"I HOLD YOU!"
On the morning following his misadventure Roden Musgrave was far too
bruised and feverish to undertake the journey back, and accordingly a
note was sent in to his official superior asking for a day's leave,
which missive Suffield undertook to deliver in person, and supplement
with his own explanations; and not only was the application readily
granted, but Mr Van Stolz, full of concern, must needs ride out with
Suffield in the afternoon to see his damaged subordinate, and to impress
upon the latter that he was not to think of returning until he felt
thoroughly able to do so.
"Don't you break your neck about anything, Musgrave, old boy," he said,
on taking his leave. "We shall manage to get along all right for a day
or two. I can put Somers on to copy the letters, and even to write some
of them. When a fellow is bruised and shaken about, he wants to lie
quiet a little. I wouldn't mind swapping places with you, to have Miss
Ridsdale as a nurse," he added waggishly, as Mona appeared on the scene.
"Take care of him, Miss Ridsdale; good men are scarce, at any rate in
Doppersdorp. Well, good-bye, everybody; good-bye, Mrs Suffield.
Suffield, old chap, give us a fill out of your pouch to start on; mine
has hardly enough in it, I find, to carry me home."
And amid a chorus of hearty farewells, the genial R.M. flung himself
into his saddle and cantered off townwards.
"What a delightful man Mr Van Stolz is!" said Mrs Suffield, gazing
after the retreating horseman.
"I agree entirely," assented Roden. "And now I shall feel bound to go
back to-morrow, if only that one is sensitive on the point of seeming to
take advantage of his good-nature."
"Well, wait till to-morrow comes, at any rate," rejoined his hostess.
"Meanwhile, whatever you have to suffer you have richly deserved, mind
that. Wicked people, who break the Sabbath, are sure to suffer. I told
you I had a severe lecture in store for you when you were well enough,
and now you are."
"Then all I can say is the moral you want to draw is no moral at all, or
a very bad one at best," laughed Roden. "For I am `suffering' for it in
the shape of indulging in the most delicious and perfect laze, and,
better still, being made such a lot of, that I feel like
Sabbath-breaking again, if only to ensure the same result. For
instance, it's rather nice sitting here taking it easy all day, and
being so efficiently taken care of."
"Ah, you didn't find it such fun in the night, when you couldn't unscrew
the flask top. Do you know, I'll never forgive you for such
foolishness. The idea of being afraid to knock anybody up!" said Mrs
Suffield tartly.
He dared not look at Mona. The joke was too rich, and he was inwardly
bursting with the kind of mirth which is calculated to kill at the
longest range of all--mirth of a grim nature, to wit. He had told his
tale of Tantalus, when asked what sort of a night he had had. The
sequel to that episode, we need hardly say, he had not told.
"I never like disturbing anybody's hard-earned slumbers. Don't you
think I'm right, Miss Ridsdale?"
Mona, who was watering flowers just below the _stoep_, thus appealed to,
looked up with a half-start. He had relapsed into the formal again.
But she understood.
"It depends," she said. "No one would grudge being disturbed for such a
reason as that."
There was a caress in the tone, latent, subtle, imperceptible to any but
himself. The voice, the attitude, the supple grace of her beautiful
form, emphasised by the occupation she was then engaged in, as indeed it
was in almost any and every movement she made, stirred him with a kind
of enchantment, an enchantment that was strange, delicious, and rather
intoxicating. He thought that he could lie there in his long cane
chair, amid the drowsy hum of bees and the far-away bleating of sheep
upon the sunny and sensuous air, and watch her for ever.
But a very much less soothing sound now rose upon the said air, in the
shape of a wild yell, quick, shrill voices, and a series of vehement
shrieks.
"My goodness! what on earth are those children about?" cried Mrs
Suffield, springing to her feet, and hurrying round to the back of the
house, where the tumult had arisen, and whence doleful howlings and the
strife of tongues still continued to flow.
"They've been scratching each other's faces, or got stung by a bee, or
something of the kind," said Mona composedly, her figure drawn up to its
full height in an attitude of unconscious grace, as she rose from her
occupation and stood for a moment with one foot on the lower step of the
_stoep_, looking half over her shoulder at the flower bed, while
calculating how much more watering it needed. Then she put down her
watering can and came up the steps.
"Hot for the time of year," she said, sweeping off her wide-brimmed
straw hat, which became her so well, and drawing off her gardening
gloves.
"Perhaps; but you looked such a vision of coolness, moving about among
the flowers, that it made up a sort of Paradise. Now, come here, Mona,
and talk to me a little. There is something about you which is the very
embodiment of all soothing properties."
A soft light grew in the hazel eyes. With a pleased smile she stepped
to the head of his couch, and placing a cool hand on his forehead for a
moment, bent down and kissed him.
"You poor invalid!" she murmured, looking down at him tenderly. "I feel
responsible for you now--you seem to belong to me--until you are well."
"In that case I am in no hurry to get well, dear," was the answer, in a
tone strangely soft as coming from the man who, not much more than a
dozen hours ago, had been haunted by an uncomfortable dread, lest she
should claim and exact this very proprietorship in the life she had
saved. And indeed, if Roden Musgrave was in some danger of losing his
head it is little to be wondered at--remembering time and place, his own
weakened but restful state, the warm and sensuous surroundings, and this
magnificent creature bending over him, with the light of love in her
eyes, a caress in every tone of her voice. With all his
clear-headedness and cynical mind, his was by no means a cold
temperament; indeed, very much the reverse. But what kept his head
level now was the ice-current of an ingrained cynicism flowing through
the hothouse temperature, the intoxicating fragrance of what was
perilously akin to a long-forgotten feeling--namely, love. The present
state of affairs was delightful, rather entrancing; but how was it going
to end? In but one way of coarse--when she was tired of it, tired of
him. This sort of thing never did last--oh no! He had seen too much of
it in his time.
To his last remark, however, Mona made no direct rejoinder. There was
nothing unduly effusive about her, and this went far towards enhancing
her attractiveness in his eyes. In the tendernesses she showed him
there was nothing overpowering, nothing of gush; and keenly observing
her every word, every action, he noted the fact, and was duly impressed.
About her there was no jarring note; all was in perfect harmony.
Now sitting there they talked--talked on matters not limited by the
boundaries of the district of Doppersdorp, or those of the Cape Colony,
but on matters that were world wide. And on such Mona loved to listen;
for of the world he possessed far greater knowledge than falls to the
lot of most men, and of human nature likewise--this man who at middle
age, for some reason, found himself compelled to fill a position usually
occupied by youngsters starting in life. But while delighting in his
keen, trenchant views upon men and matters, Mona failed not to note that
there was one subject upon which he never dwelt, and that subject was
himself.
"You give me new life," he said, dropping his hand upon hers as she sat
beside him. "What a pity we did not come together before--before I had
made such a hash of the old life. But," with a queer smile, "I am
forgetting. You would have been in short frocks then, in very short
frocks. I am quite an old fogey, Mona."
"You are not," she replied closing her fingers upon his with something
of the strong supple grip, in which she had held his hand when to relax
her grasp of it meant death--his death. Now it seemed as though that
same grasp was in accord with her thoughts, holding him back from
something else; from the Past, perhaps; from the effects of that marring
of his life to which he had made so direct an allusion. Yet to what
nature did that allusion apply? A chill seemed to hold her heart
paralysed for the moment. Should she ask him? Here was her
opportunity. Would it not be wiser--nay only in accord with the very
first dictates of common sense? Confusion to the dictates of common
sense! Let the past take care of itself, and the future too. The
present was hers--was theirs, and the present was very good, very fair,
very sunny; glowing, golden, enchanting with the strong wine of love.
Do we refuse to take advantage of a cloudless day because the morrow may
be black and overcast, and furious with rolling thunder and volleying
squalls of rain? No. The cloudless day was hers--was theirs. Let the
morrow take care of itself.
"You are nothing of the sort," she continued. "So I give you new life,
do I? Roden dear, I might say the same--I love to talk with you like
this. I knew I should from the first moment we met. And Grace had said
the very thing you have just said of yourself, when I asked her what you
were like, `Quite a middle-aged fogey.'"
"Oh, the mischief she did! I shall have a row with Mrs Grace about
that."
"Ah, but wait. She only said she had heard so, for she hadn't seen you,
and of course had no idea of your identity with her knight errant during
the post-cart journey. In the latter capacity you should have heard all
the nice things she said about you. Charlie declared himself sick of
the very name of the unknown, only he didn't know it, for that she
seemed to have got him on the brain; which I amended by saying I rather
thought she had got him on the heart. Then Grace was cross."
Roden laughed queerly.
"Well, Mona, and so ought I to be, for that was the very way to prepare
me the most unfavourable reception. Come now, isn't it an invariable
rule that the individual much-belauded in advance turns out a sure
disappointment on acquaintance?"
"It is the rule. But every rule has its exceptions."
"Meaning me. Thank you. I can appreciate the delightfulness of the
compliment, for I believe it is sincere. Nevertheless, my dear child,
you will find few enough people to agree with you--precious few."
"I know, Roden. You are one of those whom a few people would like very
much indeed, but whom the general run would rather dislike."
"Perhaps. And now, disclaiming all idea of being ungracious, how about
quitting so profitless a topic as my own interesting self? And indeed
here comes that which will assuredly divert all attention from it, or
any other matter."
Mona subtly and imperceptibly somewhat widened the distance between
them--indeed, in whatever situation or dilemma she had been surprised,
she might have been trusted to get out of it gracefully--just as the
whole brood came running up. Their mother, having pacified the
disturbance, and forthwith taken the whole lot for a walk, whence they
were returning.
"Well, what was all the grief about?" said Mona. "Frank, I suppose,
teasing somebody again."
"It wasn't me, Cousin Mona," said the accused urchin resentfully. "I
had nothing to do with it. Bah! It was Alfie, as usual. He'd let
another slate pencil fall on his toe, I suppose." And the wrongfully
accused one marched off in high dudgeon.
Roden laughed unrestrainedly.
"That fellow's a wag, by Jove!" he said. "You'll have to entrust him
with the care of the humour of the family, Mrs Suffield," as Grace came
up, and was delighted with the answer repeated for her benefit, for
Frank was rather the favoured one in her eyes, probably because he was
the most mischievous and unmanageable. The while Mona was watching with
a jealous eye lest any of the small fry in their restive exuberance
should come near imparting to the invalid chair a sudden and
unpremeditated shake.
"I saw that, Mona," he said, after they had all cleared out. "I have
seen the same kind of watchfulness, though in different ways, before,
since I have been lying here. Believe me, dear, I keenly appreciate
it."
Her eyes lighted up. She seemed about to reply, but thought better of
it and, said nothing. In her heart, however, she was echoing gladsomely
that resolute, passionate murmur which she had uttered in the silent
midnight as she stilled his pain in slumber by the very restfulness of
her presence; echoing it with such a thrill of exultation as to tax all
her powers of self-command, "Darling love--my love--you are mine! I
have won you, and now I hold you!"