CONCLUSION.
"Well, Fay, I think that's about enough for one lesson. Down you get."
"Just once more round the park, father," was the pleading rejoinder.
"I'm quite beginning to feel at home on Tricksie now."
Laurence gave way, and Tricksie darted off, perhaps a trifle too
vivaciously for a learner of the noble art of horsemanship. But the girl
kept her seat bravely, and the conceded scamper being brought to a
close, she came round to where Laurence awaited, and slid from her
saddle.
"Father, I won't have you call it 'lessons' any more," she cried. "I can
ride now; _can_ ride--do you hear!"
"Oh, can you?" laughed Laurence, thinking what a pretty picture she made
standing there with the full light of the setting sun tinting the golden
waves of her hair, playing upon the great dark eyes. Indeed, he owned
inwardly to a weakness, a soft place as strange as it was unwonted, for
this child of his. Yet she was something more than a child now, quite a
tall slip of a girl at the angular age; but there was nothing awkward or
angular even then about Fay Stanninghame.
"Well, hitch up the pony to the rail there," he went on. "Those two
scamps can take him in when they are tired of careering around and
whooping like Sioux on the war-path."
The two boys, also happy in the possession of a pony apiece, had lost no
time either in learning to ride it.
"There's no part of a fool about either of those chaps," said Laurence,
more to himself than to the girl, as he watched the two circling at full
gallop in and out among the trees, absolutely devoid of fear. "Let's
stroll a little, Fay; or would you rather go in?"
"Of course, I wouldn't," linking her arm in his. "Father, are we very
rich now?"
"Oh, pretty warm. Think it fun, eh, child?"
"Fun? Why it's heavenly. This lovely place! Oh, sometimes I dream that
this _is_ all a dream, and then--to wake up and find it real!"
"Well, dear, be as happy as you like now--all day and every day. You
have had enough of the other thing to last you a precious long time."
They strolled on through the sweet May evening--on beneath a great beech
hanger, where cushats cooed softly among the green mast, and the air was
musical with the sweet piping of thrushes and the caw of homing rooks.
Here and there a gap in the hawthorn hedge disclosed a glimpse of
red-tiled roof and farm stack--and nestling among the trees of the park
the chimneys of the Hall.
Laurence Stanninghame had found this place by a mere chance. He might
have purchased it for a third of its value, but he preferred not.
Possibly he distrusted the wandering blood within him, possibly he did
not lose sight of the fact that where he had found the great diamonds he
had certainly left behind many more, to be found or not at some future
time. So he rented the house and park, and extensive shooting and
fishing rights. No more pinching and scraping now. To the children this
change was, as Fay had said, "heavenly."
"How do people get rich in Africa, father?" said the latter, as they
turned homeward.
"In various ways. They find gold mines with no gold in them, and then
sell shares in them to a pack of idiots for a great deal of money. Or
they perhaps find a few diamonds themselves. Or they trade in all sorts
of things--ivory, and so forth."
He had stopped to light a pipe; Fay, intently watching his face through
the clouds of smoke he was puffing forth, detected a lurking quizzical
expression in his eyes, which roused her scepticism.
"I never quite know whether you are serious or not, father," she said.
"But you never tell us any stories about Africa."
"I've got out of practice for story-telling, little one."
"But Colonel Hewett tells us plenty,"--naming a neighbour,--"and yet he
hasn't been so much in Africa as you have."
"Ah, he'll never get out of practice in that line," returned Laurence,
with the same quizzical laugh.
"What a lot of adventures you must have had, father," went on Fay
wistfully; for this was a sore subject both with herself and her
brothers. They had expected tale upon tale of hair-raising peril--of
lions and crocodiles and snakes and fighting Zulus. But woeful
disappointment awaited. The last topic the returned wanderer seemed to
care to talk upon was that of his wanderings.
Before they regained the house they were joined by the two boys, happy
and healthy with their recent gallop, and full of the trout they were
going to catch on the morrow under the tuition of the keeper. Laurence,
dismissing them for a while, entered quietly by a back way. The post had
come in, and with it an African mail letter. This he carried into his
private sanctum. It was from Holmes.
"I hope the fellow isn't going to make trouble," he said to himself with
a slight clouding of the brow. "He's idiot enough to turn
pious--repentant, I suppose, they would call it--and give the whole
thing away. 'Nothing but a curse can come of it,--the curse of blood,'
the young fool said, or words to that effect. I wonder what sort of a
'curse' it is that puts one in possession of all this," looking out upon
the soft, peaceful English landscape, hayfield and wooded hill,
slumbering in the gathering dusk. "As if there could be a greater curse
anyhow than being condemned to go through life that most pitiable
object--a pauper with sixteen quarterings. No--no!"
He tore open the envelope, and in the fading light ran rapidly over its
contents. Hazon had returned to Johannesburg, and had wound up all their
affairs, and each of them was in possession of more than a small
fortune. There was nothing, however, of the remorseful or the morbid
about the writer now, and, turning over the page, Laurence broke into a
short half laugh, for there followed the announcement of Holmes'
engagement to Mabel Falkner of the blue eyes, and the usual transports
and rhapsodies attendant upon such a communication. Skipping the bulk of
this, Laurence returned the missive to his pocket with another sneering
laugh.
"We shall hear no more about a 'curse' on our good fortune now, friend
Holmes," he said to himself, "for you are entering upon an institution
calculated to knock out all such Quixotic niceties. Ha, ha! I shouldn't
be in the least surprised if in a little while you didn't hanker to
start up-country again upon another 'ivory' trade."
But Holmes' letter had, as it were, let in a waft of the dark cloud of
the Past upon the fair and smiling peacefulness of the Present, and he
fell to thinking on what strange experiences had been his--of the
consistent and unswerving irony of life as he had known it. Every
conventionality violated--every rule of morality, each set aside, had
brought him nothing but good--had brought nothing but good to him and
his. Had he grovelled on in humdrum poverty-stricken respectability,
what would have befallen him--and them? For him the stereotyped
"temporary insanity" verdict of a coroner's jury--for them, well, Heaven
only knew. Whereas now?
At this stage an impulse moved him, and opening a locked cabinet he took
forth something, and as he examined it the associations of the thing,
and the fast darkening room, brought back the vision of glooming rock
walls and a perfectly defenceless man weighed down with horror and
dread.
"May I come in, father? But you are in the dark."
It was Fay's voice. He half started, so rapt was he in his meditations.
"That's soon remedied," he said, striking a light. "Yes, come in, little
one. You were asking about this thing once. Look at it--queer sort of
weapon, isn't it?"
"It is, indeed," she answered. "Is it a Zulu war club? Why, the head is
made of brass, or is it gold? And look, there is some strange writing on
it."
"And the handle is a bone. Yes, the head is gold, and I put the thing
together when I had no other weapon--ay--and used it, too, in the
ghastliest kind of fight I ever was in. Come, now, we will put it away
again."
"Not yet, father. Show me some more queer things," she pleaded, nestling
to his side.
Then he got out other trophies and curios, and Fay spent a good hour of
unalloyed delight turning them wonderingly over, and drinking in the
incident, more or less stirring, which related to each.
But there was one thing he did not show her; one thing upon which no eye
save his own might ever again rest; one thing he treasured up in the
greatest security under lock and key, which was enshrined within his
mind as a hallowed "charm," and that was the metal box and its
contents--the "charm" which twice had stood between him and death--death
violent and horrible--The Sign of the Spider.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Sign of the Spider, by Bertram Mitford