Chapter Twenty One.

Chapter Twenty One.What the Knuckle-Bone of a Sheep Did.“The senses no less than the soul have their spiritual mysteries toreveal.”We were sitting under a mimosa tree outside the drawing-room hut, elbows on the tea-table, enjoying the sunset lights and the extraordinary content that nothing so well bestows as a day’s work well done.It was almost the end of a February day, and everywhere around us bloomed and flaunted the radiant tints of summer at the full. In a tree close by a little green-breasted bird was singing a passionate song. The sea of zinias still swayed its multi-coloured waves below us, but boundaries had been set, and full-tide now only reached to the foot of the kopje. Above high-water mark Mgatweli Police Camp and the home of its commanding officer, picturesque still, but no longer disreputable, rose like a Phoenix from its ashes.Stubbly bush had been uprooted from charming slopes to make place for luxuriant beds of tomatoes and Cape gooseberries; and terraces of flowers already gave evidence of beauty and fragrance to come. Gnarled growths had disappeared, and big trees had a clear space to branch abroad in freedom and grace. A fine tennis-court, the delight of every player in the town, stretched its gleaming level space near a newly begun small banana grove.Each of our huts except the kitchen had now a picturesque rustic porch added to it, round which were set plants of young grenadilla—the best shady creeper in Africa, and one that bears a lovely purple passion flower, and most delicious fruit.The men’s camp was also enormously improved. A little agitation in the right quarter had resulted in a grant of Government boys to build and thatch a big mess and club-house. The parade ground had been enlarged, and the beginning of an out-door gym was visible. The men had something better to do now than loafing to town in off hours, or getting drunk in their huts out of sheer boredom with life. There were shooting-butts up, and regular hours for practice in view of putting forward a Bisley team. There was also a Sports programme in active rehearsal for a projected gymkhana meeting in the near future. Under a smart officer full of initiative and invention the best bred wasters in the world are bound to “buck up and look slippy” and that is what the Mgatweli troopers were very busily occupied in doing.In six months Maurice had done wonders; and the wonders had not ceased with improvements at home and in the camp. You had only to look at him sitting there, neat and debonair in his grey uniform, to recognise that fact. He had the clear eye, healthy skin, and quiet, firm air of a man with a purpose. Force of character may be cumulative, and six months may not be a very long time in which to accumulate it. But a will to do well, and a lovely climate to do it in, is much; and I should say the matter depended not so much on time as on the number and size of the difficulties met and overcome. Six months may not be a long time but it is too long to fight daily battles with your vices without getting results; and an accumulation of results sat upon the serene brow of Maurice Stair, and revealed themselves in the firmness of his mouth.No more sealed wooden cases were surreptitiously carried to his hut. He drank his whiskey-and-soda from his own sideboard like a sane and decent gentleman. No more shirking and shelving of duties: but rather a seeking of fresh ones. No more sloth and skulking and petty sins. The old vices and weaknesses were under foot at last. He had his heel on the heads of them.I know not what upheld him in the fight; what secret dew refreshed his jaded spirit in the terrible struggles he must have undergone. Often I saw him stumble and falter, and sometimes (but not often) fall “mauled to the earth.” And I cannot tell where he found the strength to “arise and go on again;” but he did. There is little one human being can do for another in these crises of the soul, these fierce battles with old sins that have their roots in deep. They must be fought out alone. External aid is of small use. But what I could I did. And perhaps it helped a little to let him see that I too was fighting and suffering and striving to climb by his side with my hand in his. But whatever the means the result was there plain for all who ran to read; and I am bound to admit that it was so far beyond my dreams and expectations that I sometimes found it hard to recognise in this new Maurice, whose feet were so firmly planted on the upward slopes, the old Maurice, my dark-souled companion in a deep and dread ravine.Sitting there in the sunset glow he gave me fresh proof of his changed outlook on life. He offered of his own free will to renounce the five hundred a year Sir Alexander Stair paid him to live in Africa. A few days before he had unflinchingly and without preliminaries told me the meaning of the income he enjoyed from his uncle.“He pays me to keep out of his sight. He has always despised me for a rotter. The reason he put a clincher on my going into the army was because he thought I’d disgrace the family name there. It makes him sick to think I’ll get the title after him. Rather than see me, and be reminded of the fact, he pays me nearly half of his income to stay out here.”I said nothing at the time beyond exclaiming at the arrogant self-righteousness that made it possible for a man to condemn his only relative so harshly. But I knew very well that the new Maurice felt the ignominy attached to such an arrangement, and that his confession to me heralded some change. Now he volunteered to give up the money, and asked me if I would leave Africa with him for Australia, where an old friend of his father’s had a large ranch near Melbourne and had offered him a sort of under-managership on it. Having been out there for several years before coming to Africa, Maurice thoroughly understood the life and its conditions.“As soon as I get back to the ropes, after a year or so Broughton will offer me the whole thing to manage. And I know well enough I’m able for it if you will only go with me and back me up.”“Of course I will go, Maurice,” I said quietly, and we fell to making plans; but I looked no longer at the sunlit hills, and in the thorn tree the note of the little green-breasted robin had changed. It seemed now to be sobbing its life away in song.“You see we couldn’t go on here at twenty pounds a month, Deirdre. It is impossible. Living in this country is too high. These billets aren’t meant for men without private incomes. Later, when the railways get up here, it will be different. But before then we are going to have another row with the niggers here, or my name is not Jack Robinson. Then life will be dearer than ever. There’s trouble brewing again with these Matabele fellows. Ever since the rinderpest broke out they’ve been queer. They are desperate with vexation at losing their cattle, and theirUmlimo, a sort of god or high priest who lives in a cave and prophesies to them from the depths of it—having carefully collected his information first, by means of spies—tells them it is the white man who is causing their cattle to die. The funny thing is that this fellow is really the god of the Mashonas, yet the Matabele put absolute faith in him. Old Loben used to send and consult him about everything—”I was not listening very intently to Maurice. I was wondering whether it was the bird’s song that had suddenly filled me with despair. Why was I not glad to be escaping at last from the claw of the witch? Was it these thatched huts that held me—because we had made them so charming and homelike without and within? I knew it could not be. Places appealed to me, and people; houses and things never. Goods and chattels had no hands to hold me as they do some people. Of late I had come to think that life under a tree without any accessories at all could be very full and sweet—if one only shared the shade of the branches with the one right person in sill the world. Moreover, the legend carved above a door in dead Fatehpur had always struck me as a peculiarly appropriate motto for people whose lives were cast in Africa.“Said Jesus, to whom be peace, the world is a bridge, pass over it, but build no house there.”As we talked, Makupi in his brick-red blanket passed down the sloping pathway towards the zinia-sea, and when he came to its beach squatted himself down, took his piano from his hair, and began his sombre beating.Tom—brr—torn—brr—torn—brr—tom-tom-tom-brr.It seemed to me that I heard the throbbing of a human heart laid upon the stone altar of some monstrous god. My eyes wandered to the hills again. Then suddenly I knew that it was the thought of leavingthemthat filled me with such haunting despair—the far-off Matoppos that held for me some hidden mystery, some magic that drew my eyes at dawn, and at setting of sun. On moonlit nights I would often rise from my bed to gaze at them and wonder.Tom—brr—torn—brr—torn—brr.“Call him over here, Deirdre,” said Maurice suddenly. “Let’s give him back hise’tambo.”Putting his hand into an inner pocket he drew out a small black object and handed it to me. It was a little bone taken from the joint of a sheep (the boys call themdolour-ossi, and often play with them). But this one was black, either with age or by some artificial process, and polished until it gleamed like a jewel. On it was traced in spidery lines the profile of some weird quadruped of the same description as the Hottentot drawings on the rocks; otherwise there was not the slightest thing about it to suggest mystery or romance. Yet Makupi was eating his heart out and growing hollow-eyed for lack of it. He wanted to go back to his kraal in Mashonaland, he told me, but would never leave until he got hise’tamboback from theInkos. He had even offered me some mysterious bribe if I would steal it for him. Something about a mysterious gold mine, no doubt, I thought, and laughed. But I always wished Maurice would give it to the poor fellow. Lately we had become so accustomed to seeing him about that I think we had almost forgotten what he was there for.Buthehad not forgotten. When I called to him to come, that theInkoshad something for him, his thoughts flew at once to his charm, and he leaped to his feet and came running. He guessed what it was Maurice had hidden in his hand.“But what about that wonderful secret you were going to tell me, Makupi?” I laughed. He rolled his eager sad eyes at me.“Give me mye’tambofirst. You will be glad.”“Give it to him, Maurice. Let us be glad,” said I, still laughing, and suddenly feeling, in spite of my sad thoughts of the last hour, extraordinarily light-hearted and happy.One swift glance at the small black bone, and then Makupi’s lithe hand closed over it. He made a movement with both hands over his body and hair, and then his palms hung empty by his sides, and we never saw the charm again.He looked at Maurice first, then his eyes came to me and rested there while he spoke a brief sentence in the pigeon-Makalika which he knew I understood.“In the cave of the Umlimo in the Maloppos, there is a white man hidden. He wears blue charms in his ears.”For one moment he watched the paralysing effect of his statement, gazing at me in astonishment as though he saw a spectre, and afterwards at Maurice who had risen from his seat and was holding to the tree as if for support. Then his eager voice continued. He poured out the strange story now in his own tongue, of which I only understood a word here and there. But I understood enough to make the blood fly rustling through my veins, leaping from my heart to my ears and cheeks. When he had spoken a few sentences he made a gesture towards me and waited for Maurice to translate. I kept my eyes averted from my husband’s.“He says—that in the cave of theUmlimoa white man has been hidden and kept prisoner ever since the Matabele war—he is a man whom a party of Matabele warriors came upon just at the close of the campaign—alone in the bush, not far from the Shangani. He was wounded in the head, and had gone raving mad—was singing and laughing when they came upon hint—that is why they did not kill him. They are afraid to kill the mad—the mad are sacred. They took him prisoner and carried him to the camp where Lobengula lay dying.”Makupi took up the tale once more.“He says—that the King forbade them to kill the man, but to take him by out-of-the-way routes to the cave of theUmlimowho would get wisdom from his madness, and be able to advise the Matabele how to defeat the white men later, if they were beaten in the war. A wife of Lobengula who had skill in sickness took charge of him and after the death of the King he was taken by devious ways to the Matoppos, where he has been ever since.”Maurice paused a minute moment. He seemed to be suffering. His lips twisted as with some agonised effort to produce words from a lacerated throat. Later, he took up Makupi’s tale. Unconsciously he adopted the boy’s chanting tone, and used the native phraseology.“He says—the wound in the head took long to heal—only in the last few months has wisdom fully returned to the man—and since then theUmlimokeeps him in bonds for fear he should escape and tell of the things he has seen and heard in the cave where the Deity sits brooding over the fate of Matabeleland and Mashonaland. They are afraid to kill him, not only because Lobengula put the command on them not to, but because he is a great white man with strong eyes that make them afraid to strike—he sits all day with his hands bound—but when the stars come out and on nights that the moon shines he commands to be taken out, and he walks for many hours among the hills.”Another swift flow of words from Makupi.“He says—that two men of the old Imbezu Regiment are with him always—armed with assegai—but there are never any horses near, and they never unbind his hands. He eats well, with the air of a man who is content—but his eyes are looking always beyond the hills and though he pretends to be content they see that his desire lies in Mashonaland.”When Makupi’s tale was finished the sun was gone, and nothing was left of the sunset but a little red light and one last streak of gold that lingered between two hills. He folded his hands upon his breast and stood still with his eyes drooped to the ground.“Poor Kinsella!” said Maurice abstractedly, almost like a man speaking in his sleep. “What a dog’s life—for nearly two years!”Like a little codicil to a last will and testament Makupi added a few more words.“This is a very secret matter, and forbidden by theUmlimoto be spoken of to any, under pain of—” he made a dramatic gesture of stabbing. “It would have been better for me to have told any of the secrets of the Matabele and the Makalikas than this. But because theInkosizaanis like the departed glory of the Matabeleland, and her hands are kind and healing to all she touches, I have told.”“You have done well,” said Maurice firmly. He had wakened from his dreaminess now; “and we’ll take care you don’t suffer for it. But look here, Makupi, will you go with me to the Matoppoe and show me the way to the cave of theUmlimo?”Makupi looked at me for a moment.“If theInkosizaanwishes, I will go and show the way,” he said. “But it will not be easy to overcome those men of the Imbezu with their assegais and stabbing knives; some of theUmlimo’speople have guns too, which they did not give up after the war. We will have to wait in secret places of the hills with horses always ready to start, and coming upon them by surprise spring on the guard and kill them, then quickly unbind the white man and ride away. But it is hard to say how long we shall have to wait hiding in the hills.”“That’s nothing. Be ready to start the dawn after to-morrow’s dawn, Makupi. Do not fail me—or theInkosizaan.”“No,Inkos.”He went away with a spring to his walk. I turned to Maurice and spoke as steadily as I could.“Do you not think you should tell the Company and have an expedition sent?”“No!” he said abruptly. “I shall take Makapi and go alone. They would get wind of an expedition—you can’t keep anything dark from kaffirs for long—and then they would kill Kinsella as sure as a gun. After holding him so long they know well enough that some one will have to pay when he is released, and they’ll think nothing of killing him off and denying that there was ever any one there at all. We can’t risk that. I must go alone and very quickly. There will be nothing unusual in a police inspector setting off alone, and they will suspect nothing. We won’t give them time to suspect.”“I think you should tell the Company,” I persisted. There was something terrifying and awful to me in letting my husband go off alone on this dangerous mission to bring back the man I loved.“Of course I shall tell the Company—as much as is good for them to know. I must get my chief on the wire at once, and get leave to go off on urgent secret inquiry work. There are any amount of reasons to go secretly to the kraals, now that the natives are so unsettled. He’ll be glad enough to have me visit the Matoppo kraals and see what is going on.” He turned on me suddenly. “Do you grudge me this work to do for you?” he said strangely, and I knew not how to answer him, but at last I faltered:“Forus, Maurice. I think it is splendid of you to offer to go. It will be no child’s play, but a brave, big thing. Whether you succeed or not no one will be prouder of you than I. It is the going that counts. But I know you will succeed.”And indeed I had always known that I should see Anthony Kinsella again before I died.Maurice and I were closer in spirit during the next few hours than we had ever been. They were hours of unceasing occupation, swift consideration and selection.There was the route to be planned, and where to have horses waiting for him on his return; leave to be got from headquarters and arrangements to be made for his absence; double arms to be prepared, so that Anthony might be able to fight for himself if the need arose; food for two to be prepared and packed—medicines and bandages!To avoid rousing the suspicions of any of theUmlimo’sspies that might be in the town, Maurice decided to leave about an hour after midnight, when all the boys were in their quarters asleep. Thus even speculation would be unaroused. Makupi was not to travel openly with him, but to meet him at various given points, guide him, and disappear again until they reached the final place selected to hide in until an opportunity for the rescue occurred.There was little time for reflection during those rushing hours of preparation: but when at last all was complete and ready for Maurice’s departure within the hour, I had that to think on which gave me pause.Handsome and business-like in his khaki and leather, my husband sat down at his desk to put in order some papers dealing with the police work during his absence. It would only take him a quarter of an hour or so he told me, then there would be time for a last talk together before his horse came round.“Will you come to my room then?” I said in a low voice, and swiftly left him.Strange thoughts were mine as I stood at my dressing-table, combing my hair with shaking hands, until the little short curls lay like wallflower petals on my forehead, and my ghostlike face was framed in waves of bronze. Yes, my face was ghostlike. I was obliged to take some powered rouge and introduce a subtle pale rose flush to the faint hollows of my cheeks, and with a little camel’s-hair brush to outline carefully the curve of my white lips with liquid crimson. It was a difficult process for there was a mist before my eyes, and my hand trembled so much that I sometimes made a false line and had to wipe all out and begin again. For it would not do to let Maurice see that I had had recourse to make-up. His eyes were strangely keen those days, and his vision clear, like his skin. I wondered would he notice the look in my eyes. Within the next hour I must veil them often with my lashes lest they betray me.When all was finished I was very charming to look at: a slim, subtle-looking woman, with bronze hair and a curved mouth, bare armed and white bosomed, in a low cut gown of black lace.Only the strange shadow in my eyes could not be treated with. It looked out like a desperate hunted thing, but it would not come forth. I knew it well. It was the shadow of the soul I had given to Anthony Kinsella, awaiting affrightedly for the desolation I was going to work upon it before Anthony Kinsella came riding back into my life to claim it. It knew that I was resolute to sign and seal myself away to Maurice Stair before that hour, and it was sick unto death.But the thing had to be. I had practically accepted it on that sinister night six months past, when the black vultures swarmed and the eyes of the Mother of Consolation terribly accused me. It had come nearer and nearer with every fresh victory Maurice gained over his devils. I had always known there was to be no escape. But, ah, God! why had I not embraced my fate before this hour in which I knew that Anthony still dreamed of me behind the hills?Maurice came in, forage-cap in hand, riding-crop tucked under his arm, and stood by me in the place where six months before he had cowered, and I had spurned him with my foot. What a different man was this! Pride andélanin his gait, and in the old enchanting smile upon his lips real chivalry at last. I felt my heart stir strangely, as very deliberately I put out both my hands to him. He took them, kissed them, and lightly let them fall again.“Well! Expect us back in about a week, Deirdre. I shall not fail.”I stood looking at him with my lids drooped a little to hide my eyes. Why had he let my hands fall so quickly? My first effort had gone astray.“No, you will not fail, Maurice. You and the word ‘failure’ are never going to have anything to say to each other again. I am glad now that you are going alone, and will have all the honour and glory of it to yourself. I want people in this country to appreciate your courage before we leave it.”I thought of Dr Abingdon, and the other man on the Salisbury road. It was odd what a thrill of pride I felt that all the world would soon know that whatever had happened in the past, in the future none might ever again call this man coward.“Leave it?” he said. “You still hold to that plan?”“Of course.” I looked at him in surprise. “Is it not all settled? Didn’t you speak to your chief about it on the wire this morning as you said you would?”“No—I thought it had better wait over—until I came back you know.”“You should have done it at once, Maurice. I wanted to begin to do things—sorting, packing, arranging what we are going to take with us. The delay about your resignation will keep us here months longer perhaps. Will you let me write it for you and send it in while you’re away?”“Oh! all right then,” but his tone was still hesitating. I turned on him reproachfully. It seemed hard to have to be firm for him as well as myself.“Is it that you have changed your mind again—after all our plans?”“No, dear—but I don’t want to fasten you down to anything we planned.Youmay want to change.”“Why should I?” I asked quietly. “Nothing is changed because ofthis: except that in our future life together we shall both be the happier for it.”He stood looking at me with glad though doubtful eyes then, tapping his gaiter with his crop. But always he stayed at a little distance, almost as though he feared I might touch him. I went over to him, and put my hands on his shoulders.“That real life you and I are going to live presently, in—“Some neater, sweeter country,—Some greener, cleaner land.”My voice gave a little catch in my throat, but I struggled on.“Life is full of possibilities for us, Maurice—I believe we are going to be very happy.”But he turned aside moodily, hanging his head a little. I had not seen him look like that for, many months.“What is the good of pretending to me, Deirdre? I have been too bad a brute and a devil to you—and you love Kinsella—I know you can never love me.”His sullen misery made me take trembling resolution by the throat and vacillate no longer. I lied firmly, though my voice had a strange sound in my ears.“Yes I can—I have already begun to love you. You have shown yourself worthy of any woman’s love, Maurice, and who am I—?”A cold hand gripped my heart; my soul cried out to me in its despair. He stared at me amazedly for a moment, then caught me by the wrists, trying to look into my eyes. But I dared not let him see that stricken, dying thing.“Is it true?—do you mean it?”“Yes,” I said suffocating, and sank half fainting to my bed. He still held my hands but he came no nearer, and for a moment a gleam of light radiated through the darkness; a little radiant bird of hope flew through my mind. Could it be that he no longer cared for me—that I had killed desire in him—that he would be content to go on for ever as we had lived, and never require of me this terrible immolation of body and soul? The thought unsealed my closed eyes, and I looked at him keenly. But what I saw staring inhiseyes was not distaste nor hatred, but something no woman wishes to see except in the eyes of the man she adores. The hour for sacrifice had struck. I put up my arms and wound them round his neck.“Kiss me, Maurice,” I whispered, and drew him down beside me. He flung his arms about me and held me tight.“Is it true? Do you mean it? You are going to give yourself to me at last—at last?”“Yes—”“When I come back?”“No—” I tried to say a word that my stiff lips refused—“when you will.”Then he kissed me at last: terrible kisses that crushed my lips upon my clenched teeth, bruising and cutting them; that scorched my eyes and my throat.“Say you love me,” he demanded.“Kiss me, Maurice—take me,” I cried in a whispering voice. But something in me was dying a little death—hope, youth, love, all were passing. I saw like a drowning woman all the glory of life depart. And in that moment I realised a terrible thing. All was in vain. I could never love my husband. Something in his touch, in his nearness, in the scent of his hair as he bent over me, sent an agony of revulsion shuddering through me, as though some spider of which I had a peculiar fear and horror was creeping over me. I knew not whether it was of the flesh or of the soul, or a terrible mingling of both. I only knew that this piercing agony of the Magdalene who loves not where she gives would always be mine to suffer as the wife of Maurice Stair. One other thing I knew, too: I should not long be able to sustain that agony; it would kill me. Almost I believed myself dying then. My limbs turned to stone, my veins seemed filled with lead. He might have been showering his passionate kisses on a marble image.Perhaps no other woman in the world would have been affected in that terrible way by his personality: perhaps no other man in the world would have inspired such a feeling in me. That it should be so was my tragedy—and his!“Why are you so white?” he cried between his blazing kisses. “So white—like a snowdrop? Open your eyes, Deirdre—let me see love in them.”“No—no,” I cried, resolute to drown, to die. I wound my stone arms round his neck and drew him close to my cold face. But I dared not open my eyes for fear he should see the dying gestures of my soul.Then a strange thing happened. He leaned over me once more and put one more kiss like a coal of fire on my lips, then drew gently away from my arms. There was a jingle of spurs, the tread of heavily booted feet, and presently the sound of a galloping horse. I lay very still where he had left me, my eyes still closed, my leaden arms where they had fallen at my sides, the words of reprieve ringing like little bells in my brain:“I am not worthy—first I will earn this gift of you. Good-bye.”If my soul (which was Anthony Kinsella’s) sang a chant of praise because of respite, that other physical me (which was Maurice Stair’s) had heaviness and sorrow because of the knowledge that the battle was all to fight again, the agony to re-endure.

“The senses no less than the soul have their spiritual mysteries toreveal.”

“The senses no less than the soul have their spiritual mysteries toreveal.”

We were sitting under a mimosa tree outside the drawing-room hut, elbows on the tea-table, enjoying the sunset lights and the extraordinary content that nothing so well bestows as a day’s work well done.

It was almost the end of a February day, and everywhere around us bloomed and flaunted the radiant tints of summer at the full. In a tree close by a little green-breasted bird was singing a passionate song. The sea of zinias still swayed its multi-coloured waves below us, but boundaries had been set, and full-tide now only reached to the foot of the kopje. Above high-water mark Mgatweli Police Camp and the home of its commanding officer, picturesque still, but no longer disreputable, rose like a Phoenix from its ashes.

Stubbly bush had been uprooted from charming slopes to make place for luxuriant beds of tomatoes and Cape gooseberries; and terraces of flowers already gave evidence of beauty and fragrance to come. Gnarled growths had disappeared, and big trees had a clear space to branch abroad in freedom and grace. A fine tennis-court, the delight of every player in the town, stretched its gleaming level space near a newly begun small banana grove.

Each of our huts except the kitchen had now a picturesque rustic porch added to it, round which were set plants of young grenadilla—the best shady creeper in Africa, and one that bears a lovely purple passion flower, and most delicious fruit.

The men’s camp was also enormously improved. A little agitation in the right quarter had resulted in a grant of Government boys to build and thatch a big mess and club-house. The parade ground had been enlarged, and the beginning of an out-door gym was visible. The men had something better to do now than loafing to town in off hours, or getting drunk in their huts out of sheer boredom with life. There were shooting-butts up, and regular hours for practice in view of putting forward a Bisley team. There was also a Sports programme in active rehearsal for a projected gymkhana meeting in the near future. Under a smart officer full of initiative and invention the best bred wasters in the world are bound to “buck up and look slippy” and that is what the Mgatweli troopers were very busily occupied in doing.

In six months Maurice had done wonders; and the wonders had not ceased with improvements at home and in the camp. You had only to look at him sitting there, neat and debonair in his grey uniform, to recognise that fact. He had the clear eye, healthy skin, and quiet, firm air of a man with a purpose. Force of character may be cumulative, and six months may not be a very long time in which to accumulate it. But a will to do well, and a lovely climate to do it in, is much; and I should say the matter depended not so much on time as on the number and size of the difficulties met and overcome. Six months may not be a long time but it is too long to fight daily battles with your vices without getting results; and an accumulation of results sat upon the serene brow of Maurice Stair, and revealed themselves in the firmness of his mouth.

No more sealed wooden cases were surreptitiously carried to his hut. He drank his whiskey-and-soda from his own sideboard like a sane and decent gentleman. No more shirking and shelving of duties: but rather a seeking of fresh ones. No more sloth and skulking and petty sins. The old vices and weaknesses were under foot at last. He had his heel on the heads of them.

I know not what upheld him in the fight; what secret dew refreshed his jaded spirit in the terrible struggles he must have undergone. Often I saw him stumble and falter, and sometimes (but not often) fall “mauled to the earth.” And I cannot tell where he found the strength to “arise and go on again;” but he did. There is little one human being can do for another in these crises of the soul, these fierce battles with old sins that have their roots in deep. They must be fought out alone. External aid is of small use. But what I could I did. And perhaps it helped a little to let him see that I too was fighting and suffering and striving to climb by his side with my hand in his. But whatever the means the result was there plain for all who ran to read; and I am bound to admit that it was so far beyond my dreams and expectations that I sometimes found it hard to recognise in this new Maurice, whose feet were so firmly planted on the upward slopes, the old Maurice, my dark-souled companion in a deep and dread ravine.

Sitting there in the sunset glow he gave me fresh proof of his changed outlook on life. He offered of his own free will to renounce the five hundred a year Sir Alexander Stair paid him to live in Africa. A few days before he had unflinchingly and without preliminaries told me the meaning of the income he enjoyed from his uncle.

“He pays me to keep out of his sight. He has always despised me for a rotter. The reason he put a clincher on my going into the army was because he thought I’d disgrace the family name there. It makes him sick to think I’ll get the title after him. Rather than see me, and be reminded of the fact, he pays me nearly half of his income to stay out here.”

I said nothing at the time beyond exclaiming at the arrogant self-righteousness that made it possible for a man to condemn his only relative so harshly. But I knew very well that the new Maurice felt the ignominy attached to such an arrangement, and that his confession to me heralded some change. Now he volunteered to give up the money, and asked me if I would leave Africa with him for Australia, where an old friend of his father’s had a large ranch near Melbourne and had offered him a sort of under-managership on it. Having been out there for several years before coming to Africa, Maurice thoroughly understood the life and its conditions.

“As soon as I get back to the ropes, after a year or so Broughton will offer me the whole thing to manage. And I know well enough I’m able for it if you will only go with me and back me up.”

“Of course I will go, Maurice,” I said quietly, and we fell to making plans; but I looked no longer at the sunlit hills, and in the thorn tree the note of the little green-breasted robin had changed. It seemed now to be sobbing its life away in song.

“You see we couldn’t go on here at twenty pounds a month, Deirdre. It is impossible. Living in this country is too high. These billets aren’t meant for men without private incomes. Later, when the railways get up here, it will be different. But before then we are going to have another row with the niggers here, or my name is not Jack Robinson. Then life will be dearer than ever. There’s trouble brewing again with these Matabele fellows. Ever since the rinderpest broke out they’ve been queer. They are desperate with vexation at losing their cattle, and theirUmlimo, a sort of god or high priest who lives in a cave and prophesies to them from the depths of it—having carefully collected his information first, by means of spies—tells them it is the white man who is causing their cattle to die. The funny thing is that this fellow is really the god of the Mashonas, yet the Matabele put absolute faith in him. Old Loben used to send and consult him about everything—”

I was not listening very intently to Maurice. I was wondering whether it was the bird’s song that had suddenly filled me with despair. Why was I not glad to be escaping at last from the claw of the witch? Was it these thatched huts that held me—because we had made them so charming and homelike without and within? I knew it could not be. Places appealed to me, and people; houses and things never. Goods and chattels had no hands to hold me as they do some people. Of late I had come to think that life under a tree without any accessories at all could be very full and sweet—if one only shared the shade of the branches with the one right person in sill the world. Moreover, the legend carved above a door in dead Fatehpur had always struck me as a peculiarly appropriate motto for people whose lives were cast in Africa.

“Said Jesus, to whom be peace, the world is a bridge, pass over it, but build no house there.”

As we talked, Makupi in his brick-red blanket passed down the sloping pathway towards the zinia-sea, and when he came to its beach squatted himself down, took his piano from his hair, and began his sombre beating.

Tom—brr—torn—brr—torn—brr—tom-tom-tom-brr.

It seemed to me that I heard the throbbing of a human heart laid upon the stone altar of some monstrous god. My eyes wandered to the hills again. Then suddenly I knew that it was the thought of leavingthemthat filled me with such haunting despair—the far-off Matoppos that held for me some hidden mystery, some magic that drew my eyes at dawn, and at setting of sun. On moonlit nights I would often rise from my bed to gaze at them and wonder.

Tom—brr—torn—brr—torn—brr.

“Call him over here, Deirdre,” said Maurice suddenly. “Let’s give him back hise’tambo.”

Putting his hand into an inner pocket he drew out a small black object and handed it to me. It was a little bone taken from the joint of a sheep (the boys call themdolour-ossi, and often play with them). But this one was black, either with age or by some artificial process, and polished until it gleamed like a jewel. On it was traced in spidery lines the profile of some weird quadruped of the same description as the Hottentot drawings on the rocks; otherwise there was not the slightest thing about it to suggest mystery or romance. Yet Makupi was eating his heart out and growing hollow-eyed for lack of it. He wanted to go back to his kraal in Mashonaland, he told me, but would never leave until he got hise’tamboback from theInkos. He had even offered me some mysterious bribe if I would steal it for him. Something about a mysterious gold mine, no doubt, I thought, and laughed. But I always wished Maurice would give it to the poor fellow. Lately we had become so accustomed to seeing him about that I think we had almost forgotten what he was there for.

Buthehad not forgotten. When I called to him to come, that theInkoshad something for him, his thoughts flew at once to his charm, and he leaped to his feet and came running. He guessed what it was Maurice had hidden in his hand.

“But what about that wonderful secret you were going to tell me, Makupi?” I laughed. He rolled his eager sad eyes at me.

“Give me mye’tambofirst. You will be glad.”

“Give it to him, Maurice. Let us be glad,” said I, still laughing, and suddenly feeling, in spite of my sad thoughts of the last hour, extraordinarily light-hearted and happy.

One swift glance at the small black bone, and then Makupi’s lithe hand closed over it. He made a movement with both hands over his body and hair, and then his palms hung empty by his sides, and we never saw the charm again.

He looked at Maurice first, then his eyes came to me and rested there while he spoke a brief sentence in the pigeon-Makalika which he knew I understood.

“In the cave of the Umlimo in the Maloppos, there is a white man hidden. He wears blue charms in his ears.”

For one moment he watched the paralysing effect of his statement, gazing at me in astonishment as though he saw a spectre, and afterwards at Maurice who had risen from his seat and was holding to the tree as if for support. Then his eager voice continued. He poured out the strange story now in his own tongue, of which I only understood a word here and there. But I understood enough to make the blood fly rustling through my veins, leaping from my heart to my ears and cheeks. When he had spoken a few sentences he made a gesture towards me and waited for Maurice to translate. I kept my eyes averted from my husband’s.

“He says—that in the cave of theUmlimoa white man has been hidden and kept prisoner ever since the Matabele war—he is a man whom a party of Matabele warriors came upon just at the close of the campaign—alone in the bush, not far from the Shangani. He was wounded in the head, and had gone raving mad—was singing and laughing when they came upon hint—that is why they did not kill him. They are afraid to kill the mad—the mad are sacred. They took him prisoner and carried him to the camp where Lobengula lay dying.”

Makupi took up the tale once more.

“He says—that the King forbade them to kill the man, but to take him by out-of-the-way routes to the cave of theUmlimowho would get wisdom from his madness, and be able to advise the Matabele how to defeat the white men later, if they were beaten in the war. A wife of Lobengula who had skill in sickness took charge of him and after the death of the King he was taken by devious ways to the Matoppos, where he has been ever since.”

Maurice paused a minute moment. He seemed to be suffering. His lips twisted as with some agonised effort to produce words from a lacerated throat. Later, he took up Makupi’s tale. Unconsciously he adopted the boy’s chanting tone, and used the native phraseology.

“He says—the wound in the head took long to heal—only in the last few months has wisdom fully returned to the man—and since then theUmlimokeeps him in bonds for fear he should escape and tell of the things he has seen and heard in the cave where the Deity sits brooding over the fate of Matabeleland and Mashonaland. They are afraid to kill him, not only because Lobengula put the command on them not to, but because he is a great white man with strong eyes that make them afraid to strike—he sits all day with his hands bound—but when the stars come out and on nights that the moon shines he commands to be taken out, and he walks for many hours among the hills.”

Another swift flow of words from Makupi.

“He says—that two men of the old Imbezu Regiment are with him always—armed with assegai—but there are never any horses near, and they never unbind his hands. He eats well, with the air of a man who is content—but his eyes are looking always beyond the hills and though he pretends to be content they see that his desire lies in Mashonaland.”

When Makupi’s tale was finished the sun was gone, and nothing was left of the sunset but a little red light and one last streak of gold that lingered between two hills. He folded his hands upon his breast and stood still with his eyes drooped to the ground.

“Poor Kinsella!” said Maurice abstractedly, almost like a man speaking in his sleep. “What a dog’s life—for nearly two years!”

Like a little codicil to a last will and testament Makupi added a few more words.

“This is a very secret matter, and forbidden by theUmlimoto be spoken of to any, under pain of—” he made a dramatic gesture of stabbing. “It would have been better for me to have told any of the secrets of the Matabele and the Makalikas than this. But because theInkosizaanis like the departed glory of the Matabeleland, and her hands are kind and healing to all she touches, I have told.”

“You have done well,” said Maurice firmly. He had wakened from his dreaminess now; “and we’ll take care you don’t suffer for it. But look here, Makupi, will you go with me to the Matoppoe and show me the way to the cave of theUmlimo?”

Makupi looked at me for a moment.

“If theInkosizaanwishes, I will go and show the way,” he said. “But it will not be easy to overcome those men of the Imbezu with their assegais and stabbing knives; some of theUmlimo’speople have guns too, which they did not give up after the war. We will have to wait in secret places of the hills with horses always ready to start, and coming upon them by surprise spring on the guard and kill them, then quickly unbind the white man and ride away. But it is hard to say how long we shall have to wait hiding in the hills.”

“That’s nothing. Be ready to start the dawn after to-morrow’s dawn, Makupi. Do not fail me—or theInkosizaan.”

“No,Inkos.”

He went away with a spring to his walk. I turned to Maurice and spoke as steadily as I could.

“Do you not think you should tell the Company and have an expedition sent?”

“No!” he said abruptly. “I shall take Makapi and go alone. They would get wind of an expedition—you can’t keep anything dark from kaffirs for long—and then they would kill Kinsella as sure as a gun. After holding him so long they know well enough that some one will have to pay when he is released, and they’ll think nothing of killing him off and denying that there was ever any one there at all. We can’t risk that. I must go alone and very quickly. There will be nothing unusual in a police inspector setting off alone, and they will suspect nothing. We won’t give them time to suspect.”

“I think you should tell the Company,” I persisted. There was something terrifying and awful to me in letting my husband go off alone on this dangerous mission to bring back the man I loved.

“Of course I shall tell the Company—as much as is good for them to know. I must get my chief on the wire at once, and get leave to go off on urgent secret inquiry work. There are any amount of reasons to go secretly to the kraals, now that the natives are so unsettled. He’ll be glad enough to have me visit the Matoppo kraals and see what is going on.” He turned on me suddenly. “Do you grudge me this work to do for you?” he said strangely, and I knew not how to answer him, but at last I faltered:

“Forus, Maurice. I think it is splendid of you to offer to go. It will be no child’s play, but a brave, big thing. Whether you succeed or not no one will be prouder of you than I. It is the going that counts. But I know you will succeed.”

And indeed I had always known that I should see Anthony Kinsella again before I died.

Maurice and I were closer in spirit during the next few hours than we had ever been. They were hours of unceasing occupation, swift consideration and selection.

There was the route to be planned, and where to have horses waiting for him on his return; leave to be got from headquarters and arrangements to be made for his absence; double arms to be prepared, so that Anthony might be able to fight for himself if the need arose; food for two to be prepared and packed—medicines and bandages!

To avoid rousing the suspicions of any of theUmlimo’sspies that might be in the town, Maurice decided to leave about an hour after midnight, when all the boys were in their quarters asleep. Thus even speculation would be unaroused. Makupi was not to travel openly with him, but to meet him at various given points, guide him, and disappear again until they reached the final place selected to hide in until an opportunity for the rescue occurred.

There was little time for reflection during those rushing hours of preparation: but when at last all was complete and ready for Maurice’s departure within the hour, I had that to think on which gave me pause.

Handsome and business-like in his khaki and leather, my husband sat down at his desk to put in order some papers dealing with the police work during his absence. It would only take him a quarter of an hour or so he told me, then there would be time for a last talk together before his horse came round.

“Will you come to my room then?” I said in a low voice, and swiftly left him.

Strange thoughts were mine as I stood at my dressing-table, combing my hair with shaking hands, until the little short curls lay like wallflower petals on my forehead, and my ghostlike face was framed in waves of bronze. Yes, my face was ghostlike. I was obliged to take some powered rouge and introduce a subtle pale rose flush to the faint hollows of my cheeks, and with a little camel’s-hair brush to outline carefully the curve of my white lips with liquid crimson. It was a difficult process for there was a mist before my eyes, and my hand trembled so much that I sometimes made a false line and had to wipe all out and begin again. For it would not do to let Maurice see that I had had recourse to make-up. His eyes were strangely keen those days, and his vision clear, like his skin. I wondered would he notice the look in my eyes. Within the next hour I must veil them often with my lashes lest they betray me.

When all was finished I was very charming to look at: a slim, subtle-looking woman, with bronze hair and a curved mouth, bare armed and white bosomed, in a low cut gown of black lace.

Only the strange shadow in my eyes could not be treated with. It looked out like a desperate hunted thing, but it would not come forth. I knew it well. It was the shadow of the soul I had given to Anthony Kinsella, awaiting affrightedly for the desolation I was going to work upon it before Anthony Kinsella came riding back into my life to claim it. It knew that I was resolute to sign and seal myself away to Maurice Stair before that hour, and it was sick unto death.

But the thing had to be. I had practically accepted it on that sinister night six months past, when the black vultures swarmed and the eyes of the Mother of Consolation terribly accused me. It had come nearer and nearer with every fresh victory Maurice gained over his devils. I had always known there was to be no escape. But, ah, God! why had I not embraced my fate before this hour in which I knew that Anthony still dreamed of me behind the hills?

Maurice came in, forage-cap in hand, riding-crop tucked under his arm, and stood by me in the place where six months before he had cowered, and I had spurned him with my foot. What a different man was this! Pride andélanin his gait, and in the old enchanting smile upon his lips real chivalry at last. I felt my heart stir strangely, as very deliberately I put out both my hands to him. He took them, kissed them, and lightly let them fall again.

“Well! Expect us back in about a week, Deirdre. I shall not fail.”

I stood looking at him with my lids drooped a little to hide my eyes. Why had he let my hands fall so quickly? My first effort had gone astray.

“No, you will not fail, Maurice. You and the word ‘failure’ are never going to have anything to say to each other again. I am glad now that you are going alone, and will have all the honour and glory of it to yourself. I want people in this country to appreciate your courage before we leave it.”

I thought of Dr Abingdon, and the other man on the Salisbury road. It was odd what a thrill of pride I felt that all the world would soon know that whatever had happened in the past, in the future none might ever again call this man coward.

“Leave it?” he said. “You still hold to that plan?”

“Of course.” I looked at him in surprise. “Is it not all settled? Didn’t you speak to your chief about it on the wire this morning as you said you would?”

“No—I thought it had better wait over—until I came back you know.”

“You should have done it at once, Maurice. I wanted to begin to do things—sorting, packing, arranging what we are going to take with us. The delay about your resignation will keep us here months longer perhaps. Will you let me write it for you and send it in while you’re away?”

“Oh! all right then,” but his tone was still hesitating. I turned on him reproachfully. It seemed hard to have to be firm for him as well as myself.

“Is it that you have changed your mind again—after all our plans?”

“No, dear—but I don’t want to fasten you down to anything we planned.Youmay want to change.”

“Why should I?” I asked quietly. “Nothing is changed because ofthis: except that in our future life together we shall both be the happier for it.”

He stood looking at me with glad though doubtful eyes then, tapping his gaiter with his crop. But always he stayed at a little distance, almost as though he feared I might touch him. I went over to him, and put my hands on his shoulders.

“That real life you and I are going to live presently, in—

“Some neater, sweeter country,—Some greener, cleaner land.”

“Some neater, sweeter country,—Some greener, cleaner land.”

My voice gave a little catch in my throat, but I struggled on.

“Life is full of possibilities for us, Maurice—I believe we are going to be very happy.”

But he turned aside moodily, hanging his head a little. I had not seen him look like that for, many months.

“What is the good of pretending to me, Deirdre? I have been too bad a brute and a devil to you—and you love Kinsella—I know you can never love me.”

His sullen misery made me take trembling resolution by the throat and vacillate no longer. I lied firmly, though my voice had a strange sound in my ears.

“Yes I can—I have already begun to love you. You have shown yourself worthy of any woman’s love, Maurice, and who am I—?”

A cold hand gripped my heart; my soul cried out to me in its despair. He stared at me amazedly for a moment, then caught me by the wrists, trying to look into my eyes. But I dared not let him see that stricken, dying thing.

“Is it true?—do you mean it?”

“Yes,” I said suffocating, and sank half fainting to my bed. He still held my hands but he came no nearer, and for a moment a gleam of light radiated through the darkness; a little radiant bird of hope flew through my mind. Could it be that he no longer cared for me—that I had killed desire in him—that he would be content to go on for ever as we had lived, and never require of me this terrible immolation of body and soul? The thought unsealed my closed eyes, and I looked at him keenly. But what I saw staring inhiseyes was not distaste nor hatred, but something no woman wishes to see except in the eyes of the man she adores. The hour for sacrifice had struck. I put up my arms and wound them round his neck.

“Kiss me, Maurice,” I whispered, and drew him down beside me. He flung his arms about me and held me tight.

“Is it true? Do you mean it? You are going to give yourself to me at last—at last?”

“Yes—”

“When I come back?”

“No—” I tried to say a word that my stiff lips refused—“when you will.”

Then he kissed me at last: terrible kisses that crushed my lips upon my clenched teeth, bruising and cutting them; that scorched my eyes and my throat.

“Say you love me,” he demanded.

“Kiss me, Maurice—take me,” I cried in a whispering voice. But something in me was dying a little death—hope, youth, love, all were passing. I saw like a drowning woman all the glory of life depart. And in that moment I realised a terrible thing. All was in vain. I could never love my husband. Something in his touch, in his nearness, in the scent of his hair as he bent over me, sent an agony of revulsion shuddering through me, as though some spider of which I had a peculiar fear and horror was creeping over me. I knew not whether it was of the flesh or of the soul, or a terrible mingling of both. I only knew that this piercing agony of the Magdalene who loves not where she gives would always be mine to suffer as the wife of Maurice Stair. One other thing I knew, too: I should not long be able to sustain that agony; it would kill me. Almost I believed myself dying then. My limbs turned to stone, my veins seemed filled with lead. He might have been showering his passionate kisses on a marble image.

Perhaps no other woman in the world would have been affected in that terrible way by his personality: perhaps no other man in the world would have inspired such a feeling in me. That it should be so was my tragedy—and his!

“Why are you so white?” he cried between his blazing kisses. “So white—like a snowdrop? Open your eyes, Deirdre—let me see love in them.”

“No—no,” I cried, resolute to drown, to die. I wound my stone arms round his neck and drew him close to my cold face. But I dared not open my eyes for fear he should see the dying gestures of my soul.

Then a strange thing happened. He leaned over me once more and put one more kiss like a coal of fire on my lips, then drew gently away from my arms. There was a jingle of spurs, the tread of heavily booted feet, and presently the sound of a galloping horse. I lay very still where he had left me, my eyes still closed, my leaden arms where they had fallen at my sides, the words of reprieve ringing like little bells in my brain:

“I am not worthy—first I will earn this gift of you. Good-bye.”

If my soul (which was Anthony Kinsella’s) sang a chant of praise because of respite, that other physical me (which was Maurice Stair’s) had heaviness and sorrow because of the knowledge that the battle was all to fight again, the agony to re-endure.

Chapter Twenty Two.What the Hills Hid.“Life is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is love. Its purification is sacrifice.”“Death is a great price to pay for a red rose. But love is better than life.”Brown cotton stockings from Salzar’s General Stores fell into holes before one had worn them twice: yet they cost four and sixpence a pair! Almost as much as spun silk ones at home, I reflected, as I sat mending mine under the thorn tree. But was it possible that I had ever worn silk ones? Could it be true that I had once worn diamonds on my garters, and done many other absurd things! Had I really ever been Deirdre Saurin, the petted and pampered and bejewelled heiress who had announced to her mother, showering laughter:“Life shall never make a tragedy of me!”I smiled a little idle smile, that at least was free of regret, for the petted and bejewelled part of the story; but I could find it in my heart to sigh for the girl who came to Fort George and was scratched by all the cats, and scratched them cheerfully back. I should like to have been that girl again, for half an hour, just to see how it felt to be care-free andinsouciant, with the whole beautiful world made expressly for one!“Give me again all that was there,Give me the sun that shone—”Ah, that hurt! Better leave that—think of something else quickly. How far off those days were! And the people in them all passed away or passed on! Judy in Australia, happy with her cad. Mrs Rookwood settled in Johannesburg—George had got rich in the mining world and was now a king of finance, and she a leader of society. Elizabeth Marriott was still in England with her boy; gold had been discovered on her property in Matabeleland, and a brother had come out to look after it for her until the boy was old enough to come into his own. Other Fort Georgites were scattered far and wide. I heard sometimes from Colonel Blow, in Buluwayo, and Gerry Deshon at Umtali; but people in Africa are always too busy with the interesting people round them to have much time for remembering those who have passed on elsewhere. Annabel Cleeve’s husband had died in England a few months after their marriage, and left her a rich widow. Mrs Valetta was still living in Mgatweli.I had never been to call on her, for I made few calls except the official ones required of me. Even if I had not heard that she was too ill to receive visitors, I could not suppose her anxious to renew so painful an acquaintance as ours had been. She had never been well since the Fort George days, they said. Fever! Malarial fever covers a multitude of ills in Rhodesia. Would she get better when—Ah! that hurt—think of something else quick!But I could not think ofanything elsefor long. Back, back, my thoughts came always tothatas my eyes went always back to the hills. Maurice had been gone a week. No news yet. But sometimes when all was still I seemed to hear the beating of horse’s feet over the soft veldt grass.I missed Makupi’s red blanket against the blaze of the zinias, where he was wont to sit, expelling the melancholy of his soul with the throb of his weirdtom-tom, and hiding in his heart through all these months a secret that changed the face of life for three people!Down in the camp a trooper, sitting outside his hut, was at the same business as myself—darning his foot-wear—and save for his idle song there was no other sound to break the hot, tranquil silence of the afternoon. Along the town road a boy with a letter held aloft in a cleft stick was approaching, with the peculiar rhythmical motion affected by letter-carriers. Everything was very still. The world had a pregnant, brooding look to me.The boy with the letter had reached the camp and given his letter to the trooper, and the trooper had given it back, pointing to me. Carefully the boy replaced it in his stick, as though he had still many miles to go, and resuming his rhythmical step came up the winding path to me.I did not know the straggly writing upon the envelope, nor at first the signature at the foot of the brief note—Annunciata Valetta.“Will you come and see me. I am too ill to come to you. I have something to tell you.”At last I realised that Nonie was short for so beautiful a name as Annunciata, and that it was the woman I had been thinking about who had written to me. It is strange how often these coincidences occur! While the boy sat patiently on his heels at the door I scribbled a note to say I would come.I cannot tell what instinct made me beautifully arrange my hair, and put on my loveliest gown that night. I am very sure it was not vanity. Many waters cannot drown love, but there are fires in life that can burn out of a woman the last root of vanity; and I had been through those flames. Some vague idea possessed me, perhaps, of hiding from the cynical eyes of Nonie Valetta the scars the furnace had left on me. I had always felt it to be due to Maurice, as well as myself, to cover up the hollowness of our life from curious eyes, and I think no one had ever suspected what we hid under our pleasant manner to each other in public. In the last few months, especially, I believe ours had been cited as a very happy marriage. But I feared the probing glance of Nonie Valetta.I wore a white silk gown, and threw about my bare shoulders, for the night air was dewy, a long theatre-coat of black satin that was lovelier within than without, for it was lined with white satin, upon which had been embroidered, by subtle, Parisian fingers, great sprays of crimson roses. So skilfully had the work of lining been done that every time I took a step a big red rose would peep out somewhere, and if I put out my arms I seemed to shower roses. I had designed it myself in the blithe long ago. Betty used to call it my passionate cloak.After my marriage she had gone to our various homes and gathered up all my belongings—stacks of gowns, cloaks, kimonos, embroideries, and laces that I had forgotten I ever possessed; together with pictures, china, music, draperies, and curios; all the things I had collected in happy-go-careless days and thought little of, but which were now something in the nature of treasure trove. She had despatched them in case upon case, and they had arrived within the last few months. The huts were crammed with odd and lovely things, and I boasted a wardrobe the like of which no other woman in Rhodesia, perhaps in Africa, possessed. I had reason to be thankful that my taste had always run to the picturesque rather than to thechic. Most of my gowns and all of my wraps could never go out of fashion, for they had never been in it. They would be useful and picturesque until they fell into shreds.I went down through the zinias, which now I did not hate any longer. Like the hills, they had become part of my life. I should take the memory of them to Australia with me, and wherever I went they would go too. In the moonlight their garishness was dulled to a uniformity of pallor. They looked like armies and armies of little dreary ghosts.I did not have to ask the way to the big thatched house the Valettas had taken possession of. In a small town like Mgatweli one knows where every one lives even though one does not visit them.As I came to the deep, chair-lined verandah a man with the air of one of Ouida’s guardsmen threw away his cigarette and came forward looking at me curiously. He seemed surprised when I asked for Mrs Valetta.“My wife? Yes, but she is ill,” he answered hesitatingly, evidently knowing nothing of her note to me.“I heard so, and have come to see her,” I said. “She and I knew each other long ago in Fort George. I am Mrs Stair.”“Ah! Will you come in? I’ll tell her.”He led the way into a sitting-room, and in the light gave me another enveloping stare full of the bold admiration men of a certain type imagine appeals to women, not knowing that really nice women very much resent being admired by the wrong men.After one glance at him I turned away a little wearily. Early in a girl’s life these handsome, dissolute faces have their own specialallure. But I knew too much. Africa had educated me, and my mind asked for something more in a man’s face now than much evil and a few charming possibilities for good.Men who have reached the Rubicon boundary, which lies between thirty and forty, should have something more than possibilities stamped upon their faces.“Is that Mrs Stair, Claude?” a very weary voice called from the next room; the weakness, the terrible slow lassitude of it horrified me.“Is she so ill?” I asked in a low voice, after he had called back:”(Yes: coming, dear.) It is only a matter of days with her now,” he answered laconically.And when I saw Nonie Valetta lying there, her pallid hands plucking at the blue and white stripes of her coverlet, I knew that he had spoken truth. Her hours were numbered. Pale as ashes, she lay there watching me with her strangely coloured eyes, the old weary bitter curve still on her lips. She too had eaten of the aloes of life.I took her hand, and for a moment or two, as long as the nurse was in the room, we murmured the little conventional things that always lie ready on women’s lips while the eyes are probing deep, deep for the unspoken things. But as soon as we were alone she smiled her twisted smile at me and said:“I see why they call you Ghostie.”“It is very impertinent of them if they do,” I responded, smiling a little too.“But it is true. You are the ghost of your old self when you came to Africa. You were very lovely then. I knew the moment I saw you that my life was over.” I felt myself paling.“Do not speak of those days. That is past grief and pain. We are all much older and wiser now.”“You do not look a day older—only as though you had been burnt in a fire, and there is nothing but the white ashes of you left. Yet if anything you are more beautiful—there is something about you no man could resist—somethingunwon—they’ll lay down their lives and burn in hell for the unwon. I am glad Tony Kinsella cannot see you to-night looking like a white flame among red roses—What are all those red roses? Yes—I am glad he cannot see you to-night.”I put my hand to my heart.“What was it you wanted to say to me?” I asked. I felt that I could not bear too much.“Why did you marry Maurice Stair?”The unexpected question bewildered me. But she was too ill to be told that my reason was one I would discuss with no one. I said at last, for I had a part to play in life, and meant to play it to the end:“He is a good fellow. We are very happy.”“So I hear—and I want to know how you dare be happy—you whom Tony loved—with a knave like Maurice Stair?”My heart hurt. Oh! how my heart hurt. I wanted to get away from this cruel dying woman whose pale hands dug up old bones from their graves and strewed them in the path. I wished to go, but I could not. I had to stand there listening.“You won’t tell me why, but I know—it was because he persuaded you with a blue ear-ring that Tony Kinsella was dead. Well! I want to tell you now that—that tale and that proof were both false. He never found the ear-ring, but had it made in Durban from a design with which I supplied him. I have waited until you were happy to tell you this. It is my revenge on you for taking Tony Kinsella from me.”Her hand picked at the pale blue stripes of her quilt. I stood appalled at the strength of hatred that could reach out at me from a death-bed.“Ask your husband—ask your reformed character whom you have made a Sunday-school boy of—and see what he has to say.”I had an instinct to rush from the room, but I overcame it.“Shall I go now?” I asked presently. She was staring at me with her haunting eyes.“You are well-masked—or can it be possible that you don’t care!—I misjudged you, then. I thought you honoured honour in men and women above all things—Tony thought so too—he said, ‘she is like a clear stream of water—and I am thirsty for clean water.’ Tell me if those were cruel words to hear from the lips of a man I had loved and given all to, Deirdre Saurin.”Given all to! Was this what I had come to hear from the arid lips of this cruel woman! Was my faith to be shattered at last! But my heart rejected the thought even before she spoke again.“Given all that was best in me. He was no saint, but because in long past days on the Rand he was Claude Valetta’s friend he would not steal Claude Valetta’s wife—charmed that wife never so sweetly, and loved he never so deeply. For he did love me—as he never loved any of the others—and in the end I should have won—I saw the day coming—felt it close—when he would have taken me from my wretched life to some other land. Then he went to Ireland—and came back a changed man.”This again found me gazing at her amazed and bewildered.“Ah!” she mocked. “You think you were the first girl he loved—it is not so. There was a girl in Ireland—a girl at a ball, who first dragged him from me.”“A girl at a ball—”“She took him back to old dreams, he said—her beauty and her purity—but he was married, and she was not—so he came away quick—he went back to his dreams on the veldt for many months after that. Poor Tony! how he loved a woman he could put in a shrine!—his trouble was that they wouldn’t stay there when he was about. And the women out of shrines had their call for him too.—After the girl in Ireland Rhodes got him for awhile with his dreams of Empire—but he was coming straight, straight back to me—I knew it from his letters, when he met you—where did he meet you?—Oh! what broughtyourfeet straying out to Africa to trample on my hopes!”What could I say? I was bitterly sorry for her and glad for myself—and broken-hearted for myself! What could I say? I was silent.She was lying back against her pillows now, deadly pale, eyes closed. I made a step to the door to call her nurse, but she detained me with a few more words like shrivelled-up dry leaves blowing through the room.“His wife died about six months before you came to Africa.” Ah! That was something. Spikenard in that to lay upon an old wound. A streak of gold to embroider in a banner of belief I had always waved in the faces of those who cried him down. I would not even thank her for confirming my faith. She looked in my face and read my thought.“Oh! yes—your faith was great enough to remove the mountains he had piled up round himself. You weren’t like Anna Cleeve who thought she adored him, yet at the first word of doubt failed. When I told her of his marriage I did not know of his wife’s death—he never told me untilyouwere in Fort George. He came straight to me when he returned from the Transvaal, and told me, and thanked me then, for my ‘kindly offices’ with Anna. Cleeve—for saving him from a woman who had so tawdry a belief in the inherent decency of a man—but, he told me too he would have no more interference—he had found ‘a stream of crystal clear water’—he needed no more ‘friendly offices’ of me. I understood very well what it meant when I saw him looking at you on the tennis-court. Good-bye, Deirdre Saurin. You and I will not meet again.”I don’t know how I came to be on my knees beside her bed. Perhaps my thought was to cry some prayer for her and myself and for all women who love; but though many words were in my heart none came to my lips. And presently an unexpected thing happened. I felt a hand on my hair, and a voice most subtly different to that I had been listening to, said brokenly, and softly, some words that sounded almost like a blessing.“Why should I mind that he loved you best? If I had ever had a son I should have wished him to love a girl like you.”Mr Valetta was waiting for me in the verandah. He said:“I think I must insist on seeing you home, Mrs Stair. There seems to be some disturbance in the town.”“What is it?”“I don’t exactly know—but I have seen men running about in an excited way, and there has been some cheering. I fancy I heard your husband’s name. Is he in the town to-night? At any rate all the ruction has moved over in the direction of the camp. Look at the lights flashing in your huts.”I looked and saw: and even as we stood there, another wild burst of cheering came echoing across the open. Then I knew.Gathering up with shaking hands the draperies of my cloak and gown I prepared to speed my way home and to my share of the terror and beauty of life waiting there. But before I went I said to the husband of Nonie Valetta:“Is it true that she is so near death?”“The doctor holds out no hope. It is not so much the actual fever, as the complications that have set in. And her heart is all to pieces.”“Well—let her depart in peace. Do not allow any news to reach her that will disturb her at the last. I want you to promise me that.”“I promise, Mrs Stair, solemnly. Shall I come with you?”“No, no. Go to her,” I said, and sped away on swift feet.Long before I reached the camp the cheering and all sounds of exultation had ceased, and a strange stillness supervened. At the foot of the kopje, trampling on the tennis-court and among the zinias, were many men, their faces all turned towards the huts, talking among themselves in low voices. As I passed by a muffled silent figure, I caught a word or two.“By God! That dirty brute of anUmlimo... Keeping a man like Kinsella—all these months! Nearly two years!”“The trouble with the natives won’t be long coming now... Stair ought to get the V.C. Who would have thought he had it in him!”There was no mistake then—Maurice had been successful! But why were these men standing out in the inhospitable night? What was going on in the silent brilliantly lighted huts? What subtle note of regret had my ears caught in the low spoken words?Dimly, amidst the press of overpowering emotions that surged upon me, I apprehended that something was wrong. Fear crept into me, numbing my limits and detaining my feet: but still I stumbled on up the winding path.There were lights in all the huts, as though some one had been searching in each. Doubtless Maurice had gone from one to the other looking for me. What an ironical trick of Fate that, after awaiting him every moment of every hour since he left, in the very moment of his triumph I should be absent!There were men in the dining-room hut; but some instinct guided my feet to the drawing-room, through whose half-closed doors I heard the murmur of voices—and again, in thetimbreof those voices, came the suggestion of trouble—pain—loss. I knew full well now that something was wrong. Something had gone hideously awry: and I feared, I feared!At last I found courage to press open the door.The heavy odour of a drug came out like a presence to meet me, and mingling with it, piercing through it to my inmost senses, was some other scent that brought terror and dismay. A dimness came over my eyes, so that I could not distinguish any of the faces about me. I saw only the prone figure lying against pillows on the couch that had been dragged to the middle of the room.It seemed to me there were many red flowers spread about that couch, and on the doctor’s hands, and on his shirt sleeves. It was the scent of them that had met me at the door, piercing my senses—the strange pungent scent of the red flowers of death. Around me in the quiet room I heard some curt words gently spoken.“It is Mrs Stair... just in time... clear the room... nothing more can be done.”“Deirdre,”—a faint whisper dragged my leaden feet forward, and I went blindly towards the couch, my arms outstretched. The crimson roses of my cloak joined all the other crimson roses spread everywhere.All was very still. No sound in the room but the echoes of softly departing feet, and a laboured, puffing sound like the panting of some far-off train climbing a steep hill. Yet there were no trains in Matebeleland. After a little while I knew that the sound was there beside me on the couch. When the mists cleared away from my eyes I looked into the face of the dying man.It was Maurice.He was whispering wordlessly to me, and looking up into my eyes with his that were full of chivalrous fires and some other wondrous light that had never been in them before. From his lips came the little panting laboured sound.Supporting his head—pale and lean, but with the old intent strong glance, the little blue stones in his ears, and a great white scar gleaming along his forehead back into his hair—was Anthony Kinsella.We took one glance of each other, while the world rocked beneath my feet. Then I gathered my husband’s head to my breast.“Maurice! Maurice! This is all wrong—what has happened? You must not die!”A smile of triumph lit his face. He lay there like a dying Galahad with the beauty of death on him: nobler and more gallant than he had ever been before. Like the sad music of old remembered bells I heard Anthony’s voice telling the brief tale.“He put up a splendid fight with those two Imbezu fellows. I could do nothing to help until he had disabled them and unbound me. We got clear away then, after hard riding. All yesterday we travelled hard, and were certain no one was following. But this afternoon, about two hours’ ride from here, just as we were moving on after a short ‘off-saddle,’ a single shot was fired from behind a bush—it was meant for me of course—a last effort to pot me before we got in. But—God! Stair, what can I say?—You have given your life for mine! What can I say—or do!”Triumph flickered once more across the death-dewed face of Maurice Stair; and his pale half-smiling lips whispered faintly back:“That’s all right old man... Kiss me goodbye, Deirdre... I have told him everything.”With his hand in Anthony’s and his head on my breast he died.The End.

“Life is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is love. Its purification is sacrifice.”“Death is a great price to pay for a red rose. But love is better than life.”

“Life is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is love. Its purification is sacrifice.”

“Death is a great price to pay for a red rose. But love is better than life.”

Brown cotton stockings from Salzar’s General Stores fell into holes before one had worn them twice: yet they cost four and sixpence a pair! Almost as much as spun silk ones at home, I reflected, as I sat mending mine under the thorn tree. But was it possible that I had ever worn silk ones? Could it be true that I had once worn diamonds on my garters, and done many other absurd things! Had I really ever been Deirdre Saurin, the petted and pampered and bejewelled heiress who had announced to her mother, showering laughter:

“Life shall never make a tragedy of me!”

I smiled a little idle smile, that at least was free of regret, for the petted and bejewelled part of the story; but I could find it in my heart to sigh for the girl who came to Fort George and was scratched by all the cats, and scratched them cheerfully back. I should like to have been that girl again, for half an hour, just to see how it felt to be care-free andinsouciant, with the whole beautiful world made expressly for one!

“Give me again all that was there,Give me the sun that shone—”

“Give me again all that was there,Give me the sun that shone—”

Ah, that hurt! Better leave that—think of something else quickly. How far off those days were! And the people in them all passed away or passed on! Judy in Australia, happy with her cad. Mrs Rookwood settled in Johannesburg—George had got rich in the mining world and was now a king of finance, and she a leader of society. Elizabeth Marriott was still in England with her boy; gold had been discovered on her property in Matabeleland, and a brother had come out to look after it for her until the boy was old enough to come into his own. Other Fort Georgites were scattered far and wide. I heard sometimes from Colonel Blow, in Buluwayo, and Gerry Deshon at Umtali; but people in Africa are always too busy with the interesting people round them to have much time for remembering those who have passed on elsewhere. Annabel Cleeve’s husband had died in England a few months after their marriage, and left her a rich widow. Mrs Valetta was still living in Mgatweli.

I had never been to call on her, for I made few calls except the official ones required of me. Even if I had not heard that she was too ill to receive visitors, I could not suppose her anxious to renew so painful an acquaintance as ours had been. She had never been well since the Fort George days, they said. Fever! Malarial fever covers a multitude of ills in Rhodesia. Would she get better when—Ah! that hurt—think of something else quick!

But I could not think ofanything elsefor long. Back, back, my thoughts came always tothatas my eyes went always back to the hills. Maurice had been gone a week. No news yet. But sometimes when all was still I seemed to hear the beating of horse’s feet over the soft veldt grass.

I missed Makupi’s red blanket against the blaze of the zinias, where he was wont to sit, expelling the melancholy of his soul with the throb of his weirdtom-tom, and hiding in his heart through all these months a secret that changed the face of life for three people!

Down in the camp a trooper, sitting outside his hut, was at the same business as myself—darning his foot-wear—and save for his idle song there was no other sound to break the hot, tranquil silence of the afternoon. Along the town road a boy with a letter held aloft in a cleft stick was approaching, with the peculiar rhythmical motion affected by letter-carriers. Everything was very still. The world had a pregnant, brooding look to me.

The boy with the letter had reached the camp and given his letter to the trooper, and the trooper had given it back, pointing to me. Carefully the boy replaced it in his stick, as though he had still many miles to go, and resuming his rhythmical step came up the winding path to me.

I did not know the straggly writing upon the envelope, nor at first the signature at the foot of the brief note—Annunciata Valetta.

“Will you come and see me. I am too ill to come to you. I have something to tell you.”

At last I realised that Nonie was short for so beautiful a name as Annunciata, and that it was the woman I had been thinking about who had written to me. It is strange how often these coincidences occur! While the boy sat patiently on his heels at the door I scribbled a note to say I would come.

I cannot tell what instinct made me beautifully arrange my hair, and put on my loveliest gown that night. I am very sure it was not vanity. Many waters cannot drown love, but there are fires in life that can burn out of a woman the last root of vanity; and I had been through those flames. Some vague idea possessed me, perhaps, of hiding from the cynical eyes of Nonie Valetta the scars the furnace had left on me. I had always felt it to be due to Maurice, as well as myself, to cover up the hollowness of our life from curious eyes, and I think no one had ever suspected what we hid under our pleasant manner to each other in public. In the last few months, especially, I believe ours had been cited as a very happy marriage. But I feared the probing glance of Nonie Valetta.

I wore a white silk gown, and threw about my bare shoulders, for the night air was dewy, a long theatre-coat of black satin that was lovelier within than without, for it was lined with white satin, upon which had been embroidered, by subtle, Parisian fingers, great sprays of crimson roses. So skilfully had the work of lining been done that every time I took a step a big red rose would peep out somewhere, and if I put out my arms I seemed to shower roses. I had designed it myself in the blithe long ago. Betty used to call it my passionate cloak.

After my marriage she had gone to our various homes and gathered up all my belongings—stacks of gowns, cloaks, kimonos, embroideries, and laces that I had forgotten I ever possessed; together with pictures, china, music, draperies, and curios; all the things I had collected in happy-go-careless days and thought little of, but which were now something in the nature of treasure trove. She had despatched them in case upon case, and they had arrived within the last few months. The huts were crammed with odd and lovely things, and I boasted a wardrobe the like of which no other woman in Rhodesia, perhaps in Africa, possessed. I had reason to be thankful that my taste had always run to the picturesque rather than to thechic. Most of my gowns and all of my wraps could never go out of fashion, for they had never been in it. They would be useful and picturesque until they fell into shreds.

I went down through the zinias, which now I did not hate any longer. Like the hills, they had become part of my life. I should take the memory of them to Australia with me, and wherever I went they would go too. In the moonlight their garishness was dulled to a uniformity of pallor. They looked like armies and armies of little dreary ghosts.

I did not have to ask the way to the big thatched house the Valettas had taken possession of. In a small town like Mgatweli one knows where every one lives even though one does not visit them.

As I came to the deep, chair-lined verandah a man with the air of one of Ouida’s guardsmen threw away his cigarette and came forward looking at me curiously. He seemed surprised when I asked for Mrs Valetta.

“My wife? Yes, but she is ill,” he answered hesitatingly, evidently knowing nothing of her note to me.

“I heard so, and have come to see her,” I said. “She and I knew each other long ago in Fort George. I am Mrs Stair.”

“Ah! Will you come in? I’ll tell her.”

He led the way into a sitting-room, and in the light gave me another enveloping stare full of the bold admiration men of a certain type imagine appeals to women, not knowing that really nice women very much resent being admired by the wrong men.

After one glance at him I turned away a little wearily. Early in a girl’s life these handsome, dissolute faces have their own specialallure. But I knew too much. Africa had educated me, and my mind asked for something more in a man’s face now than much evil and a few charming possibilities for good.

Men who have reached the Rubicon boundary, which lies between thirty and forty, should have something more than possibilities stamped upon their faces.

“Is that Mrs Stair, Claude?” a very weary voice called from the next room; the weakness, the terrible slow lassitude of it horrified me.

“Is she so ill?” I asked in a low voice, after he had called back:

”(Yes: coming, dear.) It is only a matter of days with her now,” he answered laconically.

And when I saw Nonie Valetta lying there, her pallid hands plucking at the blue and white stripes of her coverlet, I knew that he had spoken truth. Her hours were numbered. Pale as ashes, she lay there watching me with her strangely coloured eyes, the old weary bitter curve still on her lips. She too had eaten of the aloes of life.

I took her hand, and for a moment or two, as long as the nurse was in the room, we murmured the little conventional things that always lie ready on women’s lips while the eyes are probing deep, deep for the unspoken things. But as soon as we were alone she smiled her twisted smile at me and said:

“I see why they call you Ghostie.”

“It is very impertinent of them if they do,” I responded, smiling a little too.

“But it is true. You are the ghost of your old self when you came to Africa. You were very lovely then. I knew the moment I saw you that my life was over.” I felt myself paling.

“Do not speak of those days. That is past grief and pain. We are all much older and wiser now.”

“You do not look a day older—only as though you had been burnt in a fire, and there is nothing but the white ashes of you left. Yet if anything you are more beautiful—there is something about you no man could resist—somethingunwon—they’ll lay down their lives and burn in hell for the unwon. I am glad Tony Kinsella cannot see you to-night looking like a white flame among red roses—What are all those red roses? Yes—I am glad he cannot see you to-night.”

I put my hand to my heart.

“What was it you wanted to say to me?” I asked. I felt that I could not bear too much.

“Why did you marry Maurice Stair?”

The unexpected question bewildered me. But she was too ill to be told that my reason was one I would discuss with no one. I said at last, for I had a part to play in life, and meant to play it to the end:

“He is a good fellow. We are very happy.”

“So I hear—and I want to know how you dare be happy—you whom Tony loved—with a knave like Maurice Stair?”

My heart hurt. Oh! how my heart hurt. I wanted to get away from this cruel dying woman whose pale hands dug up old bones from their graves and strewed them in the path. I wished to go, but I could not. I had to stand there listening.

“You won’t tell me why, but I know—it was because he persuaded you with a blue ear-ring that Tony Kinsella was dead. Well! I want to tell you now that—that tale and that proof were both false. He never found the ear-ring, but had it made in Durban from a design with which I supplied him. I have waited until you were happy to tell you this. It is my revenge on you for taking Tony Kinsella from me.”

Her hand picked at the pale blue stripes of her quilt. I stood appalled at the strength of hatred that could reach out at me from a death-bed.

“Ask your husband—ask your reformed character whom you have made a Sunday-school boy of—and see what he has to say.”

I had an instinct to rush from the room, but I overcame it.

“Shall I go now?” I asked presently. She was staring at me with her haunting eyes.

“You are well-masked—or can it be possible that you don’t care!—I misjudged you, then. I thought you honoured honour in men and women above all things—Tony thought so too—he said, ‘she is like a clear stream of water—and I am thirsty for clean water.’ Tell me if those were cruel words to hear from the lips of a man I had loved and given all to, Deirdre Saurin.”

Given all to! Was this what I had come to hear from the arid lips of this cruel woman! Was my faith to be shattered at last! But my heart rejected the thought even before she spoke again.

“Given all that was best in me. He was no saint, but because in long past days on the Rand he was Claude Valetta’s friend he would not steal Claude Valetta’s wife—charmed that wife never so sweetly, and loved he never so deeply. For he did love me—as he never loved any of the others—and in the end I should have won—I saw the day coming—felt it close—when he would have taken me from my wretched life to some other land. Then he went to Ireland—and came back a changed man.”

This again found me gazing at her amazed and bewildered.

“Ah!” she mocked. “You think you were the first girl he loved—it is not so. There was a girl in Ireland—a girl at a ball, who first dragged him from me.”

“A girl at a ball—”

“She took him back to old dreams, he said—her beauty and her purity—but he was married, and she was not—so he came away quick—he went back to his dreams on the veldt for many months after that. Poor Tony! how he loved a woman he could put in a shrine!—his trouble was that they wouldn’t stay there when he was about. And the women out of shrines had their call for him too.—After the girl in Ireland Rhodes got him for awhile with his dreams of Empire—but he was coming straight, straight back to me—I knew it from his letters, when he met you—where did he meet you?—Oh! what broughtyourfeet straying out to Africa to trample on my hopes!”

What could I say? I was bitterly sorry for her and glad for myself—and broken-hearted for myself! What could I say? I was silent.

She was lying back against her pillows now, deadly pale, eyes closed. I made a step to the door to call her nurse, but she detained me with a few more words like shrivelled-up dry leaves blowing through the room.

“His wife died about six months before you came to Africa.” Ah! That was something. Spikenard in that to lay upon an old wound. A streak of gold to embroider in a banner of belief I had always waved in the faces of those who cried him down. I would not even thank her for confirming my faith. She looked in my face and read my thought.

“Oh! yes—your faith was great enough to remove the mountains he had piled up round himself. You weren’t like Anna Cleeve who thought she adored him, yet at the first word of doubt failed. When I told her of his marriage I did not know of his wife’s death—he never told me untilyouwere in Fort George. He came straight to me when he returned from the Transvaal, and told me, and thanked me then, for my ‘kindly offices’ with Anna. Cleeve—for saving him from a woman who had so tawdry a belief in the inherent decency of a man—but, he told me too he would have no more interference—he had found ‘a stream of crystal clear water’—he needed no more ‘friendly offices’ of me. I understood very well what it meant when I saw him looking at you on the tennis-court. Good-bye, Deirdre Saurin. You and I will not meet again.”

I don’t know how I came to be on my knees beside her bed. Perhaps my thought was to cry some prayer for her and myself and for all women who love; but though many words were in my heart none came to my lips. And presently an unexpected thing happened. I felt a hand on my hair, and a voice most subtly different to that I had been listening to, said brokenly, and softly, some words that sounded almost like a blessing.

“Why should I mind that he loved you best? If I had ever had a son I should have wished him to love a girl like you.”

Mr Valetta was waiting for me in the verandah. He said:

“I think I must insist on seeing you home, Mrs Stair. There seems to be some disturbance in the town.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t exactly know—but I have seen men running about in an excited way, and there has been some cheering. I fancy I heard your husband’s name. Is he in the town to-night? At any rate all the ruction has moved over in the direction of the camp. Look at the lights flashing in your huts.”

I looked and saw: and even as we stood there, another wild burst of cheering came echoing across the open. Then I knew.

Gathering up with shaking hands the draperies of my cloak and gown I prepared to speed my way home and to my share of the terror and beauty of life waiting there. But before I went I said to the husband of Nonie Valetta:

“Is it true that she is so near death?”

“The doctor holds out no hope. It is not so much the actual fever, as the complications that have set in. And her heart is all to pieces.”

“Well—let her depart in peace. Do not allow any news to reach her that will disturb her at the last. I want you to promise me that.”

“I promise, Mrs Stair, solemnly. Shall I come with you?”

“No, no. Go to her,” I said, and sped away on swift feet.

Long before I reached the camp the cheering and all sounds of exultation had ceased, and a strange stillness supervened. At the foot of the kopje, trampling on the tennis-court and among the zinias, were many men, their faces all turned towards the huts, talking among themselves in low voices. As I passed by a muffled silent figure, I caught a word or two.

“By God! That dirty brute of anUmlimo... Keeping a man like Kinsella—all these months! Nearly two years!”

“The trouble with the natives won’t be long coming now... Stair ought to get the V.C. Who would have thought he had it in him!”

There was no mistake then—Maurice had been successful! But why were these men standing out in the inhospitable night? What was going on in the silent brilliantly lighted huts? What subtle note of regret had my ears caught in the low spoken words?

Dimly, amidst the press of overpowering emotions that surged upon me, I apprehended that something was wrong. Fear crept into me, numbing my limits and detaining my feet: but still I stumbled on up the winding path.

There were lights in all the huts, as though some one had been searching in each. Doubtless Maurice had gone from one to the other looking for me. What an ironical trick of Fate that, after awaiting him every moment of every hour since he left, in the very moment of his triumph I should be absent!

There were men in the dining-room hut; but some instinct guided my feet to the drawing-room, through whose half-closed doors I heard the murmur of voices—and again, in thetimbreof those voices, came the suggestion of trouble—pain—loss. I knew full well now that something was wrong. Something had gone hideously awry: and I feared, I feared!

At last I found courage to press open the door.

The heavy odour of a drug came out like a presence to meet me, and mingling with it, piercing through it to my inmost senses, was some other scent that brought terror and dismay. A dimness came over my eyes, so that I could not distinguish any of the faces about me. I saw only the prone figure lying against pillows on the couch that had been dragged to the middle of the room.

It seemed to me there were many red flowers spread about that couch, and on the doctor’s hands, and on his shirt sleeves. It was the scent of them that had met me at the door, piercing my senses—the strange pungent scent of the red flowers of death. Around me in the quiet room I heard some curt words gently spoken.

“It is Mrs Stair... just in time... clear the room... nothing more can be done.”

“Deirdre,”—a faint whisper dragged my leaden feet forward, and I went blindly towards the couch, my arms outstretched. The crimson roses of my cloak joined all the other crimson roses spread everywhere.

All was very still. No sound in the room but the echoes of softly departing feet, and a laboured, puffing sound like the panting of some far-off train climbing a steep hill. Yet there were no trains in Matebeleland. After a little while I knew that the sound was there beside me on the couch. When the mists cleared away from my eyes I looked into the face of the dying man.

It was Maurice.

He was whispering wordlessly to me, and looking up into my eyes with his that were full of chivalrous fires and some other wondrous light that had never been in them before. From his lips came the little panting laboured sound.

Supporting his head—pale and lean, but with the old intent strong glance, the little blue stones in his ears, and a great white scar gleaming along his forehead back into his hair—was Anthony Kinsella.

We took one glance of each other, while the world rocked beneath my feet. Then I gathered my husband’s head to my breast.

“Maurice! Maurice! This is all wrong—what has happened? You must not die!”

A smile of triumph lit his face. He lay there like a dying Galahad with the beauty of death on him: nobler and more gallant than he had ever been before. Like the sad music of old remembered bells I heard Anthony’s voice telling the brief tale.

“He put up a splendid fight with those two Imbezu fellows. I could do nothing to help until he had disabled them and unbound me. We got clear away then, after hard riding. All yesterday we travelled hard, and were certain no one was following. But this afternoon, about two hours’ ride from here, just as we were moving on after a short ‘off-saddle,’ a single shot was fired from behind a bush—it was meant for me of course—a last effort to pot me before we got in. But—God! Stair, what can I say?—You have given your life for mine! What can I say—or do!”

Triumph flickered once more across the death-dewed face of Maurice Stair; and his pale half-smiling lips whispered faintly back:

“That’s all right old man... Kiss me goodbye, Deirdre... I have told him everything.”

With his hand in Anthony’s and his head on my breast he died.

The End.

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