn’t you know?” exclaimed Dalkeith. “Iamsorry.”After he had gone she sat there a long time, very white and still. She was remembering acutely the lines of that pleasant, charming face, the satirical yet boyish blue eye behind the eye-glass, his gay and witty remarks, his zest for dancing. Yet all the while he was weary of life! Death was at his elbow!While she sat there meditating on the strangeness of men, and on the masks they year, concealing their true selves from the world, she saw an attendant approach the table where Mrs Cork was playing cards and hand her a telegram.On reading it, Mrs Cork put down her cards and asked to be excused from the game. The words: “Bad News” were spoken in a calm voice, but as she passed, Loree saw that her face was of a deadly pallor, haggard and wintry, with sombre eyes. No more was seen of her that day or the next. The maids reported that her news seemed bad indeed and that she was prostrate, but no details transpired.Loree longed miserably to go and condole, but dared not intrude upon one so bitterly offended with her. The next best thing seemed to be to try and explain and to ask for forgiveness. She spent the whole of an afternoon composing a penitent letter.Dear Mrs Cork:—I am so deeply sorry that you are offended with me. Please do not be. Itwasan impertinence on my part to put that note in your room, and I beg your pardon. But I did not do it out of any feeling except of pure friendliness and liking for you. Also, I had a reason for supposing that you were in need of money, and I thought it would be a nice way of spending the fifty pounds my husband had sent me for a birthday present by giving another woman a helping hand, just as I hope a woman would help me if ever I were in trouble.Yours sincerely, Loraine Loree Temple.She gave it to the maid for delivery and went down to dinner, though without the light heart a decent action should have ensured.The fact that she had known the man who shot himself—danced, laughed, talked with him within half an hour of his desperate exit from the world obsessed her poignantly. She longed for something or some one to distract her from the sad memory, and with what relief did she find that Heseltine Quelch had returned, reappearing from nowhere as suddenly as he had gone. As she came down the stairs he, too, faultlessly groomed and debonair, crossed the hall. He was taking a pile of letters and telegrams from the hands of his man, but at sight of Loree he handed them back with the brief comment: “Put them in my room. I’ll go through them later,” and came straight to her, as the bee to the honey-flower. As for her, after two dull, lonely days, the fire was lit once more, and the warmed herself and smiled in the glow of it. A certain recklessness entered into her, and she let his eyes enfold and caress her without the rebuke a woman knows so well how to introduce into her manner. After all, she said to herself, if he was so determined to hurt himself, why should she worry for him? People who go looking for scalps must expect scars. If she felt herself in danger, she could draw back and escape, as she had done that other night. What could he do but acquiesce? She was not in his power in any way. She had never given him encouragement to make a fool of himself. If he now mistook her very natural pleasure at having boredom relieved for any warmer feeling on her part, well—tant pisfor him! His blood was on his own head, and hers not the fault.Thus she reasoned, justifying herself for once more plunging into the fascinating game, walking on the wild precipice, fluttering near the live wire on whichsomewomen might meet disaster but to which she intended to remain invulnerable. The cruelty which so often comes with consciousness of power stirred her. She knew now that, though she felt the charm of Quelch, it would give her pleasure to punish him through his passion for her. If she had seen that cold and resolute look on his face two evenings before, when he watched her tripping upstairs, she might not have been so sure of her power to punish.They dined together. A gay and light-hearted pair of friends, so far as the world could see. Only they knew what secret currents were flashing and sparkling between them, fed by her alluring smiles and graces. After coffee, he suggested the garden. It was very lovely out there amid the trees and wet roses. Loree resisted a little, yet it seemed safe enough within sound, almost within sight of the verandah, where several people loitered, smoking and gossiping.But she kept to the clear, open paths, and it seemed politic now to infuse into her manner a tinge of coldness. Instantly, that grim resolute expression passed over his face, but he said nothing, only bided his time, and when presently they came near a vine-laden pergola, he thrust an arm through hers and, with a suddenness that took her unawares, guided her into obscurity. Haughtily she disengaged herself, but, he remained facing her, standing between her and the hotel, and his words were arresting.“You must stop fooling me, Loree. My love is too great to be blown hot upon one minute and cold the next.”“I don’t think I understand—”“Oh, beloved, you do! You know that I love you.” His voice was of a tenderness indescribable. It played across her taut nerves like the bow on a violin.“You must—be mad!” she faltered.He smiled.“Yes; a divine madness. You are touched with it, too.”“No! No!” she protested. He gave a short laugh and caught her in his arms, holding her close and kissing her rapidly and fiercely. She resisted, but he held her closer; she protested, but he drank the words off her lips. He swept her from her feet, holding her to his heart and taking his fill of her mouth, her eyes, her throat, her hair. It was as though a great wave of the sea had broken over her. She lost her voice, almost her senses, in the madness of the moment, but her heart knew fear and an agony of shame. At last he released her, and she leaned, like a flower broken in a storm, against the side of the pergola.“How dare you! How dare you!” she breathed, white with anger.“How dare I?” he said gently. “Oh, beloved one—lovely one—surely you have given the right!”“Never! Never!” she denied passionately.He made a gesture to her breast, where something sparkled and shone. In her struggle to loose herself from his arms, the chain of diamonds had torn its way through the filmy tissue of her gown.“Why, then, do you wear my jewels, Loree?”There was a long silence after that. He stood looking at her with pleading eyes. She was like something carved and riven out of pallid marble.“Yourjewels?” she whispered at last. “Yourjewels?”He shrugged a little. His eyes did not lose their tenderness, but his smile was a little disdainful of the flashing chain.“They are unworthy of your beauty, but you have done me the great honour to wear them.”Slowly her fingers felt for the stones and clasped them, her glance still in his.“They are yours?” she murmured, still dazed and bewildered under the shock.“No; yours, Loree, as all I have is yours. Only an earnest of things to come. You shall wreathe yourself in diamonds, the most beautiful the world has ever seen—as you yourself are and shall be the fairest jewel the world has ever seen, and mine.”“Your words are madness!” she stammered. “How can I be yours? I am a married woman.”“Oh,that!”—with a gesture and a scornful smile he brushed away marriage and every obstacle that stood between them.“You are insane!” she insisted. “I never dreamed of such a thing. And how could I know that these were yours?” With a spurt of anger she added, “How dared you put them in my room?”He only smiled tolerantly.“You accepted them—and wore them.”“But—I did not know they were yours.”“Who then, loved one, did you think was showering almost priceless stones upon you?” he inquired with gentle irony.“I—I don’t know. I never thought about it at all. I just found them there—and though—” She broke down. It was true, but it sounded too puerile and childish.“You thought that findings were keepings?” He laughed. “So they are, darling, as far as you are concerned. And for me, too, I have found you, and,”—his voice changed from laughter and became strong and soft and fierce—“by God, I mean to keep you!” As suddenly as before, he caught her to his breast. “You are mine, Loree, and I will hold you against the world. You are something I have been looking for all my life. Your beauty makes me—your eyes—your hair—it is wound round my heart. Ah—you don’t know—women don’t know—”He was incoherent in his fierce passion, and all the time he tore kisses from her lips, her hair. The fires she had played with and carelessly fed were loosed indeed, and raging to consume. Loraine Loree was getting all the thrills she had asked from life—and more! Powerless in his strong arms, hypnotised by the force of one who had always had his will of life, gone where he listed, taken what he wished, she knew now she could never save herself. There was no answering power in her to resist his. She was a frail branch in a whirlpool of strong currents, and the strength to survive was not in herself. She must be rescued. But who would rescue her? She was alone, alone—and lost! At last, the white, forlorn stillness of her quieted his fierce heart and he loosed her gently.“Forgive me, darling! Forgive me! Your loveliness, the sweetness of you drives me beyond myself. When will you come to me?”“Come to you?” She looked dazed and strange, clinging to the pergola, staring at him.“Comewithme. We will go away from here at once—to Europe—all over the world.”“But I—” she began. He interrupted her gently.“There is a mail for the Cape to-morrow night. I cannot wait a moment longer, Loree.”“I will not come!” She drew herself up in a last effort at resistance.“There must be no ‘will not.’” His eyes grew colder, his jaw resolute. He put out a light finger and touched the diamonds. “Don’t you understand that, by this chain, you have bound yourself to me? And do you think I will ever let you go? Never! I will pull down the temple of your reputation into the dust first, and perish myself in the ruins. Oh, darling, do not force me to say such things!”“You could not touch my reputation,” she said, but her heart trembled.“Would you wish it to be thought that you could be bought with diamonds, Loree?Iunderstand; but would the world understand the love of beauty in you that made you take that rose diamond from the De Beers office?”She gave a wild cry.“I did not! I did not! Oh, you know I did not!”He shrugged carelessly.“At any rate, you acquired it, and kept it, and the De Beers people—well, they are not very understanding, either; but I have power—I explained, defended you, paid for the diamond and for silence.”“My God! You think I stole it?They think so?” She swayed as if she had been struck, almost fainting from this worst blow of all.“What does it matter what they think?” he said soothingly. “They will be silent because I will it. As for me, I love you, and nothing you do could make any difference.”The girl stared before her, distraught, frantic.“And the necklace?” she stammered.“The necklace was different. That was my gift to you, and you have graced it by wearing it. I have traced its outline often round your lovely shoulders—and longed for the day when I could kiss it there.”His eyes grew dark again with the great passion he felt for her. He put out his arms entreatingly. But she drew back, shuddering. Her lips were dumb; her hair was in turmoil; her heart seemed turned to ice, but her feet still knew their uses. She dashed past him and ran.Even in her room, with the door locked and barricaded, she did not feel safe. Panting, she threw herself down and sobbed—dry sobs of fear and anger and despair. What had she done? Where would it end?“Am I mad?” she whispered. “Have I been walking in madness all these days, believing myself happy with these accursed stones, betraying my husband’s love for me—his honour and upright name?”She wept, she trembled; she cursed the day she had ever seen diamonds, and cast them from her on the floor. At last, she flung herself on her knees with the broken and bitter cry of a contrite heart.“O God, help me!”To her door came a soft knock. She raised her dreary, emotion-racked face and listened, trembling, for a while before she dared respond with an inquiry.“Who is there?”It was Valeria Cork’s voice that answered.“May I come in for a moment?”Loree’s first impulse was to deny her. All her inclinations were opposed to being seen in such a state of misery and disarray. Yet—had she not called on God for help? And was not here one stronger and abler than herself? Of instinct, she knew that Valeria Cork, for good or evil, had more force of will than she herself possessed. She opened the door.Mrs Cork, with her ravaged face and burnt-out eyes, came in, carrying the note Loree had written that afternoon. “Will you tell me,” she said, in a cold, far-off voice in which there was no life, “what your reason was for supposing I stood in need of money?”The whole thing seemed of small consequence to Loree now. Graver issues than another woman’s displeasure faced her.“I saw you in the pawnshop, and I noticed afterwards that your pendant was gone,” she answered drearily. That was conclusive enough, and so was the flush that stained the older woman’s cheek.“Oh!” she jerked out, and for a moment stood staring at the distraught face of the girl. “Then I have to thank you, Mrs Temple, and take back my words. I see now that it was not impertinence on your part, but a rare generosity. I am ashamed.”“It doesn’t matter,” said Loree. “Nothing matters.”“What is wrong?” asked Valeria Cork dully, and sat down. She seemed unprepared for Loree’s action in flinging her arms round her and bursting into tears, but she remained stonily calm.“Oh, I am in such trouble!” sobbed Loree. “Such terrible trouble!”“Tell me about it.”She did not comfortingly pat the girl in her arms, or kiss her, as most women would have done, either sincerely or insincerely. She simply sat there, holding her quietly, staring before her. On a table, the photograph of Pat Temple stared back with his large, frank gaze.Loree did not tell the full tale, but only what seemed essential to make the other woman understand her distress and peril. She recounted her finding of the necklace and Quelch’s threats and bold wooing in the garden. But she did not begin at the beginning of the trouble, which was when the little pink god cast its spell over her. There seemed no sense in dragging forth that pagan idol from its grove wherein she had so abandonedly worshipped. In the end, she sat wiping her tear-distorted face and gazing hopelessly at the other’s grave eyes. Said Valeria Cork, at last:“He has us both in his power.”“You? What can he do to hurt you?”“Much. I stole a rough diamond that day we went to the De Beers office. It was only by grace of him that I was not arrested.”Loree shrank back, horrified.“O God—how dreadful!”“Dreadful, yes,” agreed Valeria tonelessly. “But you? Did you not steal, too?”“I?”Mrs Cork’s speech assumed its usual biting flavour.“Did you know that the rose diamond you found on your table was not yours? Or did you suppose that an angel had come down from heaven to present you with it?”“The rose diamond?” faltered Loree.“Yes—your ‘pink topaz.’”“How did you know?” whispered the girl, deeply shamed.“I put it there, of course. It was the price Quelch demanded for saving me from arrest. You remember the incident at Alexandersfontein when he trod on your frock and you were obliged to go and mend it, leaving us together? That was the time he chose to blackmail me into being his tool. Both the rose diamond and the necklace were placed in your room by me.”“Then it has all been a plan from the beginning!” cried Loree, in bitter indignation. “A plan to corrupt and ensnare me!”“But you were so very willing to be corrupted and ensnared,” retorted Valeria Cork. “If you had been honest and come to me that night, as was evidently your first intention, we might have stood together and fought him. But you did not. And in the morning, when I came round, still wretchedly hoping for some way out for us both—you were there, happy and smiling, making a silk bag for yourpink topaz!” The red blood of shame rushed through Loree Temple’s face, but the elder woman spared her nothing. “You lied to me and told me how old and ugly I looked. I must say your attitude did not invite sacrifice, and the burning of my own hands. I read you—empty, vain, faithless, utterly despicable.”Loree was now white as death, but the other woman’s scorn brought a blaze to her eyes.“It does not come too well from you—that indictment,” she retorted bitterly.“Perhaps not. I am a thief, too. But I stole for a keener need, and a greater cause, if that can be any excuse for crime. I wanted money, not for myself but to ensure the continuation of my boy’s education. In a moment of terrible temptation to steal a stone and realise a few hundred pounds, I succumbed. Within a few moments I repented and would have put it back, but it was too late to do so without being observed, and my next idea, to return it anonymously, was thwarted by the fact that Quelch and the detectives had all seen. You, on the other hand, had time to think temptation over and reason with your own soul. And what wasyourpressing need that made you ready and willing to barter away the honour of a man like that,”—she pointed to the photograph on the table—“for—diamonds?”That blanched Loraine Loree, and withered and crushed her.“Oh, no—no!” she moaned brokenly. “Not Pat’s honour! Don’t think that! I love my husband with all my heart and soul. But I never gave a thought to what I was doing. From the moment I saw diamonds, they seemed to put a spell on me, something that blotted out my mind and conscience. I can’t explain to you—butnowI see what I have done—destroyed his happiness, his pride in life—everything! O God, what shall I do?”It was clear that at last she was at grips with something greater than self love and vanity, had forgotten, in the suffering she must inflict on her husband, the danger that menaced herself. Even Valeria Cork’s tormented soul, wrung dry by its own sorrow, felt compassion for the weeping, desolate girl, so young and so foolish.“You must pick up the pieces and begin again,” she said sombrely, “and consider yourself lucky if you are able to. A second chance does not come to us all.”“What second chance am I likely to have?” said Loree tragically. “None. He has me in a trap that I cannot escape from without shame.”“I could help you if you were worth it,” said Mrs Cork cryptically.The girl could only look at her with agonised eyes. She knew she had proved herself unworthy of help on this woman’s part, but she thought of Pat, and her glance was entreating.“No woman has ever helped me,” stated Valeria Cork. “A woman stole my husband and destroyed my happiness. In all my goings up and down, and struggles to live uprightly, women have kicked me and wiped their boots on me.” What gleam of hope she had felt left Loree’s heart, but came back at Valeria’s next words: “That is no reason why I should be as base as they. And, at the last, you have shown me that a womancanbe kind to another. I will tell you truthfully that your action in bringing that fifty pound note is the first disinterestedly generous thing a woman has ever done for me.”Poor Loree’s face drooped in shame.“It was not altogether disinterested,” she confessed. “I—I did think, as you divined, that it might also be a way of getting even with my conscience for keeping the diamonds—”“Ah!”“Still, Ididwant to give you a helping hand if you would let me. I liked you awfully, and was so dreadfully sorry—”“Soyou said in your letter.”“You can believe or not—I don’t care. What does anything matter if he does what he swears—that rather than let me go, he will bring my reputation to the dust? That means publishing to the world that I—Pat Temple’s wife—took the De Beers diamond!”“But you did not.”“Well, I kept it when I found it. That is as bad—and worse—as you have shown me.”“Only that it didn’t happen to belong to De Beers,” said Valeria Cork. She picked it up from where it lay in its silk bag, discarded in company with the now despised and rejected necklace. “This diamond is an almost exact facsimile of the rose diamond you so much admired at De Beers’, but it happens to have come, years ago, from the Tintara mine and to be Heseltine Quelch’s own property. He took advantage of the likeness to make you believe that it was the De Beers stone you had, when it was simply his own that he wished you to keep.”“Then—then,” cried Loree, “I amnota public criminal? De Beers cannot arrest me? No one but Heseltine Quelch can threaten me with disgrace?”“No,” answered Valeria calmly; “it is rally I who can be arrested and disgraced, and I don’t suppose he will spare me when he finds you have slipped his clutches.”Loree gave a long sigh.“I cannot slip his clutches—at your expense,” she said at last.“You have your husband to think of.”The girl shook her head.“You don’t know Pat. He would never let himself be saved anything at the expense of another, especially a woman.”“He must never know that part of the story,” said Valeria firmly.“But, Mrs Cork, I cannot! I feel it in my bones that Quelch will wreak vengeance on some one, and I cannot let you be sacrificed. You have got to think of yourself. Your boy, too—for whom—”“For whom I stole,” supplemented Valeria. “Ah, my dear,youtell me to think of him! For the last two days I have thought of nothing else. He has lain in my arms, a little chubby baby once more, with his curly head against my breast.”“He shall never be sacrificed!” cried Loree.“He is sacrificed already,” said Valeria Cork softly, “by a more just fate than you or I control. He was drowned two days ago while trying to save the life of a friend.”“O dear God!” whispered Loree pitifully. Now she knew the reason of the other’s sombre, tearless gaze. Nothing could ever hurt more deeply or comfort again that soul bereft.“So you see,” said Valeria, voicing her thought, “nothing matters.”She talked down Loree’s protests. She was bent on sacrifice as her just punishment. Almost it seemed as if she craved some other pain as anodyne for that which already ate like a rat at her heart. They talked into the small hours of the morning, formulating plans by which to defeat Quelch, who, they knew, would stick at nothing.“He told me frankly,” said Valeria, “that there were only two things in the world he cared about—the future of his son and the possession of you. That was in the small hours after the ball when he had just paid down 50,000 pounds to keep scandal from touching you.”“50,000 pounds! What can you mean?”“Ah yes, I had forgotten for the moment. That was the price he paid Mrs Solano for the necklace. It was hers as she rightly claimed. As soon as she got it into her hands in Quelch’s sitting-room she was able to prove that to him.”“Hers? But how then had he got it to give to me?”“It is a complicated story, and full of dark by-ways. God knows what evil magic lies in diamonds that they can make people do such terrible things! It appears that Mrs Solano had given the chain into the care of her banker. She wanted him to sell it, but she set a very high price on it and he had never been able to find a purchaser. However, one day recently when Quelch was with him at the bank he produced it, and Quelch, with you in his mind, and recognising it as a most exquisite collection of stones, offered twenty-five thousand pounds for it. The Banker closed at once without disclosing to Quelch the name of the client for whom he was selling. And in fact he never disclosed the transaction to Mrs Solano herself. His bank was in deep waters and he used the money to tide over his own financial difficulties, no doubt intending and hoping to repay the money before she should find out about the sale of the chain. Unfortunately you wore it that night. She saw it and the moment she and Quelch were alone and compared notes they realised what had happened.”At the words “financial difficulties” a dreadful suspicion that had been lurking in Loree Temple’s brain, found words.“What was the Banker’s name?” she asked hoarsely, and even as she feared the answer was:“Frederick Huffe.”“O God!” with a moan the girl covered her eyes. “I felt sure it was. I had a horrible feeling that there was some connection between the diamonds and his death, for I remember that it was to speak to Mr Quelch that he was called away from dancing with me.”“Yes, Quelch sent for him, and there in the sitting-room they questioned him point blank, and he calmly admitted what he had done and that he had used the money. Nothing more was said. Quelch had told me since that neither he nor Mrs Solano would have dreamed of prosecuting. They both liked the man too much and appreciated that his difficulties had not been his own but of the bank’s making. Probably Quelch would have helped him out. But poor Freddy Huffe’s pride was broken. He went straight from them into the garden and shot himself with a revolver he always carried.”Loree shuddered.“It was my fault,” she muttered. “His blood is on my head!”“That is a morbid thought,” pronounced Valeria firmly, “and one you must not allow to stay in your mind. The fate of every man is bound about his neck. Frederick Huffe was fated to die by his own hand, and no action of yours could have prevented it.”But Loree shook her head, and tears streamed down her face.“How little I dreamed that it had anything to do with me when I read it in the papers next day!—and how heartlessly I passed it over. All that moved me was thankfulness that no journalist had mentioned anything about my diamonds. I thought at the time that it was accident, but now I suppose that too can be traced back to Heseltine Quelch’s power?”“Yes. He has power in this place. I think there can be no doubt that he used it to prevent the journalists from saying anything about the chain you were wearing.”“And what about Mrs Solano? How did he account to her for giving me the jewels? Oh! what canshethink of me?”“You need not worry about that. Mrs Solano is under many obligations to Heseltine Quelch, I believe, but he did not follow that line. He told her the whole story and threw himself on her mercy. She is a strange woman and in some ways a very fine one. She understood both Quelch’s passion for you, and your passion for the gems, and she consented to sell the chain to him and to keep her lips sealed forever. He at once wrote her out a cheque for 50,000 pounds—double what she had asked. They can do big things these Jews, as well as small ones.”“But she makes another who knows!”“I tell you Rachel Solano is a great woman, for all her sins. You need never fear her.”“I fear him,” cried the desolate, shivering girl. “I shall never be able to escape him. Every one in this hotel is his tool.”“They must be deceived as well as he. Listen: start packing in the morning, saying to the servants that you are leaving for England. The news will soon reach him.”“But he expects me to go with him to-morrow night.”“You must delay that. Write him a note saying that you are ill and can’t be ready until the night after.”“And then.”“In reality, you will slip away to-morrow night by the mail-train for Rhodesia.”“Rhodesia?” said Loree faintly.“Yes—to your husband. And never leave him again. Women like you are not safe away from their rightful owners. Beauty is not such a boon as plain women suppose.”There was pity as well as a certain amount of scorn in Valeria Cork’s voice, but Loree was in no mood to resent either.“How can I ever explain to him—turning up suddenly like that?” she murmured.“That is your affair,” said Valeria. “Mine is to get you away. So to bed now, and rest as much as you can. You will need all your wits and nerves. Good-night.”She rose, and they stood looking at each other for an instant.“I don’t suppose you would care to shake hands with a woman like me,” said Mrs Cork slowly. Her mournful eyes had something shamed and beaten in their depths, something of the longing of a punished child for a kind word. Loree suddenly flung her arms about her and held her close, and then, at last, the other woman’s agonised heart found relief in the tears that had been denied her since she received the news of her loss. Amidst her bitter weeping, broken incoherent phrases came gasping from her lips.“He was so beautiful, so gay! I wanted only to be good for his dear sake. It was enough—just to be his mother. But when I suddenly lost all my little fortune in a mining smash, there seemed no way to get money to keep him among the right people. He was so brilliant—I dreamed of his being one of the great men of England, some day. I thought, ‘What doesmypoor soul matter so long asherises from the ruins of it?’ I would have lied, stolen, murdered, doneanything, so that all might have been well with him—and see how the God of Equity intervenes!Heknew that no man could ever be great who had a shameful mother—and He had pity on my son. Oh, Loree, Loree—if ever you have a son, starve with him in a garret, scratch with him in the gutter, but never imperil for him your immortal soul. ‘What you give of gold and silver stands nothing; only as much as you have of soul avails.’ Some great man said that, and it is true. Only what you give of the soul avails.”In the morning, to a wretched Loree, weary-eyed from haunted dreams, came a letter from Quelch. It was restrained and tender, almost gentle, but it sounded the note of one who held the winning cards. Below the bold signature was appended the hour of the mail-train’s departure, and an added word like a cry:“I have received a blow that only you can comfort me for, my beautiful Loraine Loree.”She shivered, then burned. The thought that she must carry the memory of his illicit caresses all her life made her sick. Frantically she began to pack, then, remembering Valeria’s instructions, went to bed again. It was a dreadful day of pretence and subterfuge and lying. It seemed to her that she could never again erase from her soul the black marks of all the lies she told that day, that they would tarnish for ever all her future life with Pat. But then, had she not tarnished it already by her own wicked folly?Under the counsels of Valeria Cork, a subtly evasive answer was written to Quelch’s letter. It told that she was too ill to leave her room that day, and gave no bond to be at the station on the next; it sent no word of love, and was a document that all the world might have read, yet a premise, elusive and fragile as the scent of spring, haunted the simple lines. Valeria’s lips were grim as she invented each delicate phrase.“Skilled weapons against an unscrupulous fighter,” she contended. “When you are safely gone, he shall know who composed the letter. It is one of his punishments for what he has done to you—and me.”She moved sombrely about the room, like one walking behind the bier of her dead. Nothing seemed alive in her except her smouldering eyes. At lunch-time, she went down stairs and sat before food she could not eat for the sake of spying out the land of the enemy. But he did not appear. There was nothing to report to Loree except that it was known in the hotel that his going to the Cape had been postponed until the following evening. Afterwards, she wrote a note to him and left it at the office. The office-girl mentioned to her that Mr Quelch was looking terribly ill, and she wondered what the bad news could be he had mentioned to Loree; but she was not a woman to waste time on idle curiosity. Having gone through Loree Temple’s trunks that morning, she had selected therefrom a pair of tan-cloth riding-breeches, a long habit-coat, and top-boots. All the rest of the lovely Viola clothes were stored away in the trunks labelled loudly for Cape Town—except one simple frock and such feminine necessities as would fill a small suitcase. Now she sallied forth to do some shopping, taking the suitcase with her.“To get it mended,” she told the hall porter, and placed it herself in the taxi. But its true destination was the station cloakroom.Returning at tea-time, she brought with her a first-class ticket to Mafeking, and another from Mafeking to Buluwayo, a strong rope, a second-hand tweed ulster suitable for a slender youth of medium height, and a slouch hat. These last, with the breeches and top-boots, were to constitute Loree’s travelling-kit.They “dressed the part” and gravely rehearsed it. Mrs Temple’s mirror, that had once given back lovely visions in diaphanous draperies and sparkling jewels, now reflected something uncommonly like a seedy youth of the type that relations get rid of to South Africa and hope they’ll never see again. What could be seen of the face beneath the slouch hat was not prepossessing when Valeria had finished with it. The complexion was sallow and distinctly spotty, the eyes slightly inflamed. A darkness on the upper lip might have been the promise of a moustache or merely dirt. What the hand of Mrs Cork found to do, she did well.Loree gazed with disgust at the odious person in the glass. It seemed impossible she could ever be herself again. But Valeria coached her in the art of getting rid of facial disguise in ten minutes. That was the secret contained in the two railway tickets. The lightning change had to occur in a lavatory dressing-room sometime in the early morning before the train reached Mafeking. During the short wait at the famous little Bechuanaland town, no one was likely to note the disappearance of a bleary-eyed youth or connect it with the advent of a veiled lady who would continue the journey to Buluwayo as Mrs Temple.Getting away from the hotel without being seen and reported to Quelch was a more difficult matter, but Valeria had laid careful plans. It would be dusk—the hour when people were dressing for dinner. No one would be likely to be near the corner of the balcony opposite Valeria’s room or in the obscure fernery on the stoop below. The corner had a strong post to the ground, against which Loree could support herself when being let down. That was what the rope was for.“And if you meet any one who wants to know your business, give them this note for me, and then make tracks,” said Valeria. “You will easily get a cab to the station.”She had thought of everything. Her only regret was that she could not be at the station, too. But it had seemed wiser to make an appointment with Quelch for that hour. To that end, she had written the note at midday, underlining the words: “particularly personal matter.” She desired that he would realise the matter to be connected with Loree Temple, and, even as she anticipated, a prompt reply came, and hoped she would “honour him by an interview in his private sitting-room” at the hour she mentioned, if such an arrangement suited her. She grimaced at the courteous words which seemed to her unnecessary irony, but the plan indeed suited her—perfectly.At the hour in which she knocked upon Heseltine Quelch’s door the work was done. She had kissed Loraine Loree upon her darkened lips and bade her Godspeed, had launched her from the balcony, and seen the boyish silhouette disappear through the garden. Even as she listened for an answer from the room within, she heard the harsh scream and “chug-chug” of a departing train, and knew that, if all was well, Mrs Temple was passing out of Kimberley and out ofherlife for ever.Quelch was sitting at a table, holding his hands before him as though clutching something. But the moment she entered, he rose abruptly and came towards her with a sort of violence. She saw that his hands were empty, and thought, by his strange face, that he meant to kill her. Brave as she was, she recoiled from him. That pulled him up sharp. He stood stammering, almost gibbering incoherent words at her. She was certain now that he knew. There was something horribly moving in the desolation of his eyes. It was the expression of a fierce creature of the wilds wounded to the death. She noticed suddenly that he was no longer young. His shoulders stooped; there was silver in his hair.“Did he care so much?” she thought amazed, and almost her heart felt pity for him. She knew what it was to love and be robbed. In a moment, he succeeded in getting control of himself and spoke clearly. Then she realised that though he was no longer incoherent, she did not understand him. What he said was:“It is no wonder you recoil from me—hate me. I can only say to you that I grieve for you with all that is left of my heart—and—I thank you.”She stared at him. They stood looking at each other—two people scarred and marred by the passionate lawlessness of their own natures—in her eyes amazement, in his that devastating mournfulness. What was he speaking of? He seemed to know of her sorrow, to share it.“A son,” he said softly, “to lose one’s son! The being one wound one’s dreams about—who was to be so infinitely greater than oneself—to compensate with the shining splendour of his soul for all the darkness of one’s own.” Valeria gloomed at him with bitter eyes. How did he know so well wherewith to mock her, this strange Eastern man with his gentle, un-English voice? “You should not hate me. It is unworthy of the mother of a son who gave his life for a friend.”While she stood considering him—how un-English he was to have tears running down his cheeks like that; that hemustbe a Jew (as she had often supposed) to be so emotional, so unreserved, so piercingly sapient—the truth came to her like an arrow. It washisson that hers had died to save and died for in vain! They were both sonless!Nothing but the bare news of her loss had come to her, no names but that of her son. Quelch with his wealth had commanded every detail of the tragedy, and been receiving news down to that very hour. The table was littered with cablegrams.She stoodverystill and white and weary until he had finished telling her all, thanking her for the nobleness of her son’s effort, assuring her that if in all the wide world there was anything that could represent his gratitude, any act of his that would help to ease her wound, she had only to speak. Then from her pocket she produced a little parcel of sparkling stones wrapped in a silken handkerchief and laid it on the table.“A little foolish girl returns you these,” she said, and her voice, too, had grown very gentle. “She left to-night to join her husband. This you can do for me: Forget her, and let her forget you.”The End.
Mrs Cork would not even look at her the next day. She was thrown abruptly upon her own society, for Quelch, too, without hail or farewell, disappeared from the horizon. This was a relief in a way, though it could not be denied that she missed him as one misses the glow of a fire from a Town. But something had gone wrong with life altogether, somehow, and the flavour of it was dry on her tongue. She began to weary of Kimberley and the monotonous existence in the luxurious hotel. More than ever she was obsessed by the diamonds. Yet the pink god often seemed to mock her when she took it from its shrine, and she began to realise that though it is sweet to look upon the image of yourself suitably decked with jewels, it is sweeter still to let the world look upon you and admire. In fact, there did not seem to be much object in jewels that you had to wear hidden. Something, too, was missing from the diamonds—some quality or spirit that Pat’s pearls possessed, sad as they were compared with the stones. She could not think what it was, and did not try very hard to discover, for the pearls had a reproach for her. Time was when she could linger over them daily, looking into their little lustrous faces, almost knowing each one of the three hundred and sixty-five singly. Now she locked them away, and with them the beautiful pearl rings Pat had given her. She longed to have the rose-pink diamond set in a ring and to wear it blazing alone on her hand. But greatly daring as she was, she did not dare that, in this hotel and town which belonged to De Beers, to whom the stone also belonged, though they did not know it was in her possession.
At about eleven o’clock that morning she was in the lounge taking tea after the pleasant and refreshing custom of the country. Mrs Cork and some gambling cronies were bridging as usual at another table, and there were various people scattered about, reading and gossiping. Only Loree Temple was alone and a little lonely. It was with pleasure that she saw young Dalkeith walk in. He had brought her a book they had been discussing at the ball, but to her disappointment could not stay, as he had a business engagement. She poured him out a cup of tea and he lingered a few moments, gossiping. Then, for the first time since the ball, she heard spoken reference to the tragedy of Frederick Huffe.
“I have just come from the inquest,” said Dalkeith. “Awful, wasn’t it?”
“Terrible.” Loree closed her eyes and shivered a little. She did not like sad things.
“And I don’t care what any one says,” went on the boy. “He was one of the best. Even if his financesdidgo a bit astray in the stress of life he was one of the best. Didn’t you think so, Mrs Temple?”
“I?” said Loree opening her eyes in surprise. “I did not know him.”
“No, of course you didn’t know himwell, but you were dancing with him a lot after I introduced him to you, and I thought you seemed to like him. Everyone liked old Freddy and found him charming.”
Loree, who had turned very white, sat staring at him, her lips slightly apart.
“WasthatFrederick Huffe?” she whispered at last. “That nice man who went away and never came back for the dance I had promised him?”
“My God! didn’t you know?” exclaimed Dalkeith. “Iamsorry.”
After he had gone she sat there a long time, very white and still. She was remembering acutely the lines of that pleasant, charming face, the satirical yet boyish blue eye behind the eye-glass, his gay and witty remarks, his zest for dancing. Yet all the while he was weary of life! Death was at his elbow!
While she sat there meditating on the strangeness of men, and on the masks they year, concealing their true selves from the world, she saw an attendant approach the table where Mrs Cork was playing cards and hand her a telegram.
On reading it, Mrs Cork put down her cards and asked to be excused from the game. The words: “Bad News” were spoken in a calm voice, but as she passed, Loree saw that her face was of a deadly pallor, haggard and wintry, with sombre eyes. No more was seen of her that day or the next. The maids reported that her news seemed bad indeed and that she was prostrate, but no details transpired.
Loree longed miserably to go and condole, but dared not intrude upon one so bitterly offended with her. The next best thing seemed to be to try and explain and to ask for forgiveness. She spent the whole of an afternoon composing a penitent letter.
Dear Mrs Cork:—I am so deeply sorry that you are offended with me. Please do not be. Itwasan impertinence on my part to put that note in your room, and I beg your pardon. But I did not do it out of any feeling except of pure friendliness and liking for you. Also, I had a reason for supposing that you were in need of money, and I thought it would be a nice way of spending the fifty pounds my husband had sent me for a birthday present by giving another woman a helping hand, just as I hope a woman would help me if ever I were in trouble.Yours sincerely, Loraine Loree Temple.
Dear Mrs Cork:—
I am so deeply sorry that you are offended with me. Please do not be. Itwasan impertinence on my part to put that note in your room, and I beg your pardon. But I did not do it out of any feeling except of pure friendliness and liking for you. Also, I had a reason for supposing that you were in need of money, and I thought it would be a nice way of spending the fifty pounds my husband had sent me for a birthday present by giving another woman a helping hand, just as I hope a woman would help me if ever I were in trouble.
Yours sincerely, Loraine Loree Temple.
She gave it to the maid for delivery and went down to dinner, though without the light heart a decent action should have ensured.
The fact that she had known the man who shot himself—danced, laughed, talked with him within half an hour of his desperate exit from the world obsessed her poignantly. She longed for something or some one to distract her from the sad memory, and with what relief did she find that Heseltine Quelch had returned, reappearing from nowhere as suddenly as he had gone. As she came down the stairs he, too, faultlessly groomed and debonair, crossed the hall. He was taking a pile of letters and telegrams from the hands of his man, but at sight of Loree he handed them back with the brief comment: “Put them in my room. I’ll go through them later,” and came straight to her, as the bee to the honey-flower. As for her, after two dull, lonely days, the fire was lit once more, and the warmed herself and smiled in the glow of it. A certain recklessness entered into her, and she let his eyes enfold and caress her without the rebuke a woman knows so well how to introduce into her manner. After all, she said to herself, if he was so determined to hurt himself, why should she worry for him? People who go looking for scalps must expect scars. If she felt herself in danger, she could draw back and escape, as she had done that other night. What could he do but acquiesce? She was not in his power in any way. She had never given him encouragement to make a fool of himself. If he now mistook her very natural pleasure at having boredom relieved for any warmer feeling on her part, well—tant pisfor him! His blood was on his own head, and hers not the fault.
Thus she reasoned, justifying herself for once more plunging into the fascinating game, walking on the wild precipice, fluttering near the live wire on whichsomewomen might meet disaster but to which she intended to remain invulnerable. The cruelty which so often comes with consciousness of power stirred her. She knew now that, though she felt the charm of Quelch, it would give her pleasure to punish him through his passion for her. If she had seen that cold and resolute look on his face two evenings before, when he watched her tripping upstairs, she might not have been so sure of her power to punish.
They dined together. A gay and light-hearted pair of friends, so far as the world could see. Only they knew what secret currents were flashing and sparkling between them, fed by her alluring smiles and graces. After coffee, he suggested the garden. It was very lovely out there amid the trees and wet roses. Loree resisted a little, yet it seemed safe enough within sound, almost within sight of the verandah, where several people loitered, smoking and gossiping.
But she kept to the clear, open paths, and it seemed politic now to infuse into her manner a tinge of coldness. Instantly, that grim resolute expression passed over his face, but he said nothing, only bided his time, and when presently they came near a vine-laden pergola, he thrust an arm through hers and, with a suddenness that took her unawares, guided her into obscurity. Haughtily she disengaged herself, but, he remained facing her, standing between her and the hotel, and his words were arresting.
“You must stop fooling me, Loree. My love is too great to be blown hot upon one minute and cold the next.”
“I don’t think I understand—”
“Oh, beloved, you do! You know that I love you.” His voice was of a tenderness indescribable. It played across her taut nerves like the bow on a violin.
“You must—be mad!” she faltered.
He smiled.
“Yes; a divine madness. You are touched with it, too.”
“No! No!” she protested. He gave a short laugh and caught her in his arms, holding her close and kissing her rapidly and fiercely. She resisted, but he held her closer; she protested, but he drank the words off her lips. He swept her from her feet, holding her to his heart and taking his fill of her mouth, her eyes, her throat, her hair. It was as though a great wave of the sea had broken over her. She lost her voice, almost her senses, in the madness of the moment, but her heart knew fear and an agony of shame. At last he released her, and she leaned, like a flower broken in a storm, against the side of the pergola.
“How dare you! How dare you!” she breathed, white with anger.
“How dare I?” he said gently. “Oh, beloved one—lovely one—surely you have given the right!”
“Never! Never!” she denied passionately.
He made a gesture to her breast, where something sparkled and shone. In her struggle to loose herself from his arms, the chain of diamonds had torn its way through the filmy tissue of her gown.
“Why, then, do you wear my jewels, Loree?”
There was a long silence after that. He stood looking at her with pleading eyes. She was like something carved and riven out of pallid marble.
“Yourjewels?” she whispered at last. “Yourjewels?”
He shrugged a little. His eyes did not lose their tenderness, but his smile was a little disdainful of the flashing chain.
“They are unworthy of your beauty, but you have done me the great honour to wear them.”
Slowly her fingers felt for the stones and clasped them, her glance still in his.
“They are yours?” she murmured, still dazed and bewildered under the shock.
“No; yours, Loree, as all I have is yours. Only an earnest of things to come. You shall wreathe yourself in diamonds, the most beautiful the world has ever seen—as you yourself are and shall be the fairest jewel the world has ever seen, and mine.”
“Your words are madness!” she stammered. “How can I be yours? I am a married woman.”
“Oh,that!”—with a gesture and a scornful smile he brushed away marriage and every obstacle that stood between them.
“You are insane!” she insisted. “I never dreamed of such a thing. And how could I know that these were yours?” With a spurt of anger she added, “How dared you put them in my room?”
He only smiled tolerantly.
“You accepted them—and wore them.”
“But—I did not know they were yours.”
“Who then, loved one, did you think was showering almost priceless stones upon you?” he inquired with gentle irony.
“I—I don’t know. I never thought about it at all. I just found them there—and though—” She broke down. It was true, but it sounded too puerile and childish.
“You thought that findings were keepings?” He laughed. “So they are, darling, as far as you are concerned. And for me, too, I have found you, and,”—his voice changed from laughter and became strong and soft and fierce—“by God, I mean to keep you!” As suddenly as before, he caught her to his breast. “You are mine, Loree, and I will hold you against the world. You are something I have been looking for all my life. Your beauty makes me—your eyes—your hair—it is wound round my heart. Ah—you don’t know—women don’t know—”
He was incoherent in his fierce passion, and all the time he tore kisses from her lips, her hair. The fires she had played with and carelessly fed were loosed indeed, and raging to consume. Loraine Loree was getting all the thrills she had asked from life—and more! Powerless in his strong arms, hypnotised by the force of one who had always had his will of life, gone where he listed, taken what he wished, she knew now she could never save herself. There was no answering power in her to resist his. She was a frail branch in a whirlpool of strong currents, and the strength to survive was not in herself. She must be rescued. But who would rescue her? She was alone, alone—and lost! At last, the white, forlorn stillness of her quieted his fierce heart and he loosed her gently.
“Forgive me, darling! Forgive me! Your loveliness, the sweetness of you drives me beyond myself. When will you come to me?”
“Come to you?” She looked dazed and strange, clinging to the pergola, staring at him.
“Comewithme. We will go away from here at once—to Europe—all over the world.”
“But I—” she began. He interrupted her gently.
“There is a mail for the Cape to-morrow night. I cannot wait a moment longer, Loree.”
“I will not come!” She drew herself up in a last effort at resistance.
“There must be no ‘will not.’” His eyes grew colder, his jaw resolute. He put out a light finger and touched the diamonds. “Don’t you understand that, by this chain, you have bound yourself to me? And do you think I will ever let you go? Never! I will pull down the temple of your reputation into the dust first, and perish myself in the ruins. Oh, darling, do not force me to say such things!”
“You could not touch my reputation,” she said, but her heart trembled.
“Would you wish it to be thought that you could be bought with diamonds, Loree?Iunderstand; but would the world understand the love of beauty in you that made you take that rose diamond from the De Beers office?”
She gave a wild cry.
“I did not! I did not! Oh, you know I did not!”
He shrugged carelessly.
“At any rate, you acquired it, and kept it, and the De Beers people—well, they are not very understanding, either; but I have power—I explained, defended you, paid for the diamond and for silence.”
“My God! You think I stole it?They think so?” She swayed as if she had been struck, almost fainting from this worst blow of all.
“What does it matter what they think?” he said soothingly. “They will be silent because I will it. As for me, I love you, and nothing you do could make any difference.”
The girl stared before her, distraught, frantic.
“And the necklace?” she stammered.
“The necklace was different. That was my gift to you, and you have graced it by wearing it. I have traced its outline often round your lovely shoulders—and longed for the day when I could kiss it there.”
His eyes grew dark again with the great passion he felt for her. He put out his arms entreatingly. But she drew back, shuddering. Her lips were dumb; her hair was in turmoil; her heart seemed turned to ice, but her feet still knew their uses. She dashed past him and ran.
Even in her room, with the door locked and barricaded, she did not feel safe. Panting, she threw herself down and sobbed—dry sobs of fear and anger and despair. What had she done? Where would it end?
“Am I mad?” she whispered. “Have I been walking in madness all these days, believing myself happy with these accursed stones, betraying my husband’s love for me—his honour and upright name?”
She wept, she trembled; she cursed the day she had ever seen diamonds, and cast them from her on the floor. At last, she flung herself on her knees with the broken and bitter cry of a contrite heart.
“O God, help me!”
To her door came a soft knock. She raised her dreary, emotion-racked face and listened, trembling, for a while before she dared respond with an inquiry.
“Who is there?”
It was Valeria Cork’s voice that answered.
“May I come in for a moment?”
Loree’s first impulse was to deny her. All her inclinations were opposed to being seen in such a state of misery and disarray. Yet—had she not called on God for help? And was not here one stronger and abler than herself? Of instinct, she knew that Valeria Cork, for good or evil, had more force of will than she herself possessed. She opened the door.
Mrs Cork, with her ravaged face and burnt-out eyes, came in, carrying the note Loree had written that afternoon. “Will you tell me,” she said, in a cold, far-off voice in which there was no life, “what your reason was for supposing I stood in need of money?”
The whole thing seemed of small consequence to Loree now. Graver issues than another woman’s displeasure faced her.
“I saw you in the pawnshop, and I noticed afterwards that your pendant was gone,” she answered drearily. That was conclusive enough, and so was the flush that stained the older woman’s cheek.
“Oh!” she jerked out, and for a moment stood staring at the distraught face of the girl. “Then I have to thank you, Mrs Temple, and take back my words. I see now that it was not impertinence on your part, but a rare generosity. I am ashamed.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Loree. “Nothing matters.”
“What is wrong?” asked Valeria Cork dully, and sat down. She seemed unprepared for Loree’s action in flinging her arms round her and bursting into tears, but she remained stonily calm.
“Oh, I am in such trouble!” sobbed Loree. “Such terrible trouble!”
“Tell me about it.”
She did not comfortingly pat the girl in her arms, or kiss her, as most women would have done, either sincerely or insincerely. She simply sat there, holding her quietly, staring before her. On a table, the photograph of Pat Temple stared back with his large, frank gaze.
Loree did not tell the full tale, but only what seemed essential to make the other woman understand her distress and peril. She recounted her finding of the necklace and Quelch’s threats and bold wooing in the garden. But she did not begin at the beginning of the trouble, which was when the little pink god cast its spell over her. There seemed no sense in dragging forth that pagan idol from its grove wherein she had so abandonedly worshipped. In the end, she sat wiping her tear-distorted face and gazing hopelessly at the other’s grave eyes. Said Valeria Cork, at last:
“He has us both in his power.”
“You? What can he do to hurt you?”
“Much. I stole a rough diamond that day we went to the De Beers office. It was only by grace of him that I was not arrested.”
Loree shrank back, horrified.
“O God—how dreadful!”
“Dreadful, yes,” agreed Valeria tonelessly. “But you? Did you not steal, too?”
“I?”
Mrs Cork’s speech assumed its usual biting flavour.
“Did you know that the rose diamond you found on your table was not yours? Or did you suppose that an angel had come down from heaven to present you with it?”
“The rose diamond?” faltered Loree.
“Yes—your ‘pink topaz.’”
“How did you know?” whispered the girl, deeply shamed.
“I put it there, of course. It was the price Quelch demanded for saving me from arrest. You remember the incident at Alexandersfontein when he trod on your frock and you were obliged to go and mend it, leaving us together? That was the time he chose to blackmail me into being his tool. Both the rose diamond and the necklace were placed in your room by me.”
“Then it has all been a plan from the beginning!” cried Loree, in bitter indignation. “A plan to corrupt and ensnare me!”
“But you were so very willing to be corrupted and ensnared,” retorted Valeria Cork. “If you had been honest and come to me that night, as was evidently your first intention, we might have stood together and fought him. But you did not. And in the morning, when I came round, still wretchedly hoping for some way out for us both—you were there, happy and smiling, making a silk bag for yourpink topaz!” The red blood of shame rushed through Loree Temple’s face, but the elder woman spared her nothing. “You lied to me and told me how old and ugly I looked. I must say your attitude did not invite sacrifice, and the burning of my own hands. I read you—empty, vain, faithless, utterly despicable.”
Loree was now white as death, but the other woman’s scorn brought a blaze to her eyes.
“It does not come too well from you—that indictment,” she retorted bitterly.
“Perhaps not. I am a thief, too. But I stole for a keener need, and a greater cause, if that can be any excuse for crime. I wanted money, not for myself but to ensure the continuation of my boy’s education. In a moment of terrible temptation to steal a stone and realise a few hundred pounds, I succumbed. Within a few moments I repented and would have put it back, but it was too late to do so without being observed, and my next idea, to return it anonymously, was thwarted by the fact that Quelch and the detectives had all seen. You, on the other hand, had time to think temptation over and reason with your own soul. And what wasyourpressing need that made you ready and willing to barter away the honour of a man like that,”—she pointed to the photograph on the table—“for—diamonds?”
That blanched Loraine Loree, and withered and crushed her.
“Oh, no—no!” she moaned brokenly. “Not Pat’s honour! Don’t think that! I love my husband with all my heart and soul. But I never gave a thought to what I was doing. From the moment I saw diamonds, they seemed to put a spell on me, something that blotted out my mind and conscience. I can’t explain to you—butnowI see what I have done—destroyed his happiness, his pride in life—everything! O God, what shall I do?”
It was clear that at last she was at grips with something greater than self love and vanity, had forgotten, in the suffering she must inflict on her husband, the danger that menaced herself. Even Valeria Cork’s tormented soul, wrung dry by its own sorrow, felt compassion for the weeping, desolate girl, so young and so foolish.
“You must pick up the pieces and begin again,” she said sombrely, “and consider yourself lucky if you are able to. A second chance does not come to us all.”
“What second chance am I likely to have?” said Loree tragically. “None. He has me in a trap that I cannot escape from without shame.”
“I could help you if you were worth it,” said Mrs Cork cryptically.
The girl could only look at her with agonised eyes. She knew she had proved herself unworthy of help on this woman’s part, but she thought of Pat, and her glance was entreating.
“No woman has ever helped me,” stated Valeria Cork. “A woman stole my husband and destroyed my happiness. In all my goings up and down, and struggles to live uprightly, women have kicked me and wiped their boots on me.” What gleam of hope she had felt left Loree’s heart, but came back at Valeria’s next words: “That is no reason why I should be as base as they. And, at the last, you have shown me that a womancanbe kind to another. I will tell you truthfully that your action in bringing that fifty pound note is the first disinterestedly generous thing a woman has ever done for me.”
Poor Loree’s face drooped in shame.
“It was not altogether disinterested,” she confessed. “I—I did think, as you divined, that it might also be a way of getting even with my conscience for keeping the diamonds—”
“Ah!”
“Still, Ididwant to give you a helping hand if you would let me. I liked you awfully, and was so dreadfully sorry—”
“Soyou said in your letter.”
“You can believe or not—I don’t care. What does anything matter if he does what he swears—that rather than let me go, he will bring my reputation to the dust? That means publishing to the world that I—Pat Temple’s wife—took the De Beers diamond!”
“But you did not.”
“Well, I kept it when I found it. That is as bad—and worse—as you have shown me.”
“Only that it didn’t happen to belong to De Beers,” said Valeria Cork. She picked it up from where it lay in its silk bag, discarded in company with the now despised and rejected necklace. “This diamond is an almost exact facsimile of the rose diamond you so much admired at De Beers’, but it happens to have come, years ago, from the Tintara mine and to be Heseltine Quelch’s own property. He took advantage of the likeness to make you believe that it was the De Beers stone you had, when it was simply his own that he wished you to keep.”
“Then—then,” cried Loree, “I amnota public criminal? De Beers cannot arrest me? No one but Heseltine Quelch can threaten me with disgrace?”
“No,” answered Valeria calmly; “it is rally I who can be arrested and disgraced, and I don’t suppose he will spare me when he finds you have slipped his clutches.”
Loree gave a long sigh.
“I cannot slip his clutches—at your expense,” she said at last.
“You have your husband to think of.”
The girl shook her head.
“You don’t know Pat. He would never let himself be saved anything at the expense of another, especially a woman.”
“He must never know that part of the story,” said Valeria firmly.
“But, Mrs Cork, I cannot! I feel it in my bones that Quelch will wreak vengeance on some one, and I cannot let you be sacrificed. You have got to think of yourself. Your boy, too—for whom—”
“For whom I stole,” supplemented Valeria. “Ah, my dear,youtell me to think of him! For the last two days I have thought of nothing else. He has lain in my arms, a little chubby baby once more, with his curly head against my breast.”
“He shall never be sacrificed!” cried Loree.
“He is sacrificed already,” said Valeria Cork softly, “by a more just fate than you or I control. He was drowned two days ago while trying to save the life of a friend.”
“O dear God!” whispered Loree pitifully. Now she knew the reason of the other’s sombre, tearless gaze. Nothing could ever hurt more deeply or comfort again that soul bereft.
“So you see,” said Valeria, voicing her thought, “nothing matters.”
She talked down Loree’s protests. She was bent on sacrifice as her just punishment. Almost it seemed as if she craved some other pain as anodyne for that which already ate like a rat at her heart. They talked into the small hours of the morning, formulating plans by which to defeat Quelch, who, they knew, would stick at nothing.
“He told me frankly,” said Valeria, “that there were only two things in the world he cared about—the future of his son and the possession of you. That was in the small hours after the ball when he had just paid down 50,000 pounds to keep scandal from touching you.”
“50,000 pounds! What can you mean?”
“Ah yes, I had forgotten for the moment. That was the price he paid Mrs Solano for the necklace. It was hers as she rightly claimed. As soon as she got it into her hands in Quelch’s sitting-room she was able to prove that to him.”
“Hers? But how then had he got it to give to me?”
“It is a complicated story, and full of dark by-ways. God knows what evil magic lies in diamonds that they can make people do such terrible things! It appears that Mrs Solano had given the chain into the care of her banker. She wanted him to sell it, but she set a very high price on it and he had never been able to find a purchaser. However, one day recently when Quelch was with him at the bank he produced it, and Quelch, with you in his mind, and recognising it as a most exquisite collection of stones, offered twenty-five thousand pounds for it. The Banker closed at once without disclosing to Quelch the name of the client for whom he was selling. And in fact he never disclosed the transaction to Mrs Solano herself. His bank was in deep waters and he used the money to tide over his own financial difficulties, no doubt intending and hoping to repay the money before she should find out about the sale of the chain. Unfortunately you wore it that night. She saw it and the moment she and Quelch were alone and compared notes they realised what had happened.”
At the words “financial difficulties” a dreadful suspicion that had been lurking in Loree Temple’s brain, found words.
“What was the Banker’s name?” she asked hoarsely, and even as she feared the answer was:
“Frederick Huffe.”
“O God!” with a moan the girl covered her eyes. “I felt sure it was. I had a horrible feeling that there was some connection between the diamonds and his death, for I remember that it was to speak to Mr Quelch that he was called away from dancing with me.”
“Yes, Quelch sent for him, and there in the sitting-room they questioned him point blank, and he calmly admitted what he had done and that he had used the money. Nothing more was said. Quelch had told me since that neither he nor Mrs Solano would have dreamed of prosecuting. They both liked the man too much and appreciated that his difficulties had not been his own but of the bank’s making. Probably Quelch would have helped him out. But poor Freddy Huffe’s pride was broken. He went straight from them into the garden and shot himself with a revolver he always carried.”
Loree shuddered.
“It was my fault,” she muttered. “His blood is on my head!”
“That is a morbid thought,” pronounced Valeria firmly, “and one you must not allow to stay in your mind. The fate of every man is bound about his neck. Frederick Huffe was fated to die by his own hand, and no action of yours could have prevented it.”
But Loree shook her head, and tears streamed down her face.
“How little I dreamed that it had anything to do with me when I read it in the papers next day!—and how heartlessly I passed it over. All that moved me was thankfulness that no journalist had mentioned anything about my diamonds. I thought at the time that it was accident, but now I suppose that too can be traced back to Heseltine Quelch’s power?”
“Yes. He has power in this place. I think there can be no doubt that he used it to prevent the journalists from saying anything about the chain you were wearing.”
“And what about Mrs Solano? How did he account to her for giving me the jewels? Oh! what canshethink of me?”
“You need not worry about that. Mrs Solano is under many obligations to Heseltine Quelch, I believe, but he did not follow that line. He told her the whole story and threw himself on her mercy. She is a strange woman and in some ways a very fine one. She understood both Quelch’s passion for you, and your passion for the gems, and she consented to sell the chain to him and to keep her lips sealed forever. He at once wrote her out a cheque for 50,000 pounds—double what she had asked. They can do big things these Jews, as well as small ones.”
“But she makes another who knows!”
“I tell you Rachel Solano is a great woman, for all her sins. You need never fear her.”
“I fear him,” cried the desolate, shivering girl. “I shall never be able to escape him. Every one in this hotel is his tool.”
“They must be deceived as well as he. Listen: start packing in the morning, saying to the servants that you are leaving for England. The news will soon reach him.”
“But he expects me to go with him to-morrow night.”
“You must delay that. Write him a note saying that you are ill and can’t be ready until the night after.”
“And then.”
“In reality, you will slip away to-morrow night by the mail-train for Rhodesia.”
“Rhodesia?” said Loree faintly.
“Yes—to your husband. And never leave him again. Women like you are not safe away from their rightful owners. Beauty is not such a boon as plain women suppose.”
There was pity as well as a certain amount of scorn in Valeria Cork’s voice, but Loree was in no mood to resent either.
“How can I ever explain to him—turning up suddenly like that?” she murmured.
“That is your affair,” said Valeria. “Mine is to get you away. So to bed now, and rest as much as you can. You will need all your wits and nerves. Good-night.”
She rose, and they stood looking at each other for an instant.
“I don’t suppose you would care to shake hands with a woman like me,” said Mrs Cork slowly. Her mournful eyes had something shamed and beaten in their depths, something of the longing of a punished child for a kind word. Loree suddenly flung her arms about her and held her close, and then, at last, the other woman’s agonised heart found relief in the tears that had been denied her since she received the news of her loss. Amidst her bitter weeping, broken incoherent phrases came gasping from her lips.
“He was so beautiful, so gay! I wanted only to be good for his dear sake. It was enough—just to be his mother. But when I suddenly lost all my little fortune in a mining smash, there seemed no way to get money to keep him among the right people. He was so brilliant—I dreamed of his being one of the great men of England, some day. I thought, ‘What doesmypoor soul matter so long asherises from the ruins of it?’ I would have lied, stolen, murdered, doneanything, so that all might have been well with him—and see how the God of Equity intervenes!Heknew that no man could ever be great who had a shameful mother—and He had pity on my son. Oh, Loree, Loree—if ever you have a son, starve with him in a garret, scratch with him in the gutter, but never imperil for him your immortal soul. ‘What you give of gold and silver stands nothing; only as much as you have of soul avails.’ Some great man said that, and it is true. Only what you give of the soul avails.”
In the morning, to a wretched Loree, weary-eyed from haunted dreams, came a letter from Quelch. It was restrained and tender, almost gentle, but it sounded the note of one who held the winning cards. Below the bold signature was appended the hour of the mail-train’s departure, and an added word like a cry:
“I have received a blow that only you can comfort me for, my beautiful Loraine Loree.”
She shivered, then burned. The thought that she must carry the memory of his illicit caresses all her life made her sick. Frantically she began to pack, then, remembering Valeria’s instructions, went to bed again. It was a dreadful day of pretence and subterfuge and lying. It seemed to her that she could never again erase from her soul the black marks of all the lies she told that day, that they would tarnish for ever all her future life with Pat. But then, had she not tarnished it already by her own wicked folly?
Under the counsels of Valeria Cork, a subtly evasive answer was written to Quelch’s letter. It told that she was too ill to leave her room that day, and gave no bond to be at the station on the next; it sent no word of love, and was a document that all the world might have read, yet a premise, elusive and fragile as the scent of spring, haunted the simple lines. Valeria’s lips were grim as she invented each delicate phrase.
“Skilled weapons against an unscrupulous fighter,” she contended. “When you are safely gone, he shall know who composed the letter. It is one of his punishments for what he has done to you—and me.”
She moved sombrely about the room, like one walking behind the bier of her dead. Nothing seemed alive in her except her smouldering eyes. At lunch-time, she went down stairs and sat before food she could not eat for the sake of spying out the land of the enemy. But he did not appear. There was nothing to report to Loree except that it was known in the hotel that his going to the Cape had been postponed until the following evening. Afterwards, she wrote a note to him and left it at the office. The office-girl mentioned to her that Mr Quelch was looking terribly ill, and she wondered what the bad news could be he had mentioned to Loree; but she was not a woman to waste time on idle curiosity. Having gone through Loree Temple’s trunks that morning, she had selected therefrom a pair of tan-cloth riding-breeches, a long habit-coat, and top-boots. All the rest of the lovely Viola clothes were stored away in the trunks labelled loudly for Cape Town—except one simple frock and such feminine necessities as would fill a small suitcase. Now she sallied forth to do some shopping, taking the suitcase with her.
“To get it mended,” she told the hall porter, and placed it herself in the taxi. But its true destination was the station cloakroom.
Returning at tea-time, she brought with her a first-class ticket to Mafeking, and another from Mafeking to Buluwayo, a strong rope, a second-hand tweed ulster suitable for a slender youth of medium height, and a slouch hat. These last, with the breeches and top-boots, were to constitute Loree’s travelling-kit.
They “dressed the part” and gravely rehearsed it. Mrs Temple’s mirror, that had once given back lovely visions in diaphanous draperies and sparkling jewels, now reflected something uncommonly like a seedy youth of the type that relations get rid of to South Africa and hope they’ll never see again. What could be seen of the face beneath the slouch hat was not prepossessing when Valeria had finished with it. The complexion was sallow and distinctly spotty, the eyes slightly inflamed. A darkness on the upper lip might have been the promise of a moustache or merely dirt. What the hand of Mrs Cork found to do, she did well.
Loree gazed with disgust at the odious person in the glass. It seemed impossible she could ever be herself again. But Valeria coached her in the art of getting rid of facial disguise in ten minutes. That was the secret contained in the two railway tickets. The lightning change had to occur in a lavatory dressing-room sometime in the early morning before the train reached Mafeking. During the short wait at the famous little Bechuanaland town, no one was likely to note the disappearance of a bleary-eyed youth or connect it with the advent of a veiled lady who would continue the journey to Buluwayo as Mrs Temple.
Getting away from the hotel without being seen and reported to Quelch was a more difficult matter, but Valeria had laid careful plans. It would be dusk—the hour when people were dressing for dinner. No one would be likely to be near the corner of the balcony opposite Valeria’s room or in the obscure fernery on the stoop below. The corner had a strong post to the ground, against which Loree could support herself when being let down. That was what the rope was for.
“And if you meet any one who wants to know your business, give them this note for me, and then make tracks,” said Valeria. “You will easily get a cab to the station.”
She had thought of everything. Her only regret was that she could not be at the station, too. But it had seemed wiser to make an appointment with Quelch for that hour. To that end, she had written the note at midday, underlining the words: “particularly personal matter.” She desired that he would realise the matter to be connected with Loree Temple, and, even as she anticipated, a prompt reply came, and hoped she would “honour him by an interview in his private sitting-room” at the hour she mentioned, if such an arrangement suited her. She grimaced at the courteous words which seemed to her unnecessary irony, but the plan indeed suited her—perfectly.
At the hour in which she knocked upon Heseltine Quelch’s door the work was done. She had kissed Loraine Loree upon her darkened lips and bade her Godspeed, had launched her from the balcony, and seen the boyish silhouette disappear through the garden. Even as she listened for an answer from the room within, she heard the harsh scream and “chug-chug” of a departing train, and knew that, if all was well, Mrs Temple was passing out of Kimberley and out ofherlife for ever.
Quelch was sitting at a table, holding his hands before him as though clutching something. But the moment she entered, he rose abruptly and came towards her with a sort of violence. She saw that his hands were empty, and thought, by his strange face, that he meant to kill her. Brave as she was, she recoiled from him. That pulled him up sharp. He stood stammering, almost gibbering incoherent words at her. She was certain now that he knew. There was something horribly moving in the desolation of his eyes. It was the expression of a fierce creature of the wilds wounded to the death. She noticed suddenly that he was no longer young. His shoulders stooped; there was silver in his hair.
“Did he care so much?” she thought amazed, and almost her heart felt pity for him. She knew what it was to love and be robbed. In a moment, he succeeded in getting control of himself and spoke clearly. Then she realised that though he was no longer incoherent, she did not understand him. What he said was:
“It is no wonder you recoil from me—hate me. I can only say to you that I grieve for you with all that is left of my heart—and—I thank you.”
She stared at him. They stood looking at each other—two people scarred and marred by the passionate lawlessness of their own natures—in her eyes amazement, in his that devastating mournfulness. What was he speaking of? He seemed to know of her sorrow, to share it.
“A son,” he said softly, “to lose one’s son! The being one wound one’s dreams about—who was to be so infinitely greater than oneself—to compensate with the shining splendour of his soul for all the darkness of one’s own.” Valeria gloomed at him with bitter eyes. How did he know so well wherewith to mock her, this strange Eastern man with his gentle, un-English voice? “You should not hate me. It is unworthy of the mother of a son who gave his life for a friend.”
While she stood considering him—how un-English he was to have tears running down his cheeks like that; that hemustbe a Jew (as she had often supposed) to be so emotional, so unreserved, so piercingly sapient—the truth came to her like an arrow. It washisson that hers had died to save and died for in vain! They were both sonless!
Nothing but the bare news of her loss had come to her, no names but that of her son. Quelch with his wealth had commanded every detail of the tragedy, and been receiving news down to that very hour. The table was littered with cablegrams.
She stoodverystill and white and weary until he had finished telling her all, thanking her for the nobleness of her son’s effort, assuring her that if in all the wide world there was anything that could represent his gratitude, any act of his that would help to ease her wound, she had only to speak. Then from her pocket she produced a little parcel of sparkling stones wrapped in a silken handkerchief and laid it on the table.
“A little foolish girl returns you these,” she said, and her voice, too, had grown very gentle. “She left to-night to join her husband. This you can do for me: Forget her, and let her forget you.”
The End.
|Chapter 1| |Chapter 2| |Chapter 3|