"THOU SHOULDST HAVE KNOWN ME TRUE."
In hinting that a public demonstration, hostile to his subordinate, was
preparing, Mr Shaston was so far right in that it was no fault of
Sonnenberg, and one or two others of like kidney, that something of the
sort did not come off. Even then the tender conscience of collective
Doppersdorp, whose main ingredients Roden Musgrave had not inaccurately
defined, was wounded to the extent of expressing its feelings in a
series of petty manifestations of spite and malice. Thus the
disfigurement of his front door was repeated, with the difference that
this time a gallows, with a man hanging on it, was substituted for the
axe. Or, if he passed a knot of youthful loots loafing at a street
corner, his ears could not fail to catch some deft allusion followed by
a yahoo bray of laughter. And although once or twice reference would be
made to tar-and-feathers, still no act of overt hostility was attempted.
It might have been, indeed, that upon this virtuous crowd was forced
home the same consideration which Roden himself had suggested to his
official superior--that, granting the identity, a man with his fighting
record was not one to be roughly handled with impunity; especially as
during that brief expedition into the Gaika location, he had given
substantial guarantee that the record might be a true one. And if in
any way this consideration influenced the virtuous public of
Doppersdorp, why, it only showed that, among that agglomeration of
mischievous turnip-heads, there lingered even yet a stray grain or so of
wisdom.
Still his position was an unpleasant one, and grew daily more so. Here
and there would be somebody not ill-disposed towards him, but, beyond a
feebly apologetic defence when he was out of hearing, they did not care
to say so, let alone to parade their sympathy, fearing public opinion or
their own women-kind, who in turn feared Mrs Shaston; for of such are
the wheels which revolve within each other in the small community.
Now the tongue of Mrs Shaston wagged oft and freely enough to have laid
her open to any number of distinct actions for slander. But although
Roden had asserted his intention to "take it fighting," he was growing
more and more sick of the whole position every day. This wretched poky
little hole-and-corner village, where people grovelled away their lives
by the score of years at a time; what was it to him? What was this
handful of shopkeepers and pettifogging practitioners, whose main
ambition was to squeeze a few extra shillings out of the unwary native,
or the wooden-headed Boer, on some pretence just falling short of
legally fraudulent, and not always that? Why, nothing, of course--less
than nothing. A month after leaving it he would have forgotten that
such a place ever existed, have forgotten it utterly and entirely.
All but for one consideration; and that he owned to himself, both in
sorrow and in wonder, would never suffer him to forget this passage in
his life as long as that life should last. In sorrow, because
unaccountably he had a chill presentiment that even that stay would fail
him in the hour of need. In wonder, because it seemed little short of
miraculous that, having left the cream of life behind him with the
capacity for faith and warm trust, he should have been required to take
up that life again almost, as it were, from the very beginning--should
be called upon to suffer the ordeal of trust and feeling, even after
losing all belief in the genuineness and durability of any such
transitory illusions.
Since the bursting of the bomb he had not seen Mona, nor bad he heard
either from or of her. The same held good of Suffield's household in
general. It almost looked as if they pointedly refrained from coming
into the town. Had they heard about it? Why, of course. How should
they not have? When a community such as Doppersdorp fastens on to a
scandal of that magnitude, why, it worries it for all it is worth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, Charles Suffield, though an excellent fellow under the ordinary
circumstances of life, was not the man to stand by a friend at a pinch,
if the said pinch should chance to be of abnormal tightness. He was one
of those good, commonplace souls to whom a public scandal is a thing of
terror; wherefore it is not surprising that, when he came to learn that
the friend with whom he and his had been upon such intimate terms, had
stood his trial for murder of a peculiarly brutal and sordid nature,
narrowly escaping conviction, and that only on the cleverness and
eloquence of his counsel rather than on the merits of the case, it is
not surprising, we repeat, that he should have been, to use his own
definition, knocked end ways. He remembered that friend's studied
reticence, instances of which were continually cropping up, and how they
had all frequently laughed at and over such; now these all stood
accounted for. The whole thing was hideous, hideous beyond words; less
the actual murder than the motive--the pitiful, paltry robbery which had
prompted it. And to think that the man should have been mixing with
them all this while upon intimate terms. And Mona--oh, great Heavens!
what amount of mischief might not be done there?
Suffield's mind, being largely diluted with commonplace, floundered
about in a panic, landing its owner in rather a contemptible hole. For
in his horror of scandal, and disgust for the reputed crime, he was
quite ready to condemn his former friend right out of hand. His
reasoning was of the feminine order, "Everybody says so, therefore it
must be true." Curiously enough it was from a feminine mind that a
little wholesome common sense was brought to bear upon the question--the
mind of his wife, to wit.
"I won't believe it, even now," said Grace sturdily; perhaps with a
vivid recollection of that awful post-cart journey, the flooded river,
and the broken cord. "There may be some explanation, but anyhow it
seems rather unfair to put a man on his trial again after he has been
acquitted."
"Where there's smoke there must be fire," rejoined Suffield, with proud
originality. "And here I'm afraid there must be a great deal more fire
than smoke."
"Still I won't believe it. Looking at only one side of the question is
supposed to be a feminine characteristic. It strikes me that our sex
has been libelled."
"That's all very well, Grace, but we've got to be practical. What about
Mona? They are engaged."
"Not actually."
"Well, as good as. It amounts to the same thing."
"I don't know," was the reply, more thoughtfully given. "Speak to her
yourself about it."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mona received the news as though semi-dazed with its ominous magnitude,
and by some curious and subtle instinct believed it. Yet not quite--not
quite the whole of it, that is. The motive was too horrible. In that
she would not believe, unless he assured her to the contrary. Still,
the other was bad enough, whichever way you looked at it. It was
appalling. A gulf, a chasm, seemed to open under her feet, paralysing
her faculties, deadening everything.
Such was the state of the family councils when Roden, resolved to know
the worst, saddled up his horse and started for Quaggasfontein. It was
Sunday morning, so he would have the whole day at his disposal, and as
he cantered out along the familiar track--how many times had he been
over it before?--it was with a very sure foreboding that he was
travelling it now for the last time. And as he journeyed he called to
his aid all the iron hardness of his now schooled nature; a hardness
which he had suffered to be penetrated, though never dispelled, but
which events of late had riveted once more in armour layers. Not upon
any softening reminiscence would he allow his mind to dwell now, and the
very first glance at Mona's face would justify his resolve; justify it
for all time, or--
He was prepared for the constraint with which the Suffields greeted
him--so different to his former welcome--the more marked perhaps because
of a certain laboured effusiveness in order to render it equally
cordial; for even Grace, her first spirited defence of him
notwithstanding, could not quite free her manner from the effect of the
distilling canker-drop of suspicion. He was prepared for this, and at
the moment thought but little of it as he entered with them.
It was a lovely, cloudless morning, and the scent of flowers with the
hum of bees and the chirrup of the cicada wafted in at the open windows
of the cool, half-darkened sitting-room. By one of these Mona was
standing. She turned, as with an effort, jerkily, constrainedly, and
her eyes met his.
All was over.
What her countenance expressed it would have been difficult to define.
What it did not express was that loving, eager sympathy, that proud,
fearless trust, which should range itself beside him in defiance of the
whole world, such as he had scarcely expected, yet still owned a
deep-down hope that he might find there.
All was over.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
While this trial and verdict, swift as a lightning flash, was going on,
Suffield had been bustling about the room with the blundering,
ostentatious tactlessness of a not very clever man under awkward
circumstances, who has more than half lost his head; under cover of
which bustle Mona slipped away and was gone, but ere vanishing she left
behind a whisper:
"Soon. At the willows."
"Hallo, Musgrave! I thought Grace was here," cried Suffield, turning.
"Have a glass of grog after your ride, eh?"
"No thanks."
"What? Did you say you wouldn't? By the way, you haven't off-saddled,"
glimpsing through the open door the other's horse still standing in
front of the _stoep_.
"I'm not going to off-saddle," said Roden. "I don't think I can stay
very long."
Suffield hardly knew what to answer, so he fired off volleys of
commonplaces, which, treading on each other's heels, soon merged into
the most drivelling of incoherences. Roden, watching him, felt moved to
pity and contempt: pity for the man who could make so gratuitous an ass
of himself, contempt for one whose "friendship" thus collapsed at the
first knock, and that knock an outside one.
"If you don't mind, Suffield, I rather want to have a word or two with
Miss Ridsdale," he said at last. "I think I saw her strolling in the
direction of the willows."
"Certainly, certainly; you're sure to find her there," assented Suffield
effusively. "When you come back you'll perhaps change your mind about
not off-saddling."
Roden did not hurry as he took his way along that well-known path. His
gait to the superficial observer was that of a bored lounger, strolling
to kill time; and as he caught the glimpse of a white dress beneath the
leafy canopy in front, so far from quickening his pace, he deliberately
halted, and affected to pick up and examine a leaf or a pebble which lay
in the path. And as he did so he began softly to hum to himself, and
the words which he found himself humming were:
"'Twas here we last parted, 'twas here we first met."