"O LOVE, THY DAY SETS DARKLING."
The same proud, fearless strength of nature which had allowed Mona to
give herself up so unreservedly to this wonderful, all-absorbing love,
once she were sure of it, now enabled her to suffer and make no sign.
She was not one to wear the willow ostentatiously. Suffield, indeed,
was lost in amazement over what he had termed her cool way of taking it.
His wife, however, who could see below the surface, knew what a
smouldering volcano this "coolness" covered. Sadly, too, she recalled
her own words, "Wait until it comes, Mona, and then tell me how
enjoyable you find it." Well, "it" had come, and could anything be a
more disastrous, more complete wreck? She would watch her relative with
a kind of awed wonder; for Mona never made direct allusion to anything
that had gone before. A trifle graver, more reserved perhaps; otherwise
as serene, as imperturbable as before. Yet deep down in her heart the
wound bled, ached, and throbbed--and that almost unbearably. For she
could not move a step without being reminded of the times that were
past--if she needed reminding. No way could she turn her eyes without
being so reminded. Every object, every feature in the surroundings was
fraught with such associations.
Then she would force herself to look things in the face--to take to
herself a kind of reckless, _bizarre_ comfort. She had youth, and the
glow of healthful beauty throbbed warm and strong within her. The world
was great. Life was all before her. And she had pride. She could face
the whole world with such an armoury.
There was one thing which, so far as the outside world was concerned,
rendered her position easier. There had been no regular engagement.
Nothing formal or binding had so much as been hinted at between them.
They had been content to live on, penetrating deeper and deeper into the
golden mazes of love; no thought for the end, no thought of a barred
gate across their way, beyond which should lie a smooth, dead-level
road, unending in its placid monotony. Nothing therefore had been
"broken off," nothing claiming explanations, and, more hateful than all,
laying her open to condolences.
But the fact that there had been nothing definite between them had its
drawbacks. She could not shut herself up; and at times, when visiting
among their acquaintances, she would be forced to listen to remarks
which cleft her heart, but which she must bear and show no sign; to
strictures on the absent one which made her blood surge and boil with
suppressed wrath. One such occasion befell about a month after his
departure, the time and place being an afternoon call, and the offender
Mrs Shaston, who, she suspected, was talking not without design,
expatiating to a roomful of people upon what a snake in the grass had
been so providentially hunted out of their midst. The hot, passionate
blood coursed madly in Mona's veins, and her eyes began to flash.
Suddenly they met those of Father O'Driscoll, who, with his hands
crossed on the head of his stick, was seated on the other side of the
room as though not hearing what went on. Suddenly the old man leaned
across towards the speaker.
"Is it Mr Musgrave ye're talking about, Mrs Shaston?" he said in his
gentle Irish tone.
"Yes. He was once a great friend of yours, Father O'Driscoll, if I
remember rightly," and there was a scarcely veiled sneer underlying the
remark.
"Was once a great friend of mine?" repeated the old priest quietly, but
in a tone clear enough to be audible to all in the room. "But he is
still a great friend of mine, Mrs Shaston, though I doubt if we shall
ever meet again, I'm sorry to say."
It was like flinging a bomb into that coterie of scandalmongers. The
lady stared, wrathful--then smiled sweetly. The magistrate's wife was
not an easy person to "put down."
"As a clergyman you would of course take a charitable view of things,
Father O'Driscoll," she answered, "and I'm sure it's quite nice to hear
you. But we poor every-day people--"
"See here, Mrs Shaston," broke in the old man, in his most genial tone.
"I remember in the old days in Cork springing a riddle on some of the
fellows; there was a lot of talk going on at the time, I forget what it
was all about, something political most likely. This was it: Why is
Shandon steeple like every question? D'ye think they could answer it?
They couldn't at all. The answer was `Because there are two sides to
it; a dark one and a light one.'"
The application of this was pretty obvious, and gave rise to a
constrained sort of silence. Pausing just long enough to lend effect to
this, the old man went on, in his frank, merry way. "And the best of
the joke is, that some of the fellows, although they'd been born and
raised in old Cork, didn't know that Shandon steeple had two sides at
all. I give ye my word they didn't. They thought it was all dark or
all light all round."
And then, turning to a fellow-compatriot of his, Father O'Driscoll asked
whether that particular curiosity of their native city had escaped her
notice too, and having launched forth, manoeuvred from one droll
anecdote to another, of course leading the conversation farther and
farther from the topic of Roden Musgrave; whither indeed it did not
return upon that occasion.
By accident or design, Grace Suffield and her cousin took their leave at
the same time as the old priest.
"Why do you never come out and see us, Father O'Driscoll?" said Mona, as
they gained the street. Her eyes were eloquent with thanks, with
unbounded appreciation of the tactful, yet unequivocal manner in which
he had championed the absent. "We have not the claim upon your time
which your own people have, still you might ride out and see us now and
then."
"Ah, don't be putting it that way, Miss Ridsdale. Sure, we're always
very good friends in spite of our differences, are we not, Mrs
Suffield?"
"I can't answer that, Father O'Driscoll, until you positively promise to
come out and dine with us at the very earliest opportunity," replied
Grace. "My husband will drive in and fetch you and take you back again,
if you will only fix the day. If you don't, why, then I sha'n't believe
you mean what you say."
"Our _friends_ do come and see us, Father O'Driscoll," added Mona with
meaning; and her eyes again were eloquent, for they said, "_You_ at
least were his friend. _You_ at least lifted up one voice on his
behalf, and that with no uncertain sound, when all tongues clamoured
against him. I want to say more about it, and--perhaps about _him_" And
it is probable that their meaning was read aright, for the required
promise was readily given, and as, having bidden the ladies good-bye,
Father O'Driscoll took his way down the street, he shook his head sadly
to himself as he thought over what had happened; for the heart of this
sweet-natured old man was very full of the pain and trouble and
separation which had come upon these two.
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Beyond the successful working out of it, Lambert had not taken much by
his vindictive scheme. In fact, he had taken rather less than nothing;
for if he expected to find the road now clear, or at any rate rapidly
becoming so, into Mona's good graces, why, then he never made a greater
mistake in his life. She would hardly speak to him, and then only to
snub him pitilessly, and with a cold and haughty politeness which left
him no road open for a colourably dignified retreat. His revenge must
be its own reward. Well, at all events, he had that.
So had Sonnenberg, but he, at any rate, fell into evil case. For he was
a good bit of a Lothario of a kind, was this vindictive and plotting
child of Israel, and somehow it happened that during the height of his
exultation over the utter discomfiture of his enemy, a great and mighty
fall awaited himself; for in the very thick of an intrigue whose central
figure was a native damsel, "black but comely," he was surprised by a
party of Kaffirs, and most soundly and unmercifully thrashed. Now
prominent among the thrashers was the thrashee's former store-boy, Tom;
wherefore the rumour failed not to creep around, that Roden Musgrave had
bequeathed a debt of vengeance and a largess to that sometime warrior;
and, in short, that Sonnenberg had walked blindly into what was nothing
less than a cunningly devised and successfully baited trap. Whether
this was so or not, we are uncertain. But the evil Jew, though his
bruised bones smarted for many a long day from the whack of the Kaffir
kerries, dared make no public stir, by reason of the very circumstances
of the case, towards securing the punishment of his assailants;
wherefore these went unpunished, and laughed openly.
So time went on, and weeks grew into months, and even the strange affair
of Roden Musgrave became ancient history in Doppersdorp, and discussion
thereof began to pall, except upon "old Buzfuz," who was never tired of
publicly thanking Heaven for having chosen him as its instrument in
unmasking and driving from their midst a most wicked and dangerous
impostor; and Roden's successor, a good-hearted sort of youth of the
very ordinary type, fell desperately in love with Mona, but at a
distance; and Grace Suffield thought regretfully over that terrible
night in the post-cart, and wondered uncomfortably if they had not given
their support to a very great act of injustice; and her husband ceased
to think any more about it; and things jogged along in Doppersdorp
pretty much as they had always done. And some wag, of malice
aforethought, turned loose the whole of Emerson's "Chamber of Horrors,"
the ingredients composing which spread themselves over the township, and
took a week to collect, save such as incontinently retreated to their
native wilds, and two snakes which got into the bank-house and bit
Emerson's native boy, involving much treatment from Lambert, for which
their owner had to pay, swearing terribly.
Thus several months went by.