BEWARE OF SUCH UNHOLY SPELLS, SHE REPLIED
Now Holmes, who, bursting with astonishment and trepidation as he beheld how his friend was engaged, came bustling up, with a scared and furtive demeanour.
"By the Lord, old man, we just have put our foot in it," he sputtered. "All the time we were sitting here, Miss Ormskirk was just inside the companion. She must have heard every word we said."
"Don't care a hang if she did."
"Man alive, but we were talking about her! Abouther, and she heard it! Don't you understand?"
"Perfectly; still I don't care a hang. A hang? No, nor the rope, nor the drop, nor the whole jolly gallows do I care. Will that do?"
Holmes gasped. This fellow Stanninghame was a lunatic. Mad, by Jove! Still gasping as he thought of the enormity of the situation, he left without another word, diving below to try and drown his confusion in a whisky and soda, iced.
But the other, still lingering on the now deserted deck, was conscious of a very unwonted sensation.The spell which he had derided so bitterly when beholding others drawn within its toils had begun to weave itself around him. This vague stirring of his mental pulses, what did it mean? Heavens! it was horrible. It brought back old memories, whose tin-pot unreality was never recalled save as subject matter for bitter gibe and mockery. He could not have believed it possible.
"It's the nerves," he told himself. "These years of squalid worry have done it. My nerves are shaken to bits. Well, I must pull them together again. But oh, the bosh of it! the utter bosh of it!"
The sway of Lilith Ormskirk over the saloon and quarter-deck of thePersianwas as complete as any woman's sway ever is. From the grizzled captain—nominally under whose charge she was making the voyage—down to the newly emancipated schoolboy going out to seek employment, the male element was, with scarcely an exception, her collective slave. Among the women, of course, her rule was less complete; those who were furthest from all possibility of rivalling her in attractiveness of person or charm of manner being, of course, the most virulent in their jealousy and the expression thereof. Lilith, however, cared nothing for this, or, if she did, gave no sign. She was never bitter, even towards those whom she knew to be among her worst detractors, never spiteful. She was not faultless, not by any means, but her failings did not lie in the direction of littleness. But she always seemed bright and happy, and full of life—too much so, thought more than one of her perfervid adorers, who would fain have monopolized her.
She was in the mid-twenties—that age when the egotism and rather narrow enthusiasms and prejudices of the girl shade off into the graciousness andsavoir-vivreof womanhood. She could look back on more than one foolishness, from whose resultsshe had providentially escaped, with an uneasy shudder, followed by a heartfelt thankfulness, and a sense of having not only learnt but profited by experience, which sense enlarged her mind and her sympathies, and imparted to her demeanour a self-possession and serenity beyond her years.
We said the male element, with scarce an exception, was her collective slave. Such an exception was Laurence Stanninghame.
Without being a misogynist, he had no great opinion of women. He owned they might be delightful—frequently were—up to a certain point, and this was the point at which you began to take them seriously. But to treat any one of them as though the sun had ceased to shine because her presence was withdrawn, struck him as sheer insanity. It might be all right for youngsters like Holmes or Swaynston, the licensed fool of the smoking room, or Dyson, to whose senile enthusiasm for the mazy rout we have heard allusion made—the latter on the principle of "no fool like an old fool"; but not for him—not for a man in the matured vigour of his physical and mental powers. Wherefore, when forced himself to acknowledge the spell which Lilith had begun to weave around him, he unhesitatingly set it down to impaired nerves.
As a direct result, he avoided the cause. It was a cowardly course of action, he told himself. He was afraid of her. If she could throw the magic of her sorcery over him during a brief ten minutes of conversation, what the very deuce would happen if he allowed himself to be drawn into anythingapproaching the easy-going shipboard intimacy—deck-walking by moonlight, chairs drawn up in a snug corner during the heat of the day, and so forth! Who knew what latent capacities for being made an ass of might not develop themselves within him. He felt really alarmed.
Let it not be supposed that any scruple on the ground of conventionality, obligation, what not, entered into his misgivings. For Laurence Stanninghame had been clean disillusioned all along the line. He hadn't the shred of an illusion left. He had started life with a fair stock-in-trade of good intentions and straight ideas, and, indeed, had acted up to them honestly, and in good faith. But now?—"I've had a h——l of a time!" he would exclaim to himself, during one of those meditative gazes out seaward, for which we heard his younger friend taking him to task. "Yes—just that." And now, only touching middle life, he believed in nothing and nobody. He had become a cold, keen, strong-headed, selfish cynic. If ever his mind reverted to the fresher and more generous impulses or actions of his younger days, it was with a contemptuous self-pity. His view of the morality of life now was just the amount of success, of advantage, of gratification to be got out of it. He thoroughly indorsed the principle of the oldroué'sadvice to his grandson: "Be good, and youmaybe happy—but you'll have d——d little fun," taking care to italicise the word "may." For he had found that the first clause of the saw had brought him neither happiness nor fun.
With his fellow-passengers on board thePersianhe was neither popular nor the reverse. Among the men, some liked him, others didn't. He was genial enough, and good company in the smoking room, but wouldn't do anything in the way of promoting the general amusement—and that voyage was a particularly lively one in the matter of getting things up. The fair section of the saloon was puzzled, and could not make up its mind whether to dislike him or not. For the first, he consistently, though not ostentatiously, avoided it, instead of laying himself out to make himself agreeable—though indications were not wanting that he could so make himself if he chose. For the second, the fact that he remained an unknown quantity was in his favour, if only that the unfamiliarity of reserve—mystery—never fails to appeal strongly to the minds of women—and savages.
It was not so difficult for him to avoid Lilith Ormskirk, if only that until that morning he had hardly exchanged a hundred words with her at a time. Wherefore the upshot of his resolve was noticeable neither by its object nor by the passengers at large. Holmes, indeed, who, having recovered from his consternation, had been secretly watching his friend, was anticipating the fun of seeing the latter fall headlong into the pit whose brink he had so boldly skirted, so openly derided. But he was disappointed. Laurence, if he referred to Lilith again, did so in the same casual, indifferent way as before, nor did he ever terminate any of his dreamy and seaward-gazing meditations in order to open converse with her, even with such inducement as solitary propinquity on more than one occasion.
"By Jove! the fellow is a cross between an icicle and a stone," quoth Holmes to himself, in mingled wonder and disgust.
It was night—warm, sensuous, tropical night. There was dancing in the saloon, and the glare from the skylight and the banging of the piano and chatter of voices gave forth strange contrast to the awesome stillness of the great liquid plain, the dewy richness of the air, the stars hanging in golden clusters from a black vault, the fiery eye of some larger planet rolling and flashing among them as the revolving beacon of a lighthouse. Here the muffled throb of the propeller, and the rushing hiss of water as the prow of the great steamer sheared through the placid surface, furrowing up on either side a long line of phosphorescent wave. Such a contrast he who stood alone in the darkness, leaning over the taffrail, could appreciate nicely.
There were quick, light footsteps. Somebody else was walking the deck. Well, whoever it was, he himself was screened by the stem of one of the ship's boats swung in and resting on chocks. They would not see him, which was all right, for he was in a queer mood and not inclined to talk. After a turn or two, the footsteps paused, then something brushed his elbow in the darkness, as suddenly starting away, while a half-frightened voice exclaimed:
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I couldn't see anything in the dark, just coming up out of the light of the saloon, too. Why, it's Mr. Stanninghame!"
To one who had been out of doors even a few minutes it was not very dark, for the stars were shining with vivid brilliancy. It needed not the sense of sight, that of hearing was enough. Nay, more, a subtile sixth sense, whatever it might be, had warned Laurence Stanninghame of the identity of the intruder.
"No case of mistaken identity here," he said. "But how is it you are all by yourself?"
"Oh, I got tired of all the whirl and chatter. I craved for some fresh air, and so I stole away," said Lilith. "Why, how heavy the dew is here in these tropical seas!" she added, withdrawing her arm from the taffrail upon which she had begun to lean.
The man, watching her furtively, said nothing for a moment. That same chord within him thrilled to her voice, her propinquity. Doubtless his nerves, high strung with recent worry, were playing the fool with him. He was conscious of a kind of envenomed resentment, almost aversion; yet his chief misgiving at that moment, which he recognized with added wrath, was lest she should leave him as quickly as she had come.
"All by yourself as usual!" she went on, flashing at him a bright smile. "Thinking, I suppose?"
"I don't know that I was. I believe I was trying to realize the immensity and silence of the midnight ocean, as far as that tin-pot racket down there would allow one to realize anything. Then it occurred to me how long it would take for the intense solitude to drive a man mad if he were cast away alone in it."
"Not long, I should think," answered Lilith, gazing seriously out over the smooth, oily sea. "The horror of it would soon do that for me."
"And yet why should it have such an effect at all?" he went on. "The grandeur of the situation ought to counterpoise any such weakness. Given enough to support life without undue stinting, with a certainty of rescue at the end, and, I think, a fortnight as castaway in these waveless seas would be an uncommonly interesting experience."
"What? A fortnight? A whole fortnight in ghastly solitude! Silence only broken by the splash or snort of Heaven knows what horrible sea monster! Any consideration of peril apart, I am sure that one night of it would turn me into a raving, gibbering lunatic."
"Perhaps. People are differently built. For my part, discounting the 'sea monster,' I am certain I should enjoy the experience. For one thing, there would be no post."
"But no more there is here on board," she said, struggling with the laugh which the dry irrelevancy had brought to her lips.
"No—but there's—Swaynston."
This time the laugh came rippling outright, and through it came the sound of footsteps.
"Oh, here you are, Miss Ormskirk. I've been looking for you everywhere. This is our dance."
Lilith, catching the satirical twinkle in the other's eyes in the starlight, did not know which way to turn to control an overmastering impulse to laugh uninterruptedly for about five minutes, the cruel partof it being that the interrupter was Swaynston himself.
The latter, a pursy individual, was holding out an arm somewhat in the attitude of a seal's flipper; but Lilith did not take it.
"Do be very good-natured and excuse me," she said. "I don't want to dance any more to-night; the noise and heat have made my head ache."
"Really, really? I'll find you a chair then, in some quiet corner," fussed Swaynston. But Lilith seemed not enthusiastic over that allurement, and finally, with some difficulty, she got rid of him; he grinning "from the teeth outwards," but consumed with fury nevertheless.
So that was why she had stolen away from them all, to slip up and talk in a quiet corner with that fellow Stanninghame, who was probably some absconding swindler, with a couple of detectives and a warrant waiting for him in Table Bay? Thus Swaynston.
Nor would it have tended to allay his irritation could he have heard the object of it after his departure.
"So you think he is worse than the post?" she said, with a laugh in her eyes. "Yet he is one of the most devoted of my—poodles."
The demure malice of her tone no more disconcerted the other than that former endeavour to show him she had overheard his remarks by quoting his own words.
"Oh, yes," was the unconcerned reply. "He sits up on his hind legs a little better than any of them."
For a few moments she said nothing, seeming tohave become infected with her companion's dreamy meditativeness. Then:
"And you are not tired of the voyage yet? You were saying the other day that its monotony was enjoyable."
"I say so still. Look!" he broke off, pointing to the sea.
A commotion was going on beneath its surface. Their grisly shapes vivid in the disturbed phosphorescence, drawing a wake of flame behind them, rushed two great sharks. Hither and thither they darted, every detail of their ugly forms discernible on the framing of the phosphorescent blaze, even the set glare of the cruel eye; and, no less nimble in swift doubling flashes, several smaller fish were trying to evade the laws of nature—the absorption of the weakest, to wit. There was something indescribably horrible in the fiery rush of the sea-demons beneath the oily blackness of the tropical waters.
"How awful! how truly awful!" murmured Lilith, with a strong shudder of repulsion, yet gazing as one fascinated at the weird sight.
"Yet it is the perfection of an object lesson, one that comes in just in time to point the moral to my answer," he said. "If those fish, now in process of being eaten, were caught and kept in an aquarium tank, it might be more monotonous for them than furnishing fun and food to the first comer in the way of bigger fish. Possibly they might yearn for the excitement of being harried, though I doubt it. That sort of philosophy is reserved for us humans. If we knock our heads against a brick wall we howl; ifwe haven't got a brick wall to knock them against we howl louder."
"And the moral is?"
"Dona nobis pacem."
"I see," she said at last, for it took her a little while to thoroughly grasp the application, partly distracted as her thinking powers were in trying to find a deeper meaning than the one intended. "Yet peace is a thing that no one can enjoy in this world. How should they when the law of life is struggle—struggle and strife?"
"Precisely. That, however, is due to the faultiness of human nature. The philosophy of the matter is the same. Its soundness remains untouched."
"Yet you are not consistent. You were implying just now that, failing a brick wall to knock our heads against, we started in search of one. Now does not that apply to those who go out into the world—to the other end of the world—instead of remaining peacefully at home?" she added, a sly sort of "I-have-you-there" inflection in her tone.
"Pardon me. My consistency is all right. Begging a question will not shatter it."
"Begging a question?"
"Of course. For present purposes the said begging is comprised in the word 'peacefully.' See?"
"Ah!"
Again she was silent. The other, watching the flash of the starlight on the meditative upturned eyes, the clearly marked brows, the firm setting of the lips, was more conscious than ever of the latent witchery in the sweet, serene face. He would not flee from itsspells now, he decided. He would meet them boldly, and throw them off, coil for coil, however subtilely, however dexterously they were wound about him. Meanwhile, two things had not escaped him: She had yielded the point gracefully, and convinced, instead of launching out into a voluble farrago of irrelevant rubbish, as ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have done in order to have "the last word." That argued sense, judgment, tact. Further, she had avoided that vulgar commonplace, instinctive to the crude and unthinking mind, of whatever sex, of importing a personal application into an abstract discussion. This, too, argued tact and mental refinement, both qualities of rarer distribution among her sex than is commonly supposed—qualities, however, which Laurence Stanninghame was peculiarly able to appreciate.
Then she talked about other things, and he let her talk, just throwing in a word here and there to stimulate the expansion of her ideas. And they were good ideas, too, he decided, listening keenly, and balancing her every point, whether he agreed with it or not. He was interested, more vividly interested than he would fain admit! This girl with the enthralling face and noble beauty of form, had a mind as well. All the slavish adoration she received had not robbed her of that. It was an experience to him, as they lounged there on the taffrail together in the gold-spangled velvet hush of the tropical night. How delightfully companionable she could be, he thought; so responsive, so discriminating and unargumentative. Argumentativeness in women wasa detestable vice, in his opinion, for it meant everything but what the word itself etymologically did. Craftily he drew her out, cunningly he touched up every fallacy or crudeness in her ideas, in such wise that she unconsciously adopted his amendments, under the impression that they were all her own.
"But—I have been boring you all this time," she broke off at last. "Confess now, you who are nothing if not candid. I have been boring your life out?"
"Then, on your own showing, I am nothing, for I am not candid," he answered. "On the contrary, it is an unadvisable virtue, and one calculated to corner you without loophole. And you certainly have not been boring me."
He thought, sardonically, what any one of those whom he had caustically defined as her "poodles" would give for an hour or so of similar boredom, if it involved Lilith all to himself. Some of this must have been reflected in his eyes, for Lilith broke in quickly:
"No, you are not candid. I accept the amendment. I can see the sarcasm in your face."
"But not on that account," he rejoined tranquilly, and at the same time dropping his hand on to hers as it rested on the taffrail. The act—an instinctive one—was a dumb protest against the movement she had made to withdraw. And as such Lilith read it; more potent in its impulsiveness than any words could have been. "Listen!" he went on. "I suppose there is a sort of imp of scepticism sitting ever upon one shoulder, and that is what you saw. Something in my thoughts suggested a droll contrast, thatwas all. So far from boring me, you have afforded me an intensely agreeable surprise."
"Now you are sneering again. I will not talk any more."
He recognized in her tone a quick sensitiveness—not temper. Accordingly his own took on an unconscious softness, a phenomenally unwonted softness.
"Don't be foolish, child. You know I was doing nothing of the sort. Go on with what you were saying at once."
"What was I saying? Oh, I remember. That idea that board-ship life shows people in their real character. Do you believe in it?"
"Only in the case of those who have no real character to show. Wherein is a paradox. Those who have got any—well, don't show it, either on board ship or on shore."
"I believe you are right. Now, my own character, do you think it shows out more readable on board than it would on shore."
"Do you think you have me so transparently as that? What was I saying just now on that head?"
"I see. Really, though, I had no ulterior motive. I asked the question in perfect good faith. Tell me—if anyone can, you can. Tell me. Shall I make a success—a good thing of life? I often wonder."
She threw up her head with a quick movement, and the wide, serious eyes, fixed full upon his, seemed to flash in the starlight. He met the glance with one as earnest and unswerving as her own.
"You rate my powers of vaticination too high," he said slowly, "and—you are groping after an ideal."
"Perhaps. Tell me, though, what you think, character-reader as you are. Shall I make a success of life?"
"I should think the chances were pretty evenly balanced either way, inclining, if anything, to the reverse."
"Thanks. I shall remember that."
"But you are not obliged to believe it."
"No. I shall remember it. And now I must go below; it is nearly time for putting out the saloon lights. Good-night. I have enjoyed our talk so much."
She had extended her hand, and as he took it, the sympathetic—was it magnetic?—pressure was mutual, almost lingering.
"Good-night," he said. "The enjoyment has not been all on one side."
Left alone, he returned to his solitary musings—tried to, rather, for there was no "return" about the matter, because now they took an entirely new line. His late companion would intrude upon them—nay, monopolized them. She had appealed powerfully to his senses, to his mind, how long would it be before she did so to his heart? He had avoided her—he alone—up till then, and yet now, after this first conversation, he was convinced that of all gathered there he alone knew the real Lilith Ormskirk as distinct from the superficial one known to the residue. And to his mind recurred her former warning, laughingly uttered: "Beware such unholy spells!" With a strange intoxicating recollection did that warning recur, together with the consciousness that more than ever was it needed now. But as againstthis was the protecting strength of a triple chain armour. Life was only rendered interesting by such interesting character studies as this. Oh, yes; that was the solution—that, and nothing more.
This was by no means the last talk they had—they two alone together. But it seemed to Laurence Stanninghame that a warning note had been sounded, and one of no uncertain nature. His tone became more acrid, his sarcasm more biting, more envenomed. One day Lilith said:
"Why do you dislike me so?"
He started at the question, thrown momentarily off his guard.
"I don't dislike you," he answered shortly.
"Then why have you such a very poor opinion of me? You never lose an opportunity of letting me see that you have. What have I done? What have I said that you should think so poorly of me?"
There was no spice of temper, of resentment, in the tone. It was soft, and rather pleading. The serious eyes were sweet and wistful. As his own met their steady gaze, it seemed that a current of magnetic thought flashed from mind to mind.
"I hold no such opinion," he said, after a few moments of silence. "Perhaps I dread those 'unholy spells,' thou sorceress. Ah! there goes the second dinner-bell. Run away now, and make yourself more beautiful than ever—if possible."
A bright laugh flashed in the hazel eyes, and the white teeth showed in a smile.
"I'll try—sinceyouwish it," she said over her shoulder, as she turned away.
The throb of the propeller has almost ceased; faint, too, is the vibration of the slowed-down engines. ThePersianis gliding with well-nigh imperceptible motion through the smooth waters of Table Bay.
It is a perfect morning, cloudless in its dazzling splendour. In front, the huge Table Mountain rears its massive wall, dwarfing the mud-town lying at its base and the bristling masts of shipping, its great line mirrored in the sheeny surface. Away in the distance, the purple cones of the Hottentots Holland mountains loom thirstily through a glimmer of summer haze. A fair scene indeed after three weeks of endless sea and sky.
"And what are your first impressions of my native land?"
Laurence turned.
"I was thinking less of the said land than of myself," he answered. "I was thinking what potentialities would lie between my first impressions of it and my last."
Just a suspicion of gravity came over Lilith Ormskirk's face at the remark.
"And are you glad the voyage is at an end, now that it is?" she went on.
"You know I am not. It was such a rest."
"Which I was everlastingly disturbing."
"By wreathing those unholy spells. Lilith, thou sorceress, how long will it be before those talks of ours are forgotten? A week, perhaps?"
"They will never be forgotten," she answered, her eyes dreamy and serious. "But now, I must go below and finish doing up my things. We shall be in dock directly."
A great crowd is collected on the quay as the steamer warps up, above which rise sunshades coloured and coquettish, pith helmets and sweeping puggarees, and more orthodox white "stove-pipes." Then in the background, yellow-skinned Malays in gaudy Oriental attire, parchment-faced Hottentots, Mozambique blacks, and lighter-hued Kaffirs from the Eastern frontier. The docks are piled with luggage, for the privilege of carrying which and its multifold owners Malay cab-drivers are uttering shrill and competing yells. On board, people are bidding each other good-bye or greeting those who have come to meet them; and flitting among such groups, a mingled expression of alertness and anxiety on his countenance, is here and there a steward, bent upon sounding up a possibly elusive "tip," or refreshing an inconveniently short memory.
Near the gangway Lilith Ormskirk was holding quite a farewell court. Her "poodles," as Laurence had satirically defined them, were crowding around—Swaynston at their head—for a farewell pat. The last, in the shape of Holmes and another, had taken their sorrowful departure, and now a quick, furtive look seemed to cross the smiling serenity of her face,a shade of wistfulness, of disappointment. Thus one in the hurrying throng at the other side of the deck read it.
"What a tail-wagging!" almost immediately spake a voice at her side.
She turned. Decidedly the expression was one of brightening.
"I thought you had gone—had forgotten to say good-bye," she said.
"I was waiting until the poodles had finally cleared. Now, however, I have come to utter that not always hateful word."
"Not in this instance?"
"Yes, distinctly. I have just heard there is to be a special train made up—we are in too late for the regular mail-train, you know. So I shall leave for Kimberley in about two or three hours' time."
Lilith looked disappointed.
"I thought you would have stayed here at least a few days," she said. And then the friends who had met her on board returned, and Laurence found himself introduced to three pretty girls—fair-haired, blue-eyed, well-dressed—eke to a man—tall, brown-faced, loosely hung, apparently about thirty years of age—none of whose names he could quite succeed in catching, save that the latter was apostrophized as "George." Then, after a commonplace or two, good-byes were uttered and they separated—Lilith and her party to catch the train for Mowbray, her late fellow-passenger to arrange for his own much longer journey.
Having the compartment to themselves, one of the blue-eyed girls opened fire thus:
"Lilith, who is he?"
"Who?"
"He."
"Bless the child," laughed Lilith, "there were about half a hundred he's."
"No, there was only one. Who is he? What is he?"
"I don't know," replied Lilith, affecting ignorance no longer.
"You don't know? After three weeks on board ship together? Three whole weeks of ship life, and you have the face to tell me you don't know anything about him. After the way in which you said good-bye to each other, too? Oh, I saw."
"Well, I don't know."
"Or care?"
"Chaff away, if it's any fun to you," answered Lilith quite serenely, as the trio rippled into peals of laughter.
"I liked the man, liked to talk to him on board—you are welcome to the admission—but all I know is that he is going to Johannesburg. We may never see each other again."
"These English Johnnies who come out here, and whom one knows nothing about, are now and again slippery fish," gruffly spoke the brown-faced one. "Watch it, Lilith."
"I thought this one looked as if he might be interesting," said another of the blue-eyed girls. "Pity he wasn't staying a day or two. We might have got him out to the house and seen what he was made of."
"Watch it," repeated George sententiously. "Watch it, Lilith."
Meanwhile, the object of this discussion—and warning—having resignedly "passed" the Customs at the dock gates, was spinning townwards in one of the innumerable hansoms. Sizing up the South African metropolis, it gave him the idea of a mud city, just dumped down wet and left to dry in the sun. Its general aspect suggested the vagaries of some sportive Titan, who, from the summit of the lofty rock wall behind it, had amused himself, out of office hours, by chucking down chunks of clay of all sorts and sizes, trying how near he could "lob" them into the position of streets and squares.
At that time the railway line ended at Kimberley—the distance thence to Johannesburg, close upon three hundred miles, had to be done by stage. It occurred to Laurence that, having a couple of hours to spare, he had better look up the coach-agent and secure a seat by wire.
The agent was not in his office. Laurence Stanninghame, however, who knew the ways of similar countries, albeit a new arrival in this, inquired for that functionary's favourite bar. The reply was prompt and accurate withal. In a few minutes, seated on stools facing each other, he and the object of his search were transacting business.
The latter did not seem entirely satisfactory. The agent could not say when the earliest chance might occur by regular coach. He might have to wait atKimberley—well, it might be for days, or it might be for ever. On the other hand, he might not even have to wait at all. He could not tell. Even the people at the other end could not say for certain. Laurence began to lose patience.
"See here," he said somewhat testily. "I haven't been long in your country, but that's about the only reply I've been able to meet with to any question yet. Tell me, as a matter of curiosity, is there any one thing you are ever certain of out here? Just one."
The agent looked at him with faint amazement.
"There is one," he said; "just one."
"Well—and that?"
"Death. That's always a dead cert. Let's liquor. Put a name to it, skipper."
The special train consisted of a mail van and a first-class carriage. There being only three or four other travellers each had a compartment to himself, an arrangement which met with Laurence Stanninghame's unfeigned approval. He did not want to talk—especially in a clattering, dusty railway carriage. At intervals the passengers foregathered for meals at some wayside buffet or accommodation house,—meals whose quality was in inverse ratio to the exuberance of the prices charged therefor,—then each would return to his own box and smoke and read and sleep away the little matter of seven hundred miles.
On they sped for hours and hours—on through sleepy Dutch villages, whose gardens and cultivation made an oasis on the surrounding flats—on, winding in a slow ascent through the gloomy grandeur of theHex River Poort, with its iron-bound heights rearing in mighty masses from the level valley bottom. Then it grew dark, and, the dim oil lamp being inadequate for reading purposes, Laurence went to sleep.
"Afar in the desert I love to ride,"
"Afar in the desert I love to ride,"
"Afar in the desert I love to ride,"
sang Pringle, the South African bard.
"Pringle was a liar, or a lunatic," quoth Laurence Stanninghame, to whom the passage was familiar, on opening his eyes next morning and looking around. For the train was speeding—when not slowing—through the identical desert of which Pringle sang; that heart-breaking, dead-level, waterless, treeless belt known as the Karroo. Not a human habitation in sight, for hours at a stretch—the same low table-topped mountains rising hours ahead, and which never seemed to get any closer, looking, moreover, in the distant, mirage-effects, like vast slabs poised in mid-air and resting on nothing. At long intervals a group of foul and tumble-down Hottentot huts, with their squalid inhabitants—lean curs and ape-like men; theirraison d'être, in the shape of a flock of prematurely aged and disappointed-looking goats, trying all they are worth to extract sustenance from the red shaly earth and its sparse growth of coarse bush-like herbage. Looking out on this horrible desert, the eye and the mind alike grow weary, and the latter starts speculating in a shuddering sort of a way as to how the deuce anything human can find it in its heart to exist in such a place. Yet though an awful desert in time of drought it is not always so.
But gazing forth upon the surrounding waste, Laurence was able to read into it a certain charm—the charm of freedom, of boundlessness, so vividly standing out in contrast to his own cramped, narrow, shut-in life. All the changed conditions—the wildness, the solitude, the flaming and unclouded sun—were as a new awakening to life. The current of a certain joy of living, long since sluggish, congealed, now coursed swiftly and without hinderance through his being.
Now through all those hours of tedious travelling—in the flaming glow of day, or in the still, cool watches of the night, he had with him a recollection—Lilith Ormskirk's face haunted him. Those eyes seemed to follow him—sweet, serious; or again mirthful, flashing from out their dark fringe of lashes, but ever entrancing, ever inviting. Her whole personality, in fact, seemed to pervade his mind, warring for sole possession, to the exclusion of all other thought, all other consideration. Into the conflict his own mind entered with a zest. It was a psychological struggle which appealed to him, and that thoroughly. She should not, by her witchery, take entire possession. Yet the recollection of her was so potent that at length he ceased to strive against it. He gave way,—abandoned himself contentedly, voluptuously to its sway,—even aiding it in the pictures it conjured up. Now he saw her, as he had first passed her, day after day on board ship, with indifference, with faintly ironical curiosity; again, as when they had first begun to talk together; and yet again, when he had found himself resorting to all manner of cowardlymental expedients to persuade himself that he did not revel in her dangerously winning attractiveness, and sweet sympathetic converse. In the monotonous three-four time beat of the wheels he could conjure up her voice—even the colonial trick of clipping the final "r" in words ending with that letter—as to which he had often rallied her, while secretly liking it—for this, like a touch of the brogue, can be winsome enough when uttered by pretty lips. Now all these reflections could not but be profitless, possibly dangerous, yet they had this advantage—they helped to kill time, and that during a thirty-odd-hour journey across the Karroo. Well, it is an advantage!
On through the long, hot day, and still that memory was with him. The solitude, the stillness, the mile after mile over the desolate and barren waste, the novelty of the scene, the monotonous rattle of the wheels—all went to perpetuate it. Then the sun drew down to the horizon, and the departing glow, striking upon the red soil, painted the latter the colour of blood, making up an extraordinarily vivid study in red and blue. Overhead a cloudless sky, the horizon all aflame, and the whole earth, far as the eye could reach, steeped in the richest purple red. Laurence fell fast asleep.
He dreamed they were steaming into Charing Cross Station. Lilith was waiting to meet him. He swore, in his dream, because they had halted on the railway bridge too long to take the tickets. Then he awoke. They were steaming slowly into a terminus, amid the familiar flashing of lamps and therumbling of porters' trucks. But it was not Charing Cross, it was Kimberley.
Not long did it take him to collect his scanty baggage and fling it into a "cab," otherwise an open, two-seated Cape cart. Hardly had he taken his seat than the driver uttered a war-whoop, and, with a jerk that nearly sent its passenger somersaulting into the road, the concern started off as hard as its eight legs and two wheels could carry it.
The night was dark, the streets guiltless of lighting. As the trap zigzagged furiously from one side of the way to the other, now poised on one wheel, now leaping bodily into the air as it charged through a deep hole or rut, it was a comfort to the said passenger to reflect that the road being feet deep in sand one was bound to fall soft anyhow. Yet, candidly, he rather enjoyed it. After thirty-three hours in a South African "Flying Watkin" even this spurious excitement was welcome.
They shaved corners, always on one wheel, sometimes even scraping the corners of houses, and causing those pedestrians in their line of flight to skip like young unicorns. Then, recovering, the startled wayfarers would hurl their choicest blessings after the cab. To these, the madcap driver would reply with a shrill and fiendish yell, belabouring his frantic cattle with a view to attempting fresh feats. They succeeded. It only wanted a bullock-waggon coming down the street to afford them the opportunity. The bullock-waggon came. Then a dead, dull scrunch—an awful shock—and the cab was at a standstill. The waggon people opened their safety-valves andlet off a fearful blast of profanity; the cab-driver replied in suitable and feeling terms, then backed clear of the wreck and whipped on.
Vastly amused by this lively experience, Laurence still ventured to expostulate, mildly, and as a matter of form. But he got no more change out of his present Jehu than Horace Greeley did of Hank Monk. The reply, accompanied by a jovial guffaw, was:
"All right, mister. You sit tight, and I'll fetch you through. Which hotel did you say?"
Laurence refreshed his memory—and swaying, jerking, pounding, into ruts and holes, the chariot drew up like a hurricane blast before quite an imposing-looking building at the corner of the Market Square. Having paid off the lunatic of the whip and stood him a drink, Laurence engaged a room, and wondered what the deuce he should do with himself if delayed here any time. For the glimpse he had obtained of the place seemed not inviting. The same crowded bars, the same roaring racket, the same dust—yea, even the same thirst. He had seen it all before in other parts of the world.
He was destined to wonder still more, and wearily, what he should do with himself; for nearly a week went by before he could secure a seat in the coach. A great depression came upon him, begotten of the heat and the drowsiness and the dust, as day after day seemed to bring with it no emancipation from the wind-swept, tin-built town, dumped down on its surrounding flat and sad-looking desert waste. Yet nothing akin to homesickness was there in hisdepression. He wanted to get onward, not to return. He was bored and in the blues. Yet, as he looked back, the feeling which predominated was that of freedom—of having a certain measure of life and its prospects before him. Stay, though. His thoughts would, at times, travel backward, and that in spite of himself, and they would land him with a lingering, though unacknowledged, regretfulness, on the deck of thePersian. Well, that was only an episode. It had passed away out of his life, and it was as well that it had.
But—had it?
At last, to our wayfarer's unspeakable joy, deliverance came. It had been Laurence's lot to travel in far worse conveyances than the regular coaches which at that time performed the journey between Kimberley and Johannesburg, a distance of close upon three hundred miles; consequently, although not among the fortunate ones who had secured a corner seat, he managed to make himself as comfortable as any traveller in comparatively outlandish regions has a right to expect. His fellow-passengers consisted, for the most part, of mechanics of the better sort and a loquacious Jew—not at all a bad sort of fellow—in conversation with whom he would now and then beguile the weariness of the route. And it was weary. The flat sameness of the treeless plains, as mile after mile brought no change; the same stony kopjes; the same deserted and tumble-down mining structures; the same God-forsaken-looking Dutch homesteads, whose owners had apparently taken on thetristehopelessness of their surroundings; the same miserable wayside inns, where leathery goat-flesh and bones and rice, painted yellow, were dispensed under the title of breakfast and dinner, what time the coach halted to change horses, and even then only served up when the driver was frantically vociferating, "All aboard!" Thus they journeyed day and night, allowing, perhaps, three hours, or four at the outside, for sleep—on a bed. But the latter proved an institution of dubious beneficence, because of its far from dubious animation; the said "animation" scorning blithely and imperviously accumulations of insect powder, reaching back into the dim past, left there and added to by a countless procession of tortured travellers. Howbeit, of these and like discomforts are such journeyings productive, wherefore they are scarcely to be reckoned as worthy of note.
"Hallo, Stanninghame! And so, here you are?"
"Here I am, Rainsford, as you say; and from what I have heard in process of getting here, I'm afraid I have got here a day too late."
The other laughed, as they shook hands. He was a man of Laurence's own age, straight and active, and his bronzed face wore that alert, eager look which was noticeable upon the faces of most of the fortune-seekers, for of such was the bulk of the inhabitants of Johannesburg at that time.
"You never can tell," he rejoined. "Things are a bit slack now, because of this infernal drought; but a good sousing rain, or a few smart thunder showers, would fill all the dams and set the batteries working again harder than ever. It's the rainy time of year, too."
It was the morning after Laurence's arrival in Johannesburg, and, while sallying forth to find Rainsford, the two had met on Commissioner Street. The brand-new gold-town looked anything but what it was. It did not look new. In spite of the general unfinishedness of the streets and sidewalks, the latter largely conspicuous by their absence; in spite of thepredominance of scaffolding poles and half-reared structures of red brick; in spite of the countless tenements of corrugated iron, and the tall chimneys of mining works which came in here where steeples would have arisen in an ordinary town; in spite of all this there was a battered and weather-beaten aspect about the place which made it look centuries old. Great pillars of dust towered skywards, then dispersing, whirled in mighty wreaths over the shining iron roofs, to fall hissing back into the red-powdery streets whence they arose, choking with pungent particles the throats, eyes, and ears of the eager, busy, speculative, acquisitive crowd, who had flocked hither like wasps to a jar of beer and honey. And to many, indeed, it was destined to prove just such a trap.
"Well, what do you advise, Rainsford?" said Laurence, after some more talk about the Rand and its prospects.
"Wait a day or two. You don't want to buy in a falling market. There are several good companies to put into, but things haven't touched bottom yet. When they do and just begin to rise, then buy in. Meanwhile lie low."
"You speak like a book, Rainsford," said one of two men who joined them at that moment. "There's a capital company now whose shares are on the rise again. Couldn't do better than take two or three hundred of them. What do you say?"
"Name?"
"Bai-praatfonteins."
"I'll watch it!" said Rainsford, with an emphatic and negative shake of the head.
"I say, you don't want a couple of building stands? They'll treble their value in as many weeks. Going cheap as dirt now."
"Not taking any, Rankin," was the uncompromising reply, for Rainsford knew something about those building stands.
"You're making a mistake. Bless my soul, if only I had the money to spare, I'd take them at double myself. I'm only agent in the matter, though. I can't do any business at all with you fellows this morning."
All this was said in the most genial and good-humoured tone imaginable. The speaker was a spare, straight, neatly dressed individual of middle age. His face was of a dark bronze hue, lit up by a pair of keen black eyes, and his beard was prematurely gray, almost white. The expression of keenness on a deal was not characteristic of him alone. Everyone wore it in those days.
"That was a great old shot you did on me, Rainsford, with those Verneuk Draais," cut in the other man, in a jolly, hail-the-maintop sort of voice. He was a tall, fair-haired, athletic fellow, whose condition looked as hard as nails. "Ja, it just was."
"Well, I'll buy them back if you like, Wheeler."
"How much?"
"Sixteen and a half."
A roar of good-humoured derision went up from the other.
"Sixteen and a half? And I took them over from you at twenty-eight. Sixteen and a half?"
"Well, are you taking?" said Rainsford.
"Dead off," returned the other.
"What do you say, you fellows?" cut in the first who had spoken. "A little 'smile' of something before lunch won't do us any harm. Eh? what do you say?"
"Ja, that's so. Come along," sung out the tall man, spinning round upon one heel and heading for the Exchange bar.
"There's nothing like an Angostura to give one an appetite," said the dark man to Laurence as they walked along. "It gives tone to the system. Angostura—with a little drop of gin in it."
"With a little drop of gin in it?" repeated Wheeler, with a derisive roar. "That's where the tone to the system comes in—eh, Rankin?"
"Only just out from home, are you?" said the latter to Laurence as, having named their respective "poisons," the original four, with two or three others who had joined themen route, stood absorbing the same. "Heavens! did you ever hear such a row in your life?" he went on, as through the open door connecting with the Exchange came the frantic bawling of brokers, competing wildly for Blazesfonteins, and Verneuk Laagtes, and Hellpoorts, and Vulture's Vleis, and Madeiras, and Marshes, and up and down the whole gamut. And there in the crowd lining the bar, and in the crowd outside the Exchange, and in the crowd upon Market Square, where the auctioneers stood, well-nigh elbow to elbow, bellowing from their tubs, and where you might bid for anything from a building stand or a pair of horses to a concertina or a pair of stays—everywhere the talk was the same, and it was of scrip. King Scrip ruled the roost.
Just then, however, the subjects of King Scrip were undergoing rather an anxious time, for the drought was becoming serious. Dams being empty, batteries could not work; result, scrip drawing within alarming distance of touching its own value—paper, to wit. And as the dams became more empty, those with an "n" appended became more and more full—yea, exceeding full-bodied, and both loud and deep. In the churches they were praying for rain,—praying hard,—for rain meant money; and in the bars they were "cussing" for lack of it,—"cussing" hard,—on the same principle. Then the rain came, and in the churches they sang "Te Deum"; and in the bars they drove a humming trade in champagne, where "John Walker" had been good enough before. Up went scrip, and Laurence Stanninghame, having judiciously invested his little all, cleared about three hundred pounds in as many days. Things began to look rosy.
By this time, too, Laurence got sick of hanging around the Exchange and talking scrip. He had no turn that way, wherefore now he was glad enough to leave his affairs in the hands of Rainsford, who, being an inhabitant of Johannesburg, was, of course, a broker; and, having picked up a very decent No. 12 bore on one of the open-air sales aforesaid, laid himself out to see what sport was obtainable in the surrounding country. This was not much, but it involved many a hard and long tramp; and the Transvaal atmosphere is brisk and exhilarating, with the result that eye and brain grew clearer, and his condition became as hard as nails. And as there is nothinglike a thoroughly healthy condition of body, combined with an equally healthy mental state,—in this instance the elation produced by an intensely longed-for measure of success,—Laurence began to realize a certain pleasure in living, a sensation to which he had been a stranger for many a long year, and which, assuredly, he had never expected to experience again.
For the market still continued to hum, and by dint of judicious investments and quick turnings over, Laurence had more than doubled the original amount he had put in. At this rate the moderate wealth to which he aspired would soon be his.
And now, with the ball of success apparently at his feet, so unsatisfying, so ironical are the conditions of life, that he was conscious of a something to damp the anticipatory delights of that success. Those long, solitary tramps over the veldt after scant coveys of partridge, or the stealthy stalk of wild duck at somevlei, were very conducive to introspection; that wealth which he imagined within his grasp did not now look so all-in-all sufficing, and yet he had deemed it the end and all-in-all of life. Even with his past experience—the depressing, deteriorating effects, mental and physical, of years of poverty in its most squalid and depressing form, "shabby-genteel" poverty—he realized that even the possession of wealth might leave something to be desired. In fact, he became conscious of an unsatisfied longing, by no means vague, but very real, which came to him at his time of life with a sort of dismayed surprise. He would give up these solitary wanderings in search of sport. The sport was of a poor description, and the intervalsbetween were too long. He had too much time to think. He would knock around the town a little for a change, and talk to fellows.
One morning he was walking down the street with Rainsford and Wheeler,—the latter, who was an up-country hunter, busy, in pursuance of the prevailing spirit, in trying to trade him sundry pairs of big game, horns, and other trophies,—when he heard his name called in a very well remembered voice. Turning, he beheld Holmes.
"Stanninghame, old chap, Iamglad to run against you again!" cried the latter, advancing upon him with outstretched hand.
"I begin to believe you are," answered Laurence genially, with a comical glance at the other's beaming countenance. "Why, you actually have a look that way. When did you get here?"
"By last night's coach. And, I say,"—trying to look wondrously mysterious and knowing,—"who do you think travelled up by it too?"
"I can't even venture the feeblest guess."
"Can't you?" chuckled Holmes. "What about Miss Ormskirk, eh? How's that?"
"So? Now I remember, she did say something about a possibility of coming up here before long," replied Laurence equably, while conscious that the announcement had convulsed his inner being with a strange, sweet thrill. For it came so aptly upon his meditations of late. The one unsatisfied longing—her presence. And now even that was to be fulfilled.
"You don't seem to take it over enthusiastically, Stanninghame," went on Holmes. "And you andshe were rather thick towards the end of the voyage," he added mischievously.
"Did you ever know me enthuse about anything, Holmes? But it's about lunch time; let's go and get some, and you can tell me what you have been doing since we landed from the oldPersian, and what the deuce has brought you up here."
This was all very friendly and plausible; but before they had been seated many minutes at lunch in a conveniently adjacent restaurant Holmes was discoursing singularly little upon his doings spread over the weeks which had elapsed since he had landed, but most volubly upon his recent coach journey congested within a space of three days—to which topic he was tactfully moved by his audience of one and also by his own inclination, as will hereinafter appear.
"Was Miss Ormskirk travelling alone, did you say, Holmes?" queried Laurence, in initiation of his deft scheme for "drawing" the other.
"Not much. There was a big parchment-faced Johnny with her. He scowled at me like sin when we were introduced—was inclined to be beastly rude in fact, until he saw that I—er—that I—talked most to the other; then he got quite affable."
"To the other? What other? Out with it, Holmes," said Laurence, with a half smile at his friend's thinly veiled embarrassment.
"Oh, there was another girl in the crowd—Miss Falkner—deuced pretty girl, too. The sulky chappie was her brother."
"Whose brother? Miss Ormskirk's?" said Laurence innocently.
"No; the blue-eyed one's. At least they both called him George."
"Yes. I remember they came on board thePersian. You had landed already, I think. From your description I recognize them. So they are up here? Where are they staying?"
"At that outlying place where the coach first begins to get among houses. I can't remember the name. There's a biggish pub, you know, and a lot of houses."
"Booyseus?"
"That was it; Booyseus. They asked me to go and see them. You'd better come along too, Stanninghame. I say, d'you think it'd be too soon if we went to-morrow, eh? Sort of excuse to ask if they'd recovered from the journey—eh?"
"Was George so very exhausted then?"
"Oh, hang your chaff, Stanninghame! What do you think? You're an older chap than I am, and know more about these things. Would it be too soon if we went to-morrow?"
"Be comforted, Holmes. As far as it rests with me, you shall behold your forget-me-not-eyed charmer to-morrow if she's at home."
The conversation worked round to the inevitable topic, King Scrip. Holmes was fired with eagerness when in his unenthusiastic way the other began to tell of such successes as he had already scored. For he, too, had come up there to take advantage of the boom. He was eager to rush out there and then to buy shares. Nothing would satisfy him but that Laurence must take him round and introduce him to Rainsford on the spot.
But on the way to that worthy's office something happened. Turning into Commissioner Street, they ran right into a party of four. Result—exclamations of astonishment, of recognition, greetings from both sides.
Three of the quartette we have already made the acquaintance of. The fourth, Mrs. Falkner, a good-looking middle-aged lady, was the aunt of the other three, and with her they were staying.
"I've heard of you, Mr. Stanninghame," said this one, when introductions had been effected. "I hope you have made a success of Johannesburg so far. Everybody turns up here. I can hardly come up to the camp—we used to call it that in the old days. I was among the first up here, you know, and it's difficult to get into the way of calling it the town—I can hardly come up here, I was saying, without meeting some one or other I had known elsewhere."
"Yes, it's an astonishing place, Mrs. Falkner," answered Laurence. "Only bare veldt but a very few years ago, now a population of forty thousand—mostly brokers."
She laughed, and Lilith cut in:
"I thought you were going to adopt the Carlylean definition of the people of England, Mr. Stanninghame."
"Oh, that'll come in time. I only trust I may not hold on too long to come under its lash."
"Let us hope none of us will," said Mrs. Falkner. "Oh, dear, we are all dreadfully reckless, I fear. We are nothing but gamblers up here. Have you caught the contagion too, Mr. Stanninghame?"
"I'm afraid so," he answered, thinking how, even among the softer sex here, King Scrip bore the principal sway.
He was thinking of something else at the same time. Lilith was looking even more sweet, more bewitchingly attractive than when last he had seen her. There was a warm seductive glow of health in her dark brilliant beauty, a winsomeness in her simple, tasteful attire—the cool easy-fitting blouse and skirt in a soft harmony of cream colour and light gray, and the plain, wide-brimmed straw hat of the "sailor" kind—which made, to his eyes, an irresistibly entrancing picture.
She, no less than himself, was comparing notes—as two people will who have been apart for a space, and have thought much of each other in the interim. He, too, was improved in appearance. The fine climate, the open-air life had lent a deeper bronze to his face and a clearness to his eyes—even as an emancipation from sordid cares, together with a present modicum of success and a prospect of further in the future, had imparted a certain stamp of serenity to his expression which was not there before. "Air, freedom, life's healthier side are good—success is good—all good things are good—behold their result," was Lilith's inner verdict as the summing up of this inspection.
Now George Falkner's efforts at cordiality were about as effective as the demeanour of a crusty mastiff encountering another of his kind well within sweep of his owner's lash. His jealous soul had noted the glance exchanged between his cousin and Laurence Stanninghame—the responsive glance which for abrief second would not be disguised; the great and deep-reaching gladness, which shone in both pairs of eyes as a result of this meeting. He stood gloomy and grim, while the two were talking together, and then rather brusquely—and to the disgust of Holmes, who was discoursing eagerly with pretty Mabel Falkner—he reminded his aunt that they were due to call at So-and-So's, and were far behind their time.
"Ah, yes, I was forgetting. Well, good-bye, Mr. Stanninghame. I hope you will come and see us. It is nothing of a walk out to Booyseus, and besides, there are several omnibuses in the course of the day. Mind you come too, Mr. Holmes. Good-bye."
And the four resumed their way, and so did our two.
"Jolly, genial old party that Mrs. Falkner," pronounced Holmes, half turning, slyly, to sneak a last glance after the blue-eyed and receding Mabel.
"Spare my susceptibilities, Holmes, even in your exuberance. That 'old party,' as you so unfeelingly define her, cannot own to more than two or three years seniority over my respectable self—four at the outside," said Laurence maliciously.
"Oh, go along with you, old chap," retorted Holmes, yet conscious of feeling just a trifle foolish. "But, I say," eagerly, "can we still go and look them up so soon as to-morrow, eh?"
"Don't let that misgiving interfere with your beauty sleep, Holmes," was the reply, dashed with a touch of good-humoured impatience. "People are not so beastly ceremonious over here."
"I've brought you another sheep to shear,Rainsford," said Laurence, as they entered the broker's office. "Don't clip him any closer than you did me, though he's dying to set up as a millionaire on the spot."
And then, having effected this introduction, he left the pair to do business or not, as the case might be, and strolled back to his own quarters.
What was this marvellous metamorphosis which had come upon him, flooding his life with golden waves of sweetness and of light? Now that he had beheld Lilith once more, he realized what entire hold she had taken of his thoughts since they two had parted on the deck of thePersian. It was a certainty there was no getting away from—but a certainty now which he was not in the least desirous of getting away from. He had beheld her once more. Their meeting had been of the briefest, their interchange of remarks of the most commonplace, every-day nature. Yet he had beheld her, had listened to the sound of her voice, had looked into her eyes. And the glance of those sweet eyes had been responsive; and his ear could detect a subtile note in the tones of her voice. Sweet Lilith! the spells she had begun to wreathe around him, so unconsciously to herself, so unconsciously to him, when first they talked together, were drawn, woven, more thoroughly now. And in his strange, new revivification—the return of strength and health and spirits—he rejoiced that it was so, and laughed, and defied circumstances, and Fate and the Future.