"Tell me again, Verna. Is there anything that could separate us,
anything I may have done--not against yourself, mind!--in this wide
world that could cause you to shrink from me? Is there? Think it out."
"Why, of course not," she answered, boldly serene now that the whole
question lay in her own hands, almost laughing, in fact, although
knowing full well she was on the verge of something tragic.
"But--what if I have killed a man?"
"What if you have killed twenty men? Some people have, and they brag
about it."
He looked hard at her.
"Yes; but what if I have--what the law calls--committed murder?"
Now she looked hard at him, then shook her head.
"You have not murdered _me_--nor father."
There spake the natural woman in Verna Halse. He had not injured her or
hers, consequently who ever this man had injured it was nothing to her.
In all probability he was justified in so doing, certainly was, in that
in her eyes he could do no wrong.
"But do you quite understand, Verna?" he said gently. "I am in danger
of--of the rope."
"Are you? Well, we shall make it our particular business to see that
that danger passes off. Why, there are places about here where you
could hide for years. Listen, Alaric"--suddenly waxing grave, while a
passion of tenderness came into her voice--"You saw fit, goodness knows
why, to love me. Do you think, then, I am going to shrink from you
because you are in a difficulty? I am only an ignorant sort of girl,
but I have seen something of one side of life, at any rate, and the
power does not exist--law or anything else--that shall take you from me.
But, tell me all about it."
"I will, Verna. You remember the first time we came to this spot, and I
was telling you things? I said there was one thing I hadn't told you,
but that I might some day. This was it."
She nodded.
"You remember, too, on that occasion, my saying what a splendid thing it
was to feel quite easy in one's mind, and that I had not always been
able to by any means?"
"Yes."
She was gravely attentive now. Her quick mind, not at ease itself, was
rapidly piecing two and two together; wherefore his next remark caused
her little if any surprise.
"That beastly thing young Stride sprung upon us the other day was an
exact likeness of the man, only, of course, it exaggerated his
villainous expression. He's dead now; but what I suffered at that
blackmailer's hands--good God! Verna; when I think of it I could wish
he might come to life so that I could kill him over again."
Then a new experience came to Verna. This man, so strongly
self-possessed, upon whom an easy dignity sat so well, had suddenly
become a different being. His eyes glowed and his features were set.
He seemed completely to have lost sight of her and her presence for the
time being; to be "reconstituting" the tragedy of horror and revenge.
This was a side of him--a tigerish side--of which she had never dreamed,
but she did not shrink from it, not one atom. She put forth a hand into
his, and the touch calmed him.
"Tell me, Alaric," she said. "Why did you kill him? I dare say he
deserved it. In fact, judging from that villainous-looking face he must
have."
He looked at her in some amazement. The cool, matter-of-fact tones in
which she discussed what to most women would have come as a very
disquieting shock, astonished him a good bit.
"Love," he said in an uneven voice, placing the cool, shapely hands
round his neck and against his face, "I place my life within those dear
hands. I will tell you the whole thing."
Then he told her how the dead man had systematically blackmailed him for
some years past, acting on the knowledge of a former business secret,
which if divulged would not merely have spelt ruin, but worse; a
transaction into which he had been led by others, in the days of his
comparative inexperience. Then he told her of the tragedy on the river
bank in the Makanya forest; told her minutely, omitting no detail. She
listened intently, breathlessly.
"When I rode away from that spot," he concluded, "it was with an
unspeakable load lifted from my mind, a load that had weighed upon it
for years. Everything was favourable. We had not been seen together,
for we entered the country by different ways, and our meeting was
entirely a chance one. He had found out somehow that I was bound for
Ezulwini, and had started to catch me there, in order to squeeze out
some more blackmail. He had missed his way and had wandered to where we
met. I had not missed mine, for I had mapped out a way through all that
wild part. When we did meet the first idea that flashed through my mind
was that now and here was a chance such as I should never get again.
Everything was favourable--the wild loneliness of the spot, seldom if
ever travelled, and the fact that we had not been seen together. I
would force him to sign a declaration which should put it out of his
power for ever to harm me. But he flatly refused, and the rest you
know. It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that the sequel was
the best that could have come about, for the declaration, being
unwitnessed, would probably have been worth nothing at all. I must have
been a bit off my head, or that would have occurred to me at the first.
Now, Verna, why don't you shrink from me?"
"Shrink from you?" and the clasp of her hand tightened on his. "It
would take a great deal more than this to make me even begin to think of
doing that. In fact, I can't see anything so very dreadful about it at
all. A blackmailer is the most pestilent vermin on earth, and
shooting's too good for him. Let me think. Ah! He tried to shoot you,
you said?"
"He certainly would have if I'd given him the slightest chance. Still,
there's no getting over the fact that I fully intended to shoot him in
the event of his persistently refusing to sign that paper."
"And he deserved it. Moreover, didn't you try to get him out of the
water?"
"Yes. I couldn't stand seeing even him finished off in such a beastly
manner. Afterwards it occurred to me that it was the best possible
thing that could have happened in that it would destroy all trace. You
understand?"
"Perfectly. But now, if the worst came to the worst, couldn't you make
it out a case of self-defence?"
"A very poor plea," he answered, with a gloomy shake of the head,
"especially under all the circumstances. Besides, no end of things
would be raked up and a motive established. But nothing more would have
been heard of the affair if that infernal Stride hadn't picked up the
saddle. Then, when he heard I had come through the Makanya just about
that time, he put two and two together. He more than hinted as much one
evening in the club before them all. Before them all, mind! Of course
I made some joke about it, but as sure as we are sitting here, Verna, I
could see that two, at any rate, more than half believed there might be
something in it. Those two were James and Hallam."
Verna's brows knitted. She did not like this feature in the case.
"Do you know why Stride is so vindictive in the matter, Verna?" he said,
after giving her an account of his interview with the young prospector
and the latter's threats.
"I think I can guess." Then she fell to thinking whether she could not
turn Stride's weakness for herself to account. But it was too late, she
recognised. He had set the ball rolling--at first all innocently, it
was true--but it had now rolled too far.
"Who did you first meet after you had left the river?" she asked.
"I struck a small kraal, and, incidentally, the people were none too
civil. But it was a long way from the spot where it happened."
Not even to her could he break his word of honour pledged to the
strange, sinister-looking fellow-countryman who had shown him
hospitality, to respect to the uttermost the latter's secrecy.