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As I entered my hut the silver travelling-clock that had come with me to
Africa struck three clear notes from my dressing-table.
Of all the strange hours of my life it had knelled none more desperate
than this! I came in with the dew of the night on my face, dust and
dead leaves hanging to my white satin gown, some little stains of blood
upon the bodice, an ashen-blue flower in my hand. My nails were full of
earth. I had dug a grave with my hands for Snowie, and buried her among
the zinias.
The hut seemed strange to me. I found myself looking round it as if I
had never seen it before--or should never see it again. On the little
altar the _veilleuse_ flickered upwards to the silver crucifix; and from
above, the Mother of Consolation regarded me with grave, sad eyes that
made me afraid of my purpose. I turned away and opened a dispatch-box
on my dressing-table, and took from it the revolver I had brought to
Rhodesia.
One little bullet lay snug, waiting to be sent on its message.
I stared at it, pondering on the power of such a tiny thing to force
open the great sealed gates of Death! So small and insignificant, yet
with surer, swifter power than anything that lived or breathed to send
one swiftly beyond the stars, beyond the dawn, beyond the eternal hills!
I should know at last what fate was Anthony Kinsella's--but I dared not
look behind me to where the _veilleuse_ gleamed on the drooping head of
Christ who died for sinners.
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A shadow fell across my hands as they mused upon the polished barrels,
and in a moment the room seemed darker; the air grew bitter to breathe
when I knew that Maurice Stair was sharing it with me. I looked in the
mirror and saw his face.
"What do you want--murderer?"
"I want to die, Deirdre--I am not fit to live--kill me."
"There is rat poison in the house," I said, and saw my lips curving in
the bitter gleaming smile of a Medusa as he blenched and shook under my
words.
"My God!--you are cruel--crueller than death. It costs more to stand
here and face you than to go and die like a rat in a hole. You are
right, it _is_ the only death I am fit for--but speak to me first,
Deirdre--give me one kind word--just one word."
"_Words_!--what do they do for you? A hundredth part of the words I
have flung at you in my misery would have put manhood into a baboon, and
driven a _real_ man mad with shame--but _you_!"
"I know--I am a coward, a skunk, a liar, a drunkard. I will die
to-night if it will please you."
"_Nothing you can do will please me_."
"My God.--let me tell you how it happened,--she scratched my hand trying
to get away to you, and I went mad for a few moments--for a few moments
I saw red--before God I did not know what I was doing--afterwards I saw
her lying on the ground all battered to bits, and found the bloody
boot-jack in my hand--"
"_Ah_!"
"Oh, God! don't look at me like that--I never meant it, Deirdre--I swear
I never meant it--I put her outside--she must have crept away into the
bush to die."
"She lay there three days suffering the hells of hunger and thirst and
wounds--too broken to crawl home--while you whistled, and lied! Maurice
Stair you are an unspeakable brute. Be very sure you will answer to God
for this."
I threw down my revolver, and turned on him the implacable Medusa face
of the stone image in the mirror.
"If you are going to die to-night, then I will not. Your presence would
poison the very valley of death for me."
"You meant to die--_you_? Deirdre, have I brought you to such a pass?
Forgive me--forgive me." He grovelled on the floor clutching at my
skirt, kissing my feet, but I thrust him away.
"Forgive me--I did not mean to do it--some madness entered into me--I
loved the little thing, Deirdre--I loved it--I used to lie in the dark
with it against my face, and think it was a little child--_your child_."
Black vultures flew into the room then; the air was darkened with their
wings. They filled the hut rustling and beating. They flapped about
me, with cruel beaks plucking at my heart. Through the trailing of
their dusky wings I saw the tortured face of the man on the floor. And
across the room the great eyes of Mary accused not him, but me.
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"Get up, Maurice," I said to him at last. Now that I knew that the
sweet rest and peace of death were not for me a great weariness crept
over my spirit. "Get up! Do not kneel to me. You make me ashamed."
"Give me another chance, Deirdre. May God curse and afflict me root and
branch, if I do not change from what I am. Give me one more chance."