As she re-entered the sitting-room, she passed at once to the entrance
which led on to the verandah. All the windows were wide open, and
the shaded lamp upon the table, round which myriads of insects were
hovering, conveyed no heat to the apartment, yet it seemed to stifle
her for want of air. Her head and her heart seemed both on fire, and
she could recall nothing of the events of the evening, except that
Henri had denied he was untrue to her, and yet had left without giving
her any proof of his fidelity. The world seemed to be crumbling
beneath her feet as she stepped out of the open door, and lifted up
her face to the star-spangled sky. How calm and peaceful and steadfast
it appeared! What a contrast to her own turbulent spirit, and how she
longed to be at peace also--anywhere, anyhow, only _at peace_!
Liz was passing through the cruellest phase of a disappointment
in love--when merciless doubt obtrudes its fang into the heart,
and poisons the whole being. How we despise and hate ourselves for
doubting, and yet how painfully we go into the minutiæ of our loathsome
suspicion, and dissect every reason that forbids our casting it from us!
Liz felt as if she dared not think about it. As she recalled De
Courcelles’ words and manner that evening, she saw that he had not said
or done a single thing calculated to set her mind at rest. Except the
solemn oath which he had sworn, and somehow, though she loved him,
Liz derived no comfort from remembering that oath, and even wished he
had not taken it. That he might not have deserted her for the sake
of Maraquita Courtney was true--as he had attested it, she was bound
to believe it was true--but he was changed to herself. All the oaths
sworn under heaven could not disabuse her mind of _that_ idea; and if
he were false, what did it signify to her _who_ occupied the place
which she had lost? The brave woman who could set a broken limb, or
lance an abscess without wincing, shook like an aspen leaf at the
prospect of losing her handsome lover. Her love was so knit to him,
that she believed she could never disentangle it, but would have to
live on, with her live warm heart beating against his dead cold one,
until death came to release them. That is the worst of finding out the
unworthiness of those whom we have believed in,--we cannot all at once
tear our hearts away, and we despise ourselves for being so weak as to
let them bleed to death by inches, instead of freeing them with one
wrench.
Liz was ready to despise herself as she walked a little way from the
bungalow. It stood in the centre of the coffee plantation, but a
considerable space round it had been set with ornamental shrubs and
trees. The glossy-leaved creamy-white magnolias, with their golden
centres, shed their powerful perfume on the night air, and a clump of
orange trees in full blossom mingled their scent with the magnolia.
The night-blowing cistus and the trumpet flowers wound themselves up
the supports of the verandah; the insects, with many a birr-r and
whiz-z, disported themselves in the lemon grass, and from the covert
of the plantation came low-toned murmurs from the sleepy love-birds,
or the shrill cry of a green parrot startled from its bower of bud and
blossom. Liz lifted her heated face to heaven, as though she would draw
inspiration from its majestic calm.
Far off, from the cluster of negroes’ huts, which bordered the
property, she could distinguish the crooning wails of the mourners,
preparing their dead for burial at sunrise, and her heart bled for the
poor black mothers who had been compelled to part with the babies at
their breast. Death and sorrow seemed to surround her, and her spirits
sunk down to their lowest ebb. The stillness was intense. It was a
night when one seemed lifted up from this lower earth, and capable of
holding communion with the Unseen.
But absorbed as Liz Fellows was in her own trouble, she was startled
after a while by the sound of a low faint moan that came from the
surrounding thicket. Her first idea was that it proceeded from Rosa
mourning over her dead child--poor wild Rosa, who was so heedless as
to be almost half-witted, and who had fallen a ready prey to some
loafing young sailor who had spent a few days near the plantation.
Liz had felt deeply interested in this girl. She had been shocked and
horrified to find she had so little sense of decency or respect for her
womanhood as to succumb to the first temptation offered her, but she
had not slighted nor reproached the girl in consequence. Such things
were common enough amongst the coolies. It was not Liz’s vocation to
preach but to console. She had indeed, whilst watching over Rosa and
her baby, tried to convince her of the wrong she had committed, both
to her child and herself, but the yellow girl had paid no attention to
her words, until the fever had carried off little Carlo. Then they had
come back upon her mind with double force, and she had resented them
by insulting her benefactress. But Liz bore no malice. She was only
anxious to console, as far as possible, the poor bereaved young mother,
and when she heard the low moans, which she fancied came from Rosa,
she plunged into the thicket whence they proceeded. She had gone but a
few steps when she came upon a female figure leaning against the trunk
of a mango tree, as though she had no strength to proceed further. But
the first glance, even though given in the dusky light, showed Lizzie
that this was no coolie girl--yellow, or otherwise. The slight form
was enveloped in a black mantle, which covered it from head to foot,
but the hood had fallen back, and in the white face turned up to the
moonbeams, Liz recognised, to her dismay, the features of Maraquita
Courtney.
‘Quita!’ she exclaimed, rushing forward, ‘my dear Quita, are you ill?’
But Maraquita shrunk from the kindly hand which was laid upon her, as
if it had been the sting of a serpent.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she murmured; ‘I could not bear it. I don’t want
_you_. I want--your--your--father.’
‘My father is at home, dear. He will see you at once if you wish it.
But why didn’t you send for him, Maraquita, if you felt ill? Why did
you take the trouble to come down here to see him?’
But all the answer Maraquita made was to utter another heartrending
moan as she swayed backwards and forwards with pain.
‘Oh, my dearest girl, you are really ill! You must come to the bungalow
at once, and let father prescribe for you. Lean on me, Maraquita, and
let me support you. Only a few steps farther, and we shall be there.’
The girl she spoke to appeared to have no alternative but to accede
to her request. She leaned heavily on Liz’s arm, and with many a moan
dragged her feet across the threshold of the Doctor’s house, where she
sank exhausted into a chair.
She was a beautiful creature, who had just attained her eighteenth
year. Her fair-haired English father had imparted to her a skin of
dazzling whiteness, with a complexion like the heart of a maiden-blush
rose, and her Spanish mother had given her eyes dark as the sloe and
soft as velvet, with languishing lids and curled lashes, and hair of
rippling raven. Maraquita’s form was slight and supple; her hands and
feet small and childlike. She was in all points a great contrast to the
Doctor’s daughter, who regarded her as the loveliest girl she had ever
seen. As little children they had been the most intimate companions
and playmates, Lizzie acting as an elder sister and protector to the
little Maraquita, who toddled all over the plantation under her care.
When older, too, they had studied together, or rather Liz had tried
to impart the knowledge she derived from her father to Quita; but
the latter had never advanced beyond the rudiments of learning. Her
indolent, half-educated mother, who lounged about in a dressing-gown
all day, and had no thoughts beyond her Sunday attire and her evening
drive, considered schooling quite unnecessary for her beautiful little
daughter, and much preferred to see her running about the White House
in a lace frock and blue ribbons, with her rosy, dimpled feet bare, to
letting her be cooped up in the bungalow studying grammar and geography.
So Maraquita had grown up to womanhood about as ignorant as it is
possible for a young lady to be--about also as vain and foolish as
it is possible for a woman to be. Yet Liz loved her--spite of it
all--for the sake of those early memories. She had never relinquished
her intimacy with Quita, and when they met, they were as familiar as
of old, but they did not meet so often as before. The last two years,
during which Miss Courtney had been introduced to the society of San
Diego, had much separated them. The pleasant evenings which they had
been used to spend together, wandering through the coffee plantation,
were gone for ever. Quita was always engaged now, either to a dinner,
or a ball, or to go to the theatre with her friends, and Liz had ceased
to expect to see her. And since the fever had broken out amongst
the coolies, they had never met, and she was content, for Quita’s
sake, that it should be so. And now to find her wandering about the
plantation at night and evidently so ill, filled Liz’s breast with
alarm. There was but one solution of the riddle. Quita had contracted
the fever in its worst form, and had come to them in her delirium. Liz
had no time to do more than think the thought before she deposited
Quita in a chair and rushed to wake her father, and summon him to her
relief.
‘Father,’ she exclaimed hurriedly, as she roused Dr Fellows from his
sleep, ‘I am so sorry to disturb you, but it is absolutely necessary.
Quita is ill--very ill, and you must come to her at once. I met her
wandering about the grounds, evidently in great pain, and she says she
wants to see you. I am afraid she is delirious. Oh, father, do come to
her at once!’
‘Maraquita _here_?’ said the Doctor, as he rose from his bed and
prepared to quit the room. ‘And without her parents? Impossible.’
‘Oh, father, I am sure she is not in her right senses, though she is
too ill to speak much. What will Mr and Mrs Courtney say?’
‘We must send word to them at once,’ exclaimed the Doctor, as he
preceded his daughter to the sitting-room. But as soon as he had felt
Maraquita’s pulse, and listened to her moans, the expression of his
face changed from concern to the deepest dismay. ‘This is much worse
than I anticipated,’ he whispered to his daughter. ‘We must carry her
into my room at once.’
‘Dr Fellows,’ cried the sick girl, as she clutched at his coat sleeve,
‘save me, for God’s sake--save me! I came to you because you are so
good and kind, but--but--I think I am dying.’
‘No! No! my dear! it will be all right by-and-by,’ replied the Doctor
soothingly; ‘but you must be good now, and do as I tell you, and you
will soon be well. Liz and I are going to move you into my bedroom.’
‘And shall I be alone with you?’ she asked, with scared eyes.
‘Yes!--_quite_ alone! Now, Lizzie, take her feet, and I will carry her
head and shoulders, and we’ll have her on the bed in no time.’
‘Is it the fever?’ inquired Liz, with a white face, for she knew that
Maraquita’s constitution was very fragile.
‘Yes! yes! Now, go and leave us, and tell this to no one.’
‘But, father, let me undress her first.’
‘I wish you to go at once and leave us alone,’ repeated the Doctor
firmly.
Liz obeyed her father’s orders at once. She was too well used to work
under him as an assistant, to dream of disputing them. But she was very
much astonished to hear him send her away from her adopted sister’s
side.
‘Shall I run up to the White House and tell Mr and Mrs Courtney that
Quita is with us, father? They will be terribly alarmed if they find
out she has gone.’
‘Go nowhere, and speak to no one,’ replied Dr Fellows authoritatively.
‘They are _my orders_, remember. Remain in the sitting-room, and let no
one enter the house. When I require you, I will call you.’
Liz walked out of the bed-chamber at once, and left her father with
his patient. She could not understand him this evening, and his action
alarmed as much as it puzzled her. Maraquita must indeed be ill, to
make him look and speak with such complete dismay; he who was generally
so cool and self-collected, and who appeared to look on death, whenever
it occurred, as a kindly note of release from a very troublesome
world. She drew out her work (for whatever her mental perplexities,
Liz was never idle) and sat down to sew and practise patience. She
could not help hearing the low moans that forced their way through the
wooden partitions of the building, and her father’s soothing tones, but
she could gain no knowledge of what was passing there. At last, after
the space of an hour, although it had seemed much longer, Dr Fellows
entered the room in which she sat, and went to his cupboard in search
of some medicine. His daughter looked up anxiously as he appeared.
‘Only tell me if she is better,’ she urged.
‘She is not better yet,’ replied her father; ‘but there is every hope
she soon will be.’
‘Thank Heaven for it! But I cannot help thinking of her poor parents.
Perhaps they have discovered her absence, and are searching the island
for her. It is cruel to keep them in suspense.’
‘I think if you look at the matter from a sensible point of view, Liz,
you will see that _when_ they miss Maraquita, _my_ bungalow is the
first place they will visit. But I do not think they _will_ miss her,
at least not yet. Meanwhile I want to speak to you. Can you give me
your serious attention?’
‘Unless Quita should want you,’ replied Liz, looking anxiously towards
the bed-chamber.
‘She will not do so for some little time, for I have given her a
soothing draught, and she is asleep; and I can hear the least sound
from where I stand. But it is necessary you should listen to me.’
‘I am all attention, father.’
‘You have spent the best part of your life in San Diego, Liz; has it
ever struck you as strange that I, an Englishman, and a certificated
doctor, should have chosen to make my home in this island, and live, as
it were, on the bounty of Edward Courtney?’
‘I don’t know that I have thought it _strange_, father, for you might
have had a thousand reasons for settling in this beautiful island, but
I have felt for a long time past that you have some secret trouble, to
make you shun the curiosity or the publicity of the world.’
‘You are right, Liz, and you are old enough now to share that
sorrow--or rather that _shame_.’
‘Oh! no, no, father, don’t say _that_!’ cried Lizzie, as her work
dropped into her lap. ‘Whatever it may be, it is not _shame_.’
‘My dear, I cannot conceal the fact any longer, for without it you will
never understand what I am about to tell you. The very name we bear,
Liz, is not our own. I was compelled to adopt the name of Fellows, in
order to escape--’
‘WHAT? In Heaven’s name, WHAT?’ she exclaimed, clutching at his sleeve.
‘_Transportation_,’ replied Dr Fellows, in a low, strained voice.
She was about to scream out, to protest her horror of the disgrace
attached to them,--her indignation that he should have brought it on
their heads,--but a glance at her father’s pale, pained face restrained
her. In a moment she realised the awful effort it must have been for
him to confess his guilt before his daughter, and womanly compassion
took the place of her first resentment.
‘My poor father,’ she said, in a low voice, as she took his hands in
hers. ‘My _poor_ father! Surely it was not deserved. There _must_ have
been some mistake.’
‘No, Lizzie, there was no mistake. Since I have told you so far, you
must hear all! I am a forger.’
She hid her face in her hands then, for she did not care to look at
him, lest he should read the contempt she felt her features must
express.
‘This is the secret of the friendship between me and Mr Courtney. I
owe him more than my life. We were boys at school together, Liz, and
chums at college, and always the best of friends. But he was rich--the
only son of a wealthy planter--and I was very poor, and had nothing
to depend on but my wits. He led me into extravagances which I was
too ready to follow, but whilst he had the means to defray his debts,
I had no power to do the same by mine. At last, in an evil moment,
to prevent a bill coming upon my old father which would have broken
up his humble home and sent him to the workhouse, I forged my friend
Edward Courtney’s name, as a temporary relief. Before I could make up
the money, the paper fell into his hands, and he might have ruined
me; instead of which, Liz, he forgave me freely; but the rumour had
got abroad, and I was a ruined man. I was married, and set up in a
small practice. I lost it all, and it preyed so on your poor mother’s
mind that when you were born, she faded out of life, and left me
alone with my disgrace. I took you away from the place, and tried to
establish a practice in various parts of England without success--the
whispered scandal followed me everywhere--until Mr Courtney came into
his father’s property, and settled out in San Diego; then he wrote
and begged me for the sake of our old friendship, to let the past be
forgotten between us, and to come out here and hold an appointment on
Beauregard as medical overseer to the plantation. As soon as I could
bring down my pride to accept a benefit from the man I had so deeply
wronged, I brought you over here, and we have been dependants on Edward
Courtney’s bounty ever since. Lizzie, what do we owe the man who has
placed us under such an obligation?’
‘Our lives, should he require them,’ she answered, in a low voice.
She was deeply humiliated by what she had heard. She had never dreamt
that the evident trouble under which her father laboured could be
the brand of shame. Her proud independent spirit writhed under the
knowledge that she had been reared on the bread of charity,--that the
very name she passed by was not her own, and that the best spirit
which she and her father could claim from their benefactor, was one of
tolerance only. She could have cried out to Dr Fellows then and there,
to take her away from the surroundings which had become hateful to her,
because they must evermore be associated with the bitter story of his
guilt. But she only hung her head, and spoke in a whisper. Her father
had been sufficiently degraded by having to tell her such a story, and
he had been very good to her, and it was not his daughter’s part to add
to his suffering. But she threw the full depth of its meaning into the
answer she returned him, and he caught at it eagerly.
‘You are right, Liz. Our lives, and all we have, should be at his
disposal, in return for all his goodness to us. You cannot feel that
more deeply than I do. And now I want to hear you take a solemn oath to
that effect.’
‘_An oath!_’ cried Lizzie, startled at the idea.
‘Yes! an oath before Almighty God. Nothing short of it will satisfy me,
and set my mind at rest.’
‘Ah, father!’ she exclaimed, remembering another oath which she had
heard that evening, ‘will not my promise do as well? You know that I
would not dare to break it. It would be as sacred to me as any oath.’
‘No, Lizzie--no! I am not asking this for myself, but for another--for
my friend Edward Courtney, to whom we owe so much, and nothing short
of an oath will do. Say, “I swear before Almighty God, and by all my
hopes of salvation, that I will never repeat what I may see, or hear,
or suspect this night.”’
‘Oh, father! you frighten me! What terrible thing is going to happen?’
‘Are you a child, to be scared by a few words? If you will not swear
it, Lizzie, I will send you out of the bungalow this minute, to the
house of our next neighbours, and you shall not return until I fetch
you. But I want your assistance, and if you will do as I require you,
you can stay and help me.’
‘For Quita’s sake then, father, “I swear before Almighty God, and by
all my hopes of salvation, that I will never repeat what I may see, or
hear, or suspect this night.”’
‘That is my brave, good daughter,’ said the Doctor, as he laid his hand
for a moment on her head, before he gathered up the medicines he had
selected, and left the room.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]