"GOOD-BYE--MY IDEAL!"
Johannesburg once more. The great, restless gold-town had passed through
many changes, many booms and rumours of booms--the latter for the most
part--since that quiet _trek_ now four years ago. Many of those who then
were among its busiest inhabitants had departed, some to a land whence
there is no return, others to the land of their respective births. Many,
who then had been on the verge of millionaires, "buzzing" their rapidly
acquired gains with a lavish magnificence which they imagined to be
"princely"--were now uncertificated bankrupts, or had blown their brains
out, or had come within the meshes of the law and the walls of a convict
prison; while others, who at that time lived upon hope and the "whiff of
an oiled rag," now fared sumptuously every day, and would do so unto
their lives' end. But for those who had held on to the place through
good and evil report, since the time we last pioneered our reader
through its dust-swept streets and arid surroundings, something of a
surprise was in store. For the old order of things was reversed. Instead
of Hazon returning without his travelling companions, the latter had
returned without Hazon.
"Bless my soul, Stanninghame, is that you?" cried Rankin, running right
into Laurence one morning just outside the new Exchange. "And Holmes
too? Why, you're looking uncommonly well, both of you. What have you
done with the pirate, eh?"
"Oh, he's coming on!" replied Laurence, which in substance was correct,
though it might be weeks before he came on; for, as a matter of fact,
Hazon had remained behind at a certain point to collect and reduce to
cash such gains as were being custodied for him--and the joint
undertaking--by sundry of his blood-brethren the Arab chiefs.
"Coming on, is he? Well, well! I think we've been libelling the pirate
after all, eh Rainsford?" as that worthy just joined them. "Here's
Hazon's _trek_ come back without Hazon, instead of the other way about."
Laurence thought how nearly it had been a case of the other way about.
Had he not offered himself instead of Holmes, it would have been, for he
would have remained with the Ba-gcatya, and Hazon would have returned
alone. Of the fate of Holmes--well--he knew what that would have been.
Holmes, however, did not, for the simple reason that Laurence had
refrained from communicating a word relating to that horrible episode to
either of his associates--when, shortly after parting with Rahman ben
Zuhdi, and the death of Lindela, he had found the two, safe and well, at
the principal town of a prominent Arab chief. And Holmes, possibly
through ignorance of its nature or magnitude, never did fully appreciate
the sacrifice which the other had made for him.
"What do you think?" went on Rankin, when the requisite amount of
greeting and chaff had been exchanged, "this fellow Rainsford has gone
and got married; has started out in the nursery department for all he's
worth."
Laurence laughed.
"Why, Rainsford, you were as stony broke as the rest of us when I left.
Things looking up, eh?"
"Of course. I told you it was a case of 'down to-day, up
to-morrow'--told you at the time. And it's my belief you'd have done
better to have remained here." Then lowering his voice; "Where's the
pirate?"
"Coming on."
Rainsford whistled, and looked knowing.
"What do you say?" cut in Rankin, "a drop of gin and soda wouldn't hurt
us, eh?" Then while they moved round to the Exchange bar, he went on;
"I've got a thing that would suit you to a hair, Stanninghame. I'd take
it up myself if I could, but I'm only an agent in the matter."
"Shares, eh?"
"Yes--Skinner and Sacks."
"Dead off. See here, Rankin--you must off-load them on somebody else. If
I were next door to certain of making half a million out of it, even
then I wouldn't touch any sort of investment connected with this place.
No, not to save my immortal soul--if I've got one, which at times seems
doubtful." And there was something in Laurence's laugh--evoked by old
time recollections--which convinced the other that no business was to be
done in this quarter at any rate.
There was method in the way in which Laurence had sought to dawdle away
the morning. He had arrived late the night before, and as yet had made
no inquiries. How strange it all seemed! Surely it was but yesterday
that he was here last. Surely he had slept, and had dreamed the
portentous events which had intervened. They could not have been real.
But the stones--the great diamonds--they were real enough; the metal box
too--the "Sign of the Spider."
How was he thus transformed? Later in the day, as he stood on the
_stoep_ knocking at the door of Mrs. Falkner's house, he was conscious
that his heart hardly beat quicker, that his pulses were as firm and
even as ever. Four years of a hard, stern schooling had done it.
Yes, Mrs. Falkner was at home. He was ushered into the drawing room,
which was empty. There was the same ever-clinging scent of roses, the
same knick-knacks, the same lounge on which they had sat together that
night. Even the battery stamps across the kloof seemed to hammer out the
same refrain.
The door opened. Was it Lilith herself? No, only Lilith's aunt.
"Why, Mr. Stanninghame, I am glad to see you. But--how you have
changed!"
"Well, yes, Mrs. Falkner. Time has knocked me about some. I can't say
the same as regards yourself, though. You haven't changed an atom."
She laughed. "That can't be true. I'm sure I feel more and more of an
old woman every day. But sit down, do, and tell me about your
adventures. Have you had a successful trip?"
"Pretty well. It has proved a more paying concern, at any rate, than
the exhilarating occupation known as 'waiting for the boom.'"
"I am very glad to hear that. And your friends--have you all returned
safe and sound?"
Laurence replied that they had. But for all his outward equability, his
impatience was amounting to torment. Even while he talked his ears were
strained to catch the sound of a light step without. How would Lilith
look? he wondered. Would these four years have left their mark upon her?
"And how is your niece, Miss Ormskirk?" he went on.
"Lilith? Oh, but--by the way, she is not 'Miss Ormskirk' now. She is
married."
"Oh, is she? I hadn't heard. After all, one forgets how time slips by."
That was all. It was a shock--possibly a hard one; but of late Laurence
Stanninghame had been undergoing a steady training for meeting such.
Mrs. Falkner--who had made the communication not without some qualm, for
she had been put very much up to the former state of things, both by her
nephew, George, and certain "signs of the times," not altogether to be
dissimulated, however bravely Lilith had borne herself after that
parting now so far back--felt relieved and in a measure a trifle
disappointed, for, womanlike, she dearly loved romance. But the man
before her had not turned a hair, had not even changed colour at the
intelligence. It could not really matter, she decided--which was as well
for him, but for herself disappointing.
"Yes--she married her cousin George, my nephew. You remember him," she
went on. "I was against it for a long time; but, after all, I believe it
was the saving of him, poor fellow, he was so wildly in love with her.
He was simply going to the dogs. Yes, it was the saving of him."
"That's satisfactory, anyway," said Laurence, as though he were
discussing the fortunes of any two people whose names he had just heard
for the first time. But meanwhile his mind was inwardly avenging itself
upon its outward self-control. For vividly, and as though spoken into
his ears, there seemed to float fragments of those farewell words
uttered there in that room: "_You have drawn my very heart and soul into
yours.... Oh, it is too bitter! Laurence, my darling--my love, my life,
my ideal, good-bye--and good-bye!_"
Well, the foolish dream had been a pleasant one while it lasted. Nay,
more,--in all seriousness it had borne momentous fruit,--for no less
than three times had that episode--yes, now it seemed a mere
episode--intervened between him and death.
"Lilith will be so glad to see you when you are passing through; for of
course you will be returning home again. They have taken a bungalow at
Kalk Bay for the summer. I'll find you the address."
They talked on a little longer, and then Laurence took his departure.
As he gained the outer air once more there was that about the shimmer of
the sunlight, the hum of the battery stamp, the familiarity of the
surroundings, which reminded him of that former time when he had thus
stepped forth, having bidden a good-bye which was not a good-bye. Yet
the same pain did not grip around his heart now--not in its former
acuteness--rather was it now a sense of the falling away of all things.
By a freak of psychology his mind reverted to poor Lindela, dying in his
arms in the steamy gloom of the equatorial forest: dying slowly, by
inches, in pain; yet uttering no cry, no complaint, lest she should rob
him of a few minutes more or less of sleep. That was indeed love. Still,
even while making it, his sense of philosophy told him the comparison
was not a fair one.
Well, that was over--another chapter in his life to shut down. Now to
make the best of life. Now, with the means to taste its pleasures, with
hard, firm health to enjoy them; after all, what was a mere sentimental
grievance? Perhaps it counted for something, for all he told himself to
the contrary. Perhaps deep down there gnawed a restless craving, stifle
it as he would. Who can tell?
"The R. M. S. _Alnwick Castle_ leaves for England at 4 P. M."
Such was the notice which, posted up in shipping office, or in the short
paragraph column of the Cape Town newspapers, met the public eye.
It was the middle of the morning. Laurence Stanninghame, striving to
kill the few hours remaining to him on African soil, was strolling
listlessly along Adderley Street. A shop window, adorned with
photographic views of local scenery and types of natives,--mostly
store-boys rigged up with shield and assegai to look warlike for the
occasion,--attracted his attention, and for a while he stood, idly
gazing at these. His survey ended, he backed away from the window in a
perfectly irrational and British manner on a busy thoroughfare,
and--trod hard on somebody's toes. A little cry of mingled pain and
resentment, then he stood--profusely apologizing.
But with the first tones of his voice, she whom he had so awkwardly, if
unintentionally damaged, seemed to lose sight of her injuries. Her face
blanched, but not with physical pain, her lips parted in a sort of gasp,
and the sweet eyes, wide and dilated, sought his in wonder--almost in
fear.
"Laurence!"
The name was hardly audible, but he heard it. And if his steely
philosophy had stood him in good stead before, assuredly at this moment
his guard was down; as he recognized that he had last beheld this serene
vision of loveliness, arrayed as now in cool white, strained to him in
farewell embrace alone in the solemn night, those parted lips pressed to
his in heart-wrung pain, those sweet eyes, starry, humid with love,
gazing full into his own. And now they met again, four years later--by
chance--in a busy thoroughfare.
"Pray excuse my inexcusable awkwardness; I must have hurt you," he said,
as they clasped hands, and the tone was even almost formal, for he
remembered they were in public.
"You--you--have changed. I should hardly have known you but for your
voice," she said unsteadily--for he had turned to walk up the street
with her. "But--when did you return? I--had not heard."
"Had you not? I called on your aunt in Johannesburg on the way through.
She was telling me all about you."
Something of relief seemed to manifest itself in Lilith's tone as she
rejoined:
"But you--are you staying here?"
"Well, no. I have been trying to kill time until this afternoon. I am
leaving by the _Alnwick Castle_."
"Oh! By the _Alnwick Castle_?" she repeated again--and in the catch in
her voice, and the quickness of utterance, he knew she was talking at
random, for the sake of saying something, in fact.
"Do you care to hear a little of what has befallen me since I went?" he
said. "Then let us turn in here," as she made a mute but eager gesture
of assent.
They had gained the entrance to the oak avenue at the back of Government
House. Strolling up this, they turned into the beautiful Botanical
Gardens. Nobody was about, save a gardener or two busied with their
work.
"What I am going to tell you is so marvellous that you will probably
refuse to believe it," he said, after narrating the incident of the sign
upon the metal box which had arrested the uplifted weapons of the
unsparing Ba-gcatya, and, of course, editing out all that might have
revealed the real nature of the expedition. "I have never breathed one
word of it to any living being--not even to those who were with me. I
would rather you did not either, Lilith, because it is too strange for
anybody to believe, and--for other reasons."
She gave the required promise, and he drew forth the box. At sight of
this relic of the past, that sweet, entrancing, if profitless
past--Lilith could no longer quite keep herself in hand. The tears
welled forth, falling upon the metal box itself--hallowing, as it were,
the sweet charm of its saving power.
"Your love had power to save one life, you see," he went on in a cold,
even voice, intended to strengthen him against himself. "But look,
now--see those marks on the lid, just discernible? Now--listen."
And Lilith did listen; and at the description of the awful rock prison,
with its skeleton bones, the long hours of helpless suspense and
despair--and the final struggle in the ghastly moonlight; the struggle
for life with the appalling monster that tenanted it, her eyes dilated
with horror, and with pallid face and gasping lips she begged him not to
go on, so great a hold did the incident take upon her imagination, even
there, in the blaze of the broad midday sunlight.
"I have done now," he said. "Well, Lilith--you see what that token of
your love has rescued me from. It was given as an amulet or charm, and
right well has it fulfilled its purpose. But--to what end?"
"Did you--did you come back with what you went for," she broke forth at
last, as with an effort.
"Yes. Therein, too, you proved yourself a true prophet. And now tell me
something about yourself."
"Were you--angry with me when you heard what I had done, Laurence?" she
said, raising her eyes full to his.
"Angry? No. Why should I be? Your life is your own, though, as a rule,
sacrificing ones' self to save somebody else, as your aunt rather gave
me to understand was the case here, is lamentably apt to turn out a case
of throwing away one's life with both hands. It is too much like cutting
one's own throat to save somebody else from being hanged."
"And is that your way of wishing me well, Laurence?" she said
reproachfully.
"No. I wish you nothing but well. It would be futile to say 'happiness,'
I suppose."
"The happiness of doing one's duty is a hard kind of happiness, after
all," she said, with a sad little smile.
"Yes. An excellent copybook maxim, but for all purposes of real
life--bosh. Am I not in my own person a living instance to that effect?
As soon as I pitched 'duty' to the dogs, why then, and only then, did I
begin to travel in the contrary direction to those sagacious animals
myself--which, of course, is simply appalling morality, but--it's life.
Well, child, make the best of your life, and prove a shining exception
to the dismal rule."
"Do you remember our talk on board the dear old _Persian_? Yes, we had
so many, you were going to say; but I mean our first one, the first
serious one--that night, leaning over the side, I asked you: 'Shall I
make a success of life?' Do you remember your answer?"
"As well as though it were yesterday. I replied that the chances were
pretty even, inclining, if anything, to the negative. Well, and was I
right?"
Lilith turned away her head. He could see that the tears were not far
away. Her lips were quivering.
"I likewise told you you were groping after an ideal," he went on.
"And I found it. Perhaps I had already found it when I asked the
question. Oh, Laurence, life is all wrong, all horribly wrong and out of
joint," she burst forth, with a passionate catch in her voice, as she
turned and faced him once more.
"Yes, I know it is. I came to that conclusion a goodish while ago, and
have never seen any reason since to doubt its absolute accuracy."
"All out of joint!" she repeated hopelessly. "It is as if our lives had
been placed opposite each other on parallel lines, and then one of the
lines had been moved. Then our lives lay apart forever."
"That's about it."
She was not deceived. His tone was hard; to all appearances indifferent.
Yet not to her ear did it so ring. She knew the immensity of effort that
kept it--and what lay behind it--under control. Then she broke down
entirely.
"Laurence, my love--my doubly lost love!" she uttered through a choking
whirlwind of sobs. "Teach me some of your strength--some of your
hardness. Then, perhaps, I can bear things better."
"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, remember, and perhaps you
have shown me the weak link here--that of my 'hardness.' Child, I would
not teach you an iota of it, if I could. It is good for me, but no
woman was ever the better for it yet. But keep yourself in hand now. We
are in a public place, although a comparatively secluded one. For your
own sake, do not give way. And for the very reason that I feared to stir
up old memories, I had intended to go through without attempting to see
you once more. Tell me one thing--would it have been better had I done
so?"
"Better had you done so? No--no. A thousand times no--Laurence, my
darling. I shall treasure up this last hour we have spent
together--shall treasure it as the sweetest of memories as long as life
shall last."
"And I shall treasure up that reply. Listen! Twice has your love stood
between me and death, as I have told you. Yet of the third time I have
never told you. It was the day I decided to go up-country. I had done
with life. The pistol was pressed hard against my forehead. I was
gradually trying how much more pressure the trigger would bear. A hair's
breadth would have done it. Then it seemed that your voice was in my
ear. Your form stood before me. I tell you, Lilith, you saved me that
day as surely as though you had actually been within the room. I put the
pistol down."
"I did this?" wonderingly. "Why, that must have been the day I had that
awful dream."
"It was. Hazon came in just after, and we made our plans for the
expedition. I remember telling you of it that same afternoon."
"Why, then, if this is so, it must have been with some great purpose,"
she cried, brightening up, a strange, wistful smile illumining her
face. "Oh, how glad I am you have told me this, for now I can see
comfort--strength. In some mysterious way it seems as if our two lives
were intertwined, that it would ever be in my power in some dim way to
watch over yours. My darling, my darling--until this moment I had not
the strength to part with you--now I have. Let me do so before it leaves
me, for we have been here a very long time. I would have seen you off on
board, but that I dare not. I simply lack the strength of will to bear
that, Laurence, my dear one. We had better say good-bye here--not in the
crowded street. Then I will go--alone."
Both had risen, and were holding each other's hands, were gazing into
each other's eyes. Thus they stood for a moment. Nobody was in sight.
Lilith lifted her lips, and they moved in a barely audible murmur.
"Good-bye, my ideal!"
One long, close, farewell kiss, and she was gone. And the man, as he
flung himself back on the garden seat, with his eyes fixed dreamily on
the jutting end of the massive rock wall of Table Mountain towering on
high to the cloudless blue, realized at that moment no elation such as
one might feel who had found considerable wealth, and was returning full
of hard, firm health to enjoy the same. More than ever at that moment
did life seem to him all out of joint--more than ever, if possible; for
his had been one of those lives which, from the cradle to the grave,
never seems to be anything else.