"Shall I go now?" I asked presently. She was staring at me with her
haunting eyes.
"You are well-masked--or can it be possible that you don't care!--I
misjudged you, then. I thought you honoured honour in men and women
above all things--Tony thought so too--he said, `she is like a clear
stream of water--and I am thirsty for clean water.' Tell me if those
were cruel words to hear from the lips of a man I had loved and given
all to, Deirdre Saurin."
Given all to! Was this what I had come to hear from the arid lips of
this cruel woman! Was my faith to be shattered at last! But my heart
rejected the thought even before she spoke again.
"Given all that was best in me. He was no saint, but because in long
past days on the Rand he was Claude Valetta's friend he would not steal
Claude Valetta's wife--charmed that wife never so sweetly, and loved he
never so deeply. For he did love me--as he never loved any of the
others--and in the end I should have won--I saw the day coming--felt it
close--when he would have taken me from my wretched life to some other
land. Then he went to Ireland--and came back a changed man."
This again found me gazing at her amazed and bewildered.
"Ah!" she mocked. "You think you were the first girl he loved--it is
not so. There was a girl in Ireland--a girl at a ball, who first
dragged him from me."
"_A girl at a ball_--"
"She took him back to old dreams, he said--her beauty and her purity--
but he was married, and she was not--so he came away quick--he went back
to his dreams on the veldt for many months after that. Poor Tony! how
he loved a woman he could put in a shrine!--his trouble was that they
wouldn't stay there when he was about. And the women out of shrines had
their call for him too.--After the girl in Ireland Rhodes got him for
awhile with his dreams of Empire--but he was coming straight, straight
back to me--I knew it from his letters, when he met you--where did he
meet you?--Oh! what brought _your_ feet straying out to Africa to
trample on my hopes!"
What could I say? I was bitterly sorry for her and glad for myself--and
broken-hearted for myself! What could I say? I was silent.
She was lying back against her pillows now, deadly pale, eyes closed. I
made a step to the door to call her nurse, but she detained me with a
few more words like shrivelled-up dry leaves blowing through the room.
"His wife died about six months before you came to Africa." Ah! That
was something. Spikenard in that to lay upon an old wound. A streak of
gold to embroider in a banner of belief I had always waved in the faces
of those who cried him down. I would not even thank her for confirming
my faith. She looked in my face and read my thought.
"Oh! yes--your faith was great enough to remove the mountains he had
piled up round himself. You weren't like Anna Cleeve who thought she
adored him, yet at the first word of doubt failed. When I told her of
his marriage I did not know of his wife's death--he never told me until
_you_ were in Fort George. He came straight to me when he returned from
the Transvaal, and told me, and thanked me then, for my `kindly offices'
with Anna. Cleeve--for saving him from a woman who had so tawdry a
belief in the inherent decency of a man--but, he told me too he would
have no more interference--he had found `a stream of crystal clear
water'--he needed no more `friendly offices' of me. I understood very
well what it meant when I saw him looking at you on the tennis-court.
Good-bye, Deirdre Saurin. You and I will not meet again."
I don't know how I came to be on my knees beside her bed. Perhaps my
thought was to cry some prayer for her and myself and for all women who
love; but though many words were in my heart none came to my lips. And
presently an unexpected thing happened. I felt a hand on my hair, and a
voice most subtly different to that I had been listening to, said
brokenly, and softly, some words that sounded almost like a blessing.
"Why should I mind that he loved you best? If I had ever had a son I
should have wished him to love a girl like you."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr Valetta was waiting for me in the verandah. He said:
"I think I must insist on seeing you home, Mrs Stair. There seems to
be some disturbance in the town."
"What is it?"
"I don't exactly know--but I have seen men running about in an excited
way, and there has been some cheering. I fancy I heard your husband's
name. Is he in the town to-night? At any rate all the ruction has
moved over in the direction of the camp. Look at the lights flashing in
your huts."
I looked and saw: and even as we stood there, another wild burst of
cheering came echoing across the open. Then I knew.
Gathering up with shaking hands the draperies of my cloak and gown I
prepared to speed my way home and to my share of the terror and beauty
of life waiting there. But before I went I said to the husband of Nonie
Valetta:
"Is it true that she is so near death?"
"The doctor holds out no hope. It is not so much the actual fever, as
the complications that have set in. And her heart is all to pieces."
"Well--let her depart in peace. Do not allow any news to reach her that
will disturb her at the last. I want you to promise me that."
"I promise, Mrs Stair, solemnly. Shall I come with you?"
"No, no. Go to her," I said, and sped away on swift feet.
Long before I reached the camp the cheering and all sounds of exultation
had ceased, and a strange stillness supervened. At the foot of the
kopje, trampling on the tennis-court and among the zinias, were many
men, their faces all turned towards the huts, talking among themselves
in low voices. As I passed by a muffled silent figure, I caught a word
or two.
"By God! That dirty brute of an _Umlimo_... Keeping a man like
Kinsella--all these months! Nearly two years!"
"The trouble with the natives won't be long coming now... Stair ought
to get the V.C. Who would have thought he had it in him!"
There was no mistake then--Maurice had been successful! But why were
these men standing out in the inhospitable night? What was going on in
the silent brilliantly lighted huts? What subtle note of regret had my
ears caught in the low spoken words?
Dimly, amidst the press of overpowering emotions that surged upon me, I
apprehended that something was wrong. Fear crept into me, numbing my
limits and detaining my feet: but still I stumbled on up the winding
path.
There were lights in all the huts, as though some one had been searching
in each. Doubtless Maurice had gone from one to the other looking for
me. What an ironical trick of Fate that, after awaiting him every
moment of every hour since he left, in the very moment of his triumph I
should be absent!
There were men in the dining-room hut; but some instinct guided my feet
to the drawing-room, through whose half-closed doors I heard the murmur
of voices--and again, in the _timbre_ of those voices, came the
suggestion of trouble--pain--loss. I knew full well now that something
was wrong. Something had gone hideously awry: and I feared, I feared!
At last I found courage to press open the door.
The heavy odour of a drug came out like a presence to meet me, and
mingling with it, piercing through it to my inmost senses, was some
other scent that brought terror and dismay. A dimness came over my
eyes, so that I could not distinguish any of the faces about me. I saw
only the prone figure lying against pillows on the couch that had been
dragged to the middle of the room.
It seemed to me there were many red flowers spread about that couch, and
on the doctor's hands, and on his shirt sleeves. It was the scent of
them that had met me at the door, piercing my senses--the strange
pungent scent of the red flowers of death. Around me in the quiet room
I heard some curt words gently spoken.
"It is Mrs Stair... just in time... clear the room... nothing more can
be done."
"Deirdre,"--a faint whisper dragged my leaden feet forward, and I went
blindly towards the couch, my arms outstretched. The crimson roses of
my cloak joined all the other crimson roses spread everywhere.
All was very still. No sound in the room but the echoes of softly
departing feet, and a laboured, puffing sound like the panting of some
far-off train climbing a steep hill. Yet there were no trains in
Matebeleland. After a little while I knew that the sound was there
beside me on the couch. When the mists cleared away from my eyes I
looked into the face of the dying man.
It was Maurice.
He was whispering wordlessly to me, and looking up into my eyes with his
that were full of chivalrous fires and some other wondrous light that
had never been in them before. From his lips came the little panting
laboured sound.
Supporting his head--pale and lean, but with the old intent strong
glance, the little blue stones in his ears, and a great white scar
gleaming along his forehead back into his hair--was Anthony Kinsella.
We took one glance of each other, while the world rocked beneath my
feet. Then I gathered my husband's head to my breast.
"Maurice! Maurice! This is all wrong--what has happened? You must not
die!"
A smile of triumph lit his face. He lay there like a dying Galahad with
the beauty of death on him: nobler and more gallant than he had ever
been before. Like the sad music of old remembered bells I heard
Anthony's voice telling the brief tale.
"He put up a splendid fight with those two Imbezu fellows. I could do
nothing to help until he had disabled them and unbound me. We got clear
away then, after hard riding. All yesterday we travelled hard, and were
certain no one was following. But this afternoon, about two hours' ride
from here, just as we were moving on after a short `off-saddle,' a
single shot was fired from behind a bush--it was meant for me of
course--a last effort to pot me before we got in. But--God! Stair,
what can I say?--You have given your life for mine! What can I say--or
do!"
Triumph flickered once more across the death-dewed face of Maurice
Stair; and his pale half-smiling lips whispered faintly back:
"That's all right old man... Kiss me goodbye, Deirdre _... I have told
him everything_."
With his hand in Anthony's and his head on my breast he died.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The End.