Look you lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with.
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
I must leave thee, love...
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, belov'd, and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou--
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife.--_Hamlet_.
|OSWIN Markham lay awake nearly all that night after he had reached the
hotel. His thoughts were not of that even nature whose proper sequence
is sleep. He thought of all that had passed since he had left the
room he was lying in now. What had been on his mind on leaving this
room--what had his determination been?
“For her,” he said; “for her. It would have been for her. God keep
me--God pity me!”
The morning came with the sound of marching soldiers in the street
below; with the cry of bullock-wagon-drivers and the rattle of the rude
carts; with the morning and the sounds of life--the breaking of the
deadly silence of the night--sleep came to the man.
It was almost midday before he awoke, and for some time after opening
his eyes he was powerless to recollect anything that had happened during
the night; his awakening now was as his return to consciousness on board
the _Cardwell Castle_,--a great blank seemed to have taken place in his
life--the time of unconsciousness was a gulf that all his efforts of
memory could not at first bridge.
He looked around the room, and his first consciousness was the
recollection of what his thoughts of the previous evening had been when
he had slept in the chair before the window and had awakened to see
Despard ride away. He failed at once to remember anything of the
interval of night; only with that one recollection burning on his brain
he looked at his right hand.
In a short time he remembered everything. He knew that Despard was in
the hotel. He dressed himself and went downstairs, and found Harwood in
the coffee-room, reading sundry documents with as anxious an expression
of countenance as a special correspondent ever allows himself to assume.
“What is the news?” Markham asked, feeling certain that something
unusual had either taken place or was seen by the prophetical vision of
Harwood to be looming in the future.
“War,” said Harwood, looking up. “War, Markham. I should never have left
Natal. They have been working up to the point for the last few months,
as I saw; but now there is no hope for a peaceful settlement.”
“The Zulu chief is not likely to come to terms now?” said Markham.
“Impossible,” replied the other. “Quite impossible. In a few days there
will, no doubt, be a call for volunteers.”
“For volunteers?” Markham repeated. “You will go up country at once, I
suppose?” he added.
“Not quite as a volunteer, but as soon as I receive my letters by the
mail that arrives in a few days, I shall be off to Durban, at any rate.”
“And you will be glad of it, no doubt. You told me you liked doing
war-correspondence.”
“Did I?” said Harwood; and after a little pause he added slowly: “It's
a tiring life this I have been leading for the past fifteen years,
Markham. I seem to have cut myself off from the sympathies of life. I
seem to have been only a looker-on in the great struggles--the great
pleasures--of life. I am supposed to have no more sympathies than
Babbage's calculator that records certain facts without emotion, and
I fancied I had schooled myself into this cold apathy in looking at
things; but I don't think I have succeeded in cutting myself off from
all sympathies. No, I shall not be glad of this war. Never mind. By the
way, are you going out to Dr. Glaston's to-night?”
“I have got a card for his dinner, but I cannot tell what I may do. I am
not feeling myself, just now.”
“You certainly don't look yourself, Markham. You are haggard, and
as pale as if you had not got any sleep for nights. You want the
constitution of your friend Mr. Despard, who is breakfasting in the
bar.”
“What, is it possible he is out of his room?” cried Markham, in
surprise.
“Why, he was waiting here an hour ago when I came down, and in the
meantime he had been buying a suit of garments, he said, that gallant
check of his having come to grief through the night.”
Harwood spoke the words at the door and then he left the room.
Oswin was not for long left in solitary occupation, however, for in
a few moments the door was flung open, and Despard entered with a
half-empty tumbler in his hand. He came forward with a little chuckling
laugh and stood in front of Oswin without speaking. He looked with his
blood-shot eyes into Oswin's cold pale face, and then burst into a laugh
so hearty that he was compelled to leave the tumbler upon the table,
not having sufficient confidence in his ability to grasp it under the
influence of his excitement. Then he tapped Markham on the shoulder,
crying:
“Well, old boy, have you got over that lark of last night? Like the old
times, wasn't it? You did the fatherly by me, I believe, though hang
me if I remember what happened after I had drunk the last glass of old
Irish with our friend the king. How the deuce did I get in with the
teetotal colonel who, the boots has been telling me, lent me his cart?
That's what I should like to know. And where were you, my boy, all the
night?”
“Despard,” said Markham, “I have borne with your brutal insults long
enough. I will not bear them any longer. When you have so disgraced both
yourself and me as you did last night, it is time to bring matters to a
climax. I cannot submit to have you thrust yourself upon my friends as
you have done. You behaved like a brute.”
Despard seated himself and wiped his eyes. “I did behave like a brute,”
he said. “I always do, I know--and you know too, Oswin. Never mind. Tell
me what you want--what am I to do?”
“You must leave the colony,” said Oswin quickly, almost eagerly. “I
will give you money, and a ticket to England to-day. You must leave this
place at once.”
“And so I will--so I will,” said the man from behind his handkerchief.
“Yes, yes, Oswin, I'll leave the colony--I will--when I become a
teetotaller.” He took down his handkerchief, and put it into his pocket
with a hoarse laugh. “Come, my boy,” he said in his usual voice, “come;
we've had quite enough of that sort of bullying. Don't think you're
talking to a boy, Master Oswin. Who looks on a man as anything the worse
for getting drunk now and again? You don't; you can't afford to. How
often have I not helped you as you helped me? Tell me that.”
“In the past--the accursed past,” said Oswin, “I may have made myself a
fool--yes, I did, but God knows that I have suffered for it. Now all is
changed. I was willing to tolerate you near me since we met this time,
hoping that you would think fit, when you were in a new place and
amongst new people, to change your way of life. But last night showed
me that I was mistaken. You can never be received at Colonel Gerald's
again.”
“Indeed?” said the man. “You should break the news gently to a fellow.
You might have thrown me into a fit by coming down like that. Hark you
here, Mr. Markham. I know jolly well that I will be received there and
welcomed too. I'll be received everywhere as well as you, and hang me,
if I don't go everywhere. These people are my friends as well as yours.
I've done more for them than ever you did, and they know that.”
“Fool, fool!” said Oswin bitterly.
“We'll see who's the fool, my boy. I know my advantage, don't you be
afraid. The Irish king has a son, hasn't he? well, I was welcome with
him last night. The Lord Bishop of Calapash has another blooming male
offspring, and though he hasn't given me an invite to his dinner this
evening, yet, hang me, if he wouldn't hug me if I went with the rest of
you swells. Hang me, if I don't try it at any rate--it will be a lark at
least. Dine with a bishop--by heaven, sir, it would be a joke--I'll go,
oh, Lord, Lord!” Oswin stood motionless looking at him. “Yes,” continued
Despard, “I'll have a jolly hour with his lordship the bishop. I'll
fill up my glass as I did last night, and we'll drink the same toast
together--we'll drink to the health of the Snowdrop of Glenmara, as the
king called her when he was very drunk; we'll drink to the fair Daireen.
Hallo, keep your hands off!--Curse you, you're choking me! There!”
Oswin, before the girl's name had more than passed the man's lips, had
sprung forward and clutched him by the throat; only by a violent effort
was he cast off, and now both men stood trembling with passion face to
face.
“What the deuce do you mean by this sort of treatment?” cried Despard.
“Despard,” said Oswin slowly, “you know me a little, I think. I tell you
if you ever speak that name again in my presence you will repent it. You
know me from past experience, and I have not utterly changed.”
The man looked at him with an expression that amounted to wonderment
upon his face. Then he threw himself back in his chair, and an
uncontrollable fit of laughter seized him. He lay back and almost yelled
with his insane laughter. When he had recovered himself and had wiped
the tears from his eyes, he saw Oswin was gone. And this fact threw him
into another convulsive fit. It was a long time before he was able to
straighten his collar and go to the bar for a glass of French brandy.
The last half-hour had made Oswin Markham very pale. He had eaten no
breakfast, and he was reminded of this by the servant to whom he had
given directions to have his horse brought to the door.
“No,” he said, “I have not eaten anything. Get the horse brought round
quickly, like a good fellow.”
He stood erect in the doorway until he heard the sound of hoofs. Then
he went down the steps and mounted, turning his horse's head towards
Wynberg. He galloped along the red road at the base of the hill, and
only once he looked up, saying, “For the last time--the last.”
He reached the avenue at Mowbray and dismounted, throwing the bridle
over his arm as he walked slowly between the rows of giant aloes. In
another moment he came in sight of the Dutch cottage. He paused under
one of the Australian oaks, and looked towards the house. “Oh, God, God,
pity me!” he cried in agony so intense that it could not relieve itself
by any movement or the least motion.
He threw the bridle over a low branch and walked up to the house. His
step was heard. She stood before him in the hall--white and flushed in
turn as he went towards her. He was not flushed; he was still deadly
white. He had startled her, he knew, for the hand she gave him was
trembling like a dove's bosom.
“Papa is gone part of the way back to Simon's Town with the commodore
who was with us this morning,” she said. “But you will come in and wait,
will you not?”
“I cannot,” he said. “I cannot trust myself to go in--even to look at
you, Daireen.”
“Oh, God!” she said, “you are ill--your face--your voice----”
“I am not ill, Daireen. I have an hour of strength--such strength as is
given to men when they look at Death in the face and are not moved at
all. I kissed you last night----”
“And you will now,” she said, clasping his arm tenderly. “Dearest, do
not speak so terribly--do not look so terrible--so like--ah, that night
when you looked up to me from the water.”
“Daireen, why did I do that? Why did you pluck me from that death to
give me this agony of life--to give yourself all the bitterness that can
come to any soul? Daireen, I kissed you only once, and I can never kiss
you again. I cannot be false to you any longer after having touched
your pure spirit. I have been false to you--false, not by my will--but
because to me God denied what He gave to others--others to whom His gift
was an agony--that divine power to begin life anew. My past still clings
to me, Daireen--it is not past--it is about and around me still--it is
the gulf that separates us, Daireen.”
“Separates us?” she said blankly, looking at him.
“Separates us,” he repeated, “as heaven and hell are separated. We have
been the toys--the playthings, of Fate. If you had not looked out of
your cabin that night, we should both be happy now. And then how was
it we came to love each other and to know it to be love? I struggled
against it, but I was as a feather upon the wind. Ah, God has given us
this agony of love, for I am here to look on you for the last time--to
beseech of you to hate me, and to go away knowing that you love me.”
“No, no, not to go away--anything but that. Tell me all--I can forgive
all.”
“I cannot bring my lips to frame my curse,” he said after a little
pause. “But you shall hear it, and, Daireen, pity me as you pitied me
when I looked to God for hope and found none. Child--give me your eyes
for the last time.”
She held him clasped with her white hands, and he saw that her passion
made her incapable of understanding his words. She looked up to him
whispering, “The last time--no, no--not the last time--not the last.”
She was in his arms. He looked down upon her face, but he did not kiss
it. He clenched his teeth as he unwound her arms from him.
“One word may undo the curse that I have bound about your life,”
he said. “Take the word, Daireen--the blessed word for you and
me--_Forget_. Take it--it is my last blessing.”
She was standing before him. She saw his face there, and she gave a
cry, covering her own face with her hands, for the face she saw was that
which had looked up to her from the black waters.
Was he gone?
From the river bank came the sounds of the native women, from the
garden the hum of insects, and from the road the echo of a horse's hoofs
passing gradually away.
Was it a dream--not only this scene of broad motionless leaves, and
these sounds she heard, but all the past months of her life?
Hours went by leaving her motionless in that seat, and then came the
sound of a horse--she sprang up. He was returning--it was a dream that
had given her this agony of parting.
“Daireen, child, what is the matter?” asked her father, whose horse it
was she had heard.
She looked up to his face.
“Papa,” she said very gently, “it is over--all--all over--for ever--I
have only you now.”
“My dear little Dolly, tell me all that troubles you.”
“Nothing troubles me now, papa. I have you near me, and I do not mind
anything else.”
“Tell me all, Daireen.”
“I thought I loved some one else, papa--Oswin--Oswin Markham. But he is
gone now, and I know you are with me. You will always be with me.”
“My poor little Dolly,” said Colonel Gerald, “did he tell you that he
loved you?”
“He did, papa; but you must ask me no more. I shall never see him
again!”
“Perfectly charming!” said Mrs. Crawford, standing at the door. “The
prettiest picture I have seen for a long time--father and daughter in
each other's arms. But, my dear George, are you not yet dressed for the
bishop's dinner? Daireen, my child, did you not say you would be ready
when I would call for you? I am quite disappointed, and I would be angry
only you look perfectly lovely this evening--like a beautiful lily. The
dear bishop will be so charmed, for you are one of his favourites. Now
do make haste, and I entreat of you to be particular with your shades of
gray.”