HIS GUARDIAN ANGEL.
"I'd sell my immortal soul, twenty times over, for a few thousands of
the damnation stuff; but as that article isn't negotiable, why, better
make an end of the whole bother."
Thus Laurence to himself, though unconsciously aloud. His room was an
end one on the _stoep_, and the door was open. The time was the middle
of the morning, and he sat thinking.
His thoughts were black and bitter--as how indeed should they be
otherwise? He had come to this place to make one final effort to
retrieve his fortunes. That effort had failed. He had put what little
remained to him into various companies--awaiting the boom--and no boom
had ensued. On the contrary, things had never looked more dead than at
this moment, never since the Rand had been opened up. The bulk of the
scrip owned by him was now barely saleable at any price; for the residue
he might have obtained a quarter of the price he had paid for it. He was
ruined.
He was not alone in this--not by a very large number. But what sort of
consolation was that? He had received letters too by the last mail.
Money! money! That was their burden. He tossed them aside half read.
What mattered anything? The accursed luck which had followed him
throughout life had stuck to him most consistently--would do so until
the end. The end? Ha, had not "the end" come? What more was left? More
squalor, more deterioration--gradually dragging him down, down. Heaven
knew what he might come to, what final degradation might not be his. The
end? Yes, better let it be the end--now, here--while in the full
possession of his faculties, in the full possession of the dignity of
his self-respect. The dead blank hopelessness of life! Better end it,
now, here.
He rose and went to the open door. All was quiet. The occupants of the
other rooms were away, drowning their cares in liquor saloons, or
feverishly hanging around 'Change to grasp at any possible straw. He was
about to close the door. No, it had better remain as it was. The thing
would look more accidental that way.
He returned into the room, and unlocking his portmanteau, took out a
six-shooter. It was loaded in every chamber, for in those days such a
companion was not far from a necessity in the great restless gold-town.
He sat down at the table, and, placing the weapon in front of him,
passed his fingers up and down the blue shiny metal in a strange,
half-meditative way. Then, grasping the butt, he placed the muzzle
against his forehead.
The hard metal imprinted a cold ring just between the eyes. He did not
flinch at the grisly contact. His hand was as firm as a rock. He must
depress the muzzle just a trifle--it would make more certain. He began
to press the trigger, ever so faintly, then a little more firmly,
strangely wondering how much more imperceptible a degree of pressure
would be required to produce the roaring, shattering shock which should
whirl him into the dark night of Death.
Well, but--afterwards? Who knew? If it were as they taught, even then it
could be no augmentation of the hopelessness of this life. Perhaps they
might make a devil of him, he thought, with grim satisfaction, as a
black wave of hatred towards humanity at large surged through his brain.
In that eventuality his role of tormentor as well as tormented would be
a congenial one.
The dark night of death! What would it matter about money then, and all
the sordid and pitiful wretchednesses entailed by the want of it? A leap
in the dark! It held all the excitement of an unknown adventure to the
man who sat there, pressing the muzzle of the deadly weapon hard against
his forehead. The additional pressure of so much as a hair's weight upon
that trigger now!
Could it be that the man's guardian angel was with him still, that a
saving presence really hovered about him in the prosaic noonday? A
strange chord seemed to thrill and vibrate within his brain, bringing
before his vision the face of Lilith Ormskirk. There it was, as he had
beheld it but a few days since; but now the sweet eyes were troubled, as
though clouded with pain and bitter disappointment.
"You, whom I thought so strong, are weak after all! You, to whom I loved
to listen as the very ideal of a well-balanced mind and judgment, are
about to do what will stamp your memory forever as that of one who was
insane! Have I been no more to you than that--I who thought to have
brightened and strengthened your life all that within me lay? It cannot
be! You shall not do it."
He could not. The voice thrilled to his hearing, as plainly, as
articulately as it had ever done when she had stood before him. He laid
down the weapon, and passed his hand in a dazed sort of manner over his
brows. Laurence Stanninghame was saved.
He stared around, somewhat unsteadily, as though more than half
expecting to behold her there in the room. What did it all mean? At any
rate she had saved him. Was it for good or for ill? Then the full irony
of the position struck upon his satirical soul. His mind went back over
his acquaintance with Lilith. What if his disillusioning had been a
little less complete? What if he had fled the rich attractiveness of her
presence, had shunned her with heroic scrupulousness, acting from some
fiddle-faddle notion of so-called "honour"? Just this, he, Laurence
Stanninghame, would at that moment be lying a lifeless thing, with
brains scattered all over the room--a memory, a standing monument of
commonplace weakness. But she had saved him from this--had saved him as
surely and completely as though she had struck the weapon from his hand.
Was it for good or for ill?
He fell thinking again. Had he indeed played his last card, or did one
more solitary trump yet lurk up his sleeve unknown to himself? No, it
could not be; and his thoughts grew dark again. Yet he was safe
now--safe from himself. Lilith had done it--her influence, her love!
He thought long and thought hard, but still hopelessly. And again,
unconsciously, he broke out into soliloquy.
"Yes, I'd sell my soul to the devil himself!"
"Maybe the old man would be dead off the deal. Likely he reckons you a
dead cert. already, Stanninghame."
Laurence did not start at the voice, which was that of Hazon, whose
shadow darkened the door. The up-country man at that moment especially
noticed that he did not.
"Dare say you're right, Hazon," was the reply. "That's it, come in,"
which the other had already done. "Talking out loud, was I? It's a d----
bad habit, and grows on one."
"It does. Say, though, what game were you up to with that plaything?"
glancing meaningly at the six-shooter lying on the table.
"This? Oh, I thought likely it wanted cleaning."
"So?" and the corners of Hazon's saturnine mouth drooped in ever so
faint a grin as his keen eyes fixed themselves for a moment full upon
the other's face. Laurence had forgotten the tell-tale imprint left in
the centre of his forehead by the muzzle. "So? See here, Stanninghame,
don't be at the trouble to invent any more sick old lies, but put the
thing away. It might go off. Don't mind me; I've been through the same
stage myself."
"Have you? How did it feel, eh?" said Laurence, with a sort of weary
imperturbability, filling his pipe and pushing the pouch across the
table to his friend.
"Bad. Ah, that's right! Instead of fooling about 'cleaning' guns at
such times, fill your pipe. That's the right lay, depend upon it."
Laurence made no reply, but lighting up, puffed away in silence. His
thoughts were wandering from Hazon.
"Broke, eh?" queried the latter sententiously.
"Stony."
"So? Ah, I knew it'd come; I knew it'd come."
This remark, redolent as it was of that sort of cheap prophecy which
consists of being wise after the event, Laurence did not deem worthy of
answer.
"And I was waiting for it to come," pursued Hazon. "Say, now, why not
make a trip up country with me?"
"That sounds likely, doesn't it? Didn't I just tell you I was stony
broke?"
"You did. The very reason why I made my proposal."
"Don't see it. If I were to sell out every rag of my scrip now, I
couldn't raise enough to pay my shot towards the outfit. And I couldn't
even render service in kind, for I've had no experience of waggons and
all that sort of thing. So where does it come in?"
"It does come in. You can render service in kind--darned much so. I
don't want you to pay any shot towards the outfit. See here,
Stanninghame, if you go up country with me now, you'll come back a
fairly rich man, or----"
"Or what?"
"You'll never come back at all."
In spite of his normal imperturbability, Laurence was conscious of a
quickening of the pulses. The suggestion of adventure--of an adventure
on a magnificent scale, and with magnificent results if successful, as
conveyed in the other's reply, caused the blood to surge hotly through
his frame. He had been strangely drawn towards this dark, reticent,
solitary individual, beneath whose quiet demeanour lurked such a
suggestion of force and power, who shunned the friendship of all even as
all shunned his, who had been moderately intimate even with none but
himself. This wonderful land--the dim, mysterious recesses of its
interior--what possibilities did it not hold? And in groping into such
possibilities this, above all others, was the comrade he would have
chosen to have at his side. Not that he had forgotten the words of dark
warning spoken by Rainsford and others, but at such he laughed.
"Are you taking it on any?" queried Hazon, after a pause of silence on
the part of both.
"I am. I don't mind telling you, Hazon, that life, so far as I am
concerned, was no great thing before."
"I guessed as much," assented the other, with a nod of the head.
"Quite. Now, I'm broke, stony broke, and it's more than ever a case of
stealing away to hang one's self in a well. I tell you squarely, I'd
walk into the jaws of the devil himself to effect the capture of the
oof-bird."
"Yes? How are your nerves, Stanninghame?"
"Hard--hard as nails now. That's not to say they have been always."
"Quite so. Ever seen a man's head cut off?"
"Two."
"So? Where was that?" said Hazon, ever so faintly surprised at
receiving an affirmative reply.
"In Paris. A press friend of mine had to go and see two fellows
guillotined, and managed to work me in with him. We were as close to the
machine, too, as it was possible to get."
"Did it make you feel sick at all?"
"Not any. The other Johnny took it pretty badly, though. I had to fill
him up with cocktails before he could eat any breakfast."
"That's a very good test. I never expected you to say you had stood it.
Well, you may see a little more in that line before we come through.
Can't make omelettes without breaking eggs though, as the French say.
Well now, Stanninghame, I've had my eye on you ever since you came up
here. I'm pretty good at reading people, and I read you. 'That's the man
for me,' I said to myself. 'He's come to the end of his tether. He's
just at that stage of life when it's kill or cure, and he means kill or
cure.'"
"Well, we had talked enough together to let you into that much, eh,
Hazon?" said Laurence, with a laugh which was not altogether free from a
dash of scepticism.
"We have. Still, I'm not gassing when I tell you I knew all about it
before. How? you want to ask. Because I've been through it all myself. I
thought, 'That chap is throwing his last card; if he loses, he's my
man.' And you have lost."
"But what's the object of the trip, Hazon? Gold?"
"No."
"Stones?"
"Not stones."
"Ivory, then?"
"That's it; ivory," and a gleam of saturnine mirth shot across the
other's dark features.
"You have to go a good way up for that now, don't you, Hazon?"
"Yes, a good way up. And it's contraband."
"The devil it is!"
Hazon nodded. Then he went to the door and looked out.
"Leave it open. It's better so. We can hear any one coming," he said,
returning. "And now, Stanninghame, listen carefully, and we'll talk out
the scheme. If you're on, well and good; if you're dead off it, why, I
told you I had read you, and you're not the man to let drop by word or
hint to a living soul any of what has passed between us."
"Quite right, Hazon. You never formed a safer judgment in your life."
Then, for upwards of an hour, the pair talked together; and when the
luncheon bell rang, and Laurence Stanninghame took his seat at the table
along with the rest, to talk scrip in the scathingly despondent way in
which the darling topic was conversationally dealt with in these days,
he was conscious that he had turned the corner of a curious
psychological crisis in his life.
In the afternoon he took his way down to Booyseus. Would he find Lilith
in? It was almost too much good luck to hope to find her alone. As he
walked, he was filled with a strange elation. The dull pain of a very
near parting was largely counteracted by the manner of it. Such a
parting had been before his mind for long; but then he would have gone
forth broken down, ruined, more utterly without hope in life than ever.
Now it was different. He was going forth upon an adventure fraught with
all manner of stirring potentialities--one from which he would return
wealthy, or, as his friend and thenceforth comrade had said, one from
which he would not return at all.
Had his luck already begun to turn, he thought? As he mounted the
_stoep_ Lilith herself came forth to meet him. It struck him that the
omen was a good one.
"Why, you are becoming quite a stranger," she said. But the note of
gladness underlying the reproach did not escape him, nor a certain
lighting up of her face as they clasped hands, with the subtile
lingering pressure now never absent from that outwardly formal method of
greeting.
"Am I?" he answered, thinking how soon, how very soon, he would become
one in reality. "But you were going out?" For she had on her hat and
gloves, and carried a sunshade.
"I was. You are only just in time--only just. But I won't now that you
have come."
"On the contrary, I want you to. I want you to come out with me, and at
once, before an irruption of bores renders that manoeuvre
impracticable. Will you?"
"Of course I will. Which way shall we go? Up to the town?"
"Not much. Right in the opposite direction, and as far away from it as
possible. Are you alone?"
"Not quite alone. Aunt is having her afternoon sleep; but May and George
went to the town this morning. They intended to have lunch at the
Stevensons', and then go on to the cricket ground. There's a match or
something on to-day. George was cross because I wouldn't go too; but I
had a touch of headache, and went to sleep instead. And oh, Laurence, I
had such a horrible dream. It was about you."
"Oh, was it?" The words rapped themselves out quickly, nervously, more
so than she had ever heard him talk before. But the awful and ghastly
crisis of the morning was recalled by her words. "About me? Tell it to
me."
"I can't. It was all rather vague, and yet so real. I dreamed that you
were in the face of some strange, some horrible danger, against which I
was powerless to warn you. I struggled to, even prayed. Then I was able.
I warned you, and the danger seemed to pass. And oh, Laurence, I woke up
crying!"
"Your dream was a true one, my Lilith. No, I will not tell you how or in
what way. And will you always be empowered to warn me--to save me, my
sweet guardian angel? I shall need it often enough during the
next--er--in the time that is coming."
His face had taken on an unwonted expression, and his tones were
suspiciously husky. Lilith looked wonderingly at him, and her own
expression was grave and earnest. The sweet eyes became dewy with unshed
tears.
"You know I will, if I may," she answered, stealing a hand into his for
a sympathetic pressure, as they walked side by side.
They had been walking at a good pace over the open, treeless veldt, and
the roofs of Booyseus were now quite dwarfed behind them.
"But, tell me," she continued, "are things any better? Oh, it is
dreadful that you should have come all this way only to be more
completely ruined than before--dreadful! I am always thinking about it.
Yet I am of a hopeful disposition, as I told you. I never despair.
Things will take a turn. They must."
"They have taken a turn, Lilith, but not in the direction you mean. I am
going away."
She started. She knew that those words must one day be spoken. Now that
they had been, they hurt.
"Back to England?"
The words came out breathlessly, and with a sort of gasp.
"No, not there. I am going up country, into the interior."
"Oh!"
There was relief in the ejaculation. For the moment she lost sight of
all that was involved by such a destination. They would still be in the
same land. That was something--or seemed so.
Now all the latent instincts, never half drawn forth, surged like molten
volcano fires through Laurence Stanninghame's soul. The dead and stormy
nature, slain within him, revivified, burst forth into warm, pulsating,
struggling, rebellious life. This striving of heart against heart, this
desperate effort still to patch up the rents in the flimsy veil, moved
him infinitely. The veldt on the Witwatersrand is as open and devoid of
cover as a billiard-table. The two were visible for miles. But for this
he knew not what he might have done--rather he knew full well what he
certainly would have done.
They took refuge in practical topics; they talked of the up-country
trip.
"You are very friendly with that Mr. Hazon, are you not, Laurence?
Nobody else is, and there are strange stories, not told, but hinted
about him. He is a man I should be almost afraid of, and yet half
admire. He strikes me as one who would be a terrible and relentless
enemy, but as true as steel, true to self-sacrificing point, to a
friend."
"That's exactly my opinion. Now, Hazon and I suit each other down to the
ground. I have an especial faculty, remember, for getting on with
unpopular individuals."
Thus they talked, and at length time forced them to turn their steps
homeward. And as the sun rays began to slant golden upon the surrounding
veldt, it seemed to Laurence that even that _triste_ wilderness took on
a glow that was more than of earth. How that afternoon, that walk, would
dwell within his memory, stamped there indelibly! He thought how the day
had opened, of that gnawing mental struggle culminating in--what? But
for this girl at his side he would now be--what? She had saved him, she
alone--her confidence in him, her high opinion of him, and--her love.
Yes, her love. He looked upon her as she walked beside him, entrancing
beyond words in her rich, warm beauty, a perfect dream of grace and
symmetry. Even the hot sunlight seemed to linger, as with a kiss, upon
the dark, brilliant loveliness of her eyes, on the soft curve of her
lips.
"You are cruel, sorceress," he broke forth. "You have made yourself look
especially enchanting because soon I shall see you no more. You are
looking perfect."
She flashed a bright smile upon him, but it seemed to fade into a
shadow, as of pain.
"Am I? Well, Laurence, one knows instinctively when one is looking one's
best. It would be affectation to pretend otherwise. And I love to make
myself look bright and sweet and attractive for you. And now--oh, dear,
we are nearly home again. Come in with me now and stay the evening. We
shall not be alone together again, I fear--this evening, I mean. But you
will be going away so soon now, and I must see as much of you as I can."
He needed no persuasion. And as Lilith had said, they were not alone
together again. But even the jealous George, who came back from the town
more cantankerous than ever on learning of this addition, found balm in
Gilead. That brute Stanninghame was going away up-country soon, he put
it. Heaven send a convenient shot of malaria or a providential assegai
prod to keep him there forever!