"And the greatest of these is charity."
I met Cassidy under trying circumstances. But it worked out all right
eventually, principally because, so far as I knew him--and that got to
be pretty well--Cassidy was not amenable to circumstances. He beat them
mostly, and some of them were pretty tough.
The circumstances surrounding our meeting were trying, because Cassidy
was in bed after a hard day's work, and I aroused him at 3 a.m. by
firing a revolver at his bulldog. His huts were on the railway works,
and near the footpath to Jim Mackay's canteen--a pretty hot show. He
used to be roused this way every Saturday and Sunday, and occasionally
throughout the week, by visitors, black and white, warlike and friendly,
thieving and sociable, but all drunk. At first he got a bulldog, but
they got to know him, and after awhile the tip went round that half a
pound of beefsteak was a good buy and better than a blunderbuss for
Cassidy's Cutting. Then he loaded fifty Number 12's with coarse salt,
mixed with pebbles and things, and, as he said to me afterwards:
"Ye were the fourth that night, and ye 'noyed me wid yer swearin' an'
shootin' an' that, so I just passed the salt an' wint for the dust shot
as bein' more convincing like; but the divil an' all of it was, I
couldn't get the cartridge in by reason of drawin' the charge that was
there already. Too bad! too bad! for dust shot it was, av I'd only
known it, an' me thinkin' it was nothin' but salt. Lord, Lord! we're a
miscontented lot! Av it wasn't for bein' greedy, I'd 've had ye wid the
dust shot safe as death. Faith, ye niver know yer luck!"
That was all right from his point of view, but as I had left my horse
dying of Dikkop sickness just this side of Kilo 26, and had walked along
the formation carrying saddle and bridle up to Kilo 43--about ten
miles--without a drink, and twice lost my way between unconnected
sections, and twice walked over the ends of the formation where culverts
should have been and rolled down twenty feet of embankment, and once got
bogged in a bottoming pit in a vlei, and many times hacked my shins
against wheelbarrows and piles of picks stacked on the track, I think it
was reasonable to let out at a bulldog that came at me like a hurricane
out of the darkness and silence of 3 a.m. in the Bush veld, to say
nothing of a half-finished railway cutting. And I think it only human
to have cursed the owner with all my resources until the dog was called
off.
I don't exactly know how it came about, but I slept in Cassidy's hut
that night. He pushed me in before him, guiding me to the bed with a
hand on each elbow. He said that there were no matches in the show and
that it wasn't worth while looking for the candle, which, as he had no
means of lighting it, I suppose it wasn't.
He had a rare brogue and a governing nasal drone, but it was the brogue
that emboldened me to ask for whisky.
"Spirits!" said he; "not a drop, an' niver have; but jist sit ye where
ye are, an' I'll fetch ye out some beer--Bass's, no less, av ye'll thry
that; and can dhrink from the bottle."
He talked in jerks, and had a quaint knack of chucking remarks after an
apparently completed sentence, evidently intending them to catch up to
it and be tacked on. He dived under the bed somewhere, and a minute
later I heard the squeaking of a corkscrew and the popping of a cork.
"Here y' are," said he, as he pressed the bottle into my two hands;
"drink hearty, me lad, and praise yer God Dan O'Connell there's got too
fat an' lazy to pull ye down."
I dare say he knew what he was talking about, but, for my part, I
confess that nothing in the whole business had impressed me less than
any lack of earnestness on Dan O'Connell's part. I sat awhile munching
biscuits from a tin which he had placed on the table and gurgling down
beer from the bottle. Cassidy was asleep. Ten minutes passed, and I
was finishing the beer, when he sat up again, as I judged from the
sound, and remarked in a brisk, clear tone:
"Ye called me a mud-dollopin', dyke-diggin', Amsterdam'd Dutchman!
Ye'll take back the Dutchman, I believe?"
"I will indeed," I said, laughing.
"An' the mud?"
"Yes, and the mud."
He settled himself in the bunk again with a grunt, and murmured in a
tone of indignant contempt:
"Mud, sez he, mud! An' me shiftin' granite boulders for soft rock, an
shtruck solid formation a fut from surface, an' getting two an' six a
cubic fer the lot! Mud, faith! An' not enough water this three miles
to the Crocodile to make spit for an ant, barrin' what I can tap from
the Figaro Battery pipe! An' mud, sez he? Holy Fly! Mud, be Gawd!"
It died away in a sleepy grunt, and Cassidy was off I groped about for a
blanket, and, rolling back into the meal-sack stretcher, forgot all
about mad Irishmen, sick horses, and earnest bulldogs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
One always experiences a curious sensation on seeing by daylight that
which one has only known in the dark. Persons do for years a certain
journey or voyage, always starting and always arriving at regular hours.
One day something happens which necessitates their passing in daylight
the places formerly passed at night. On such occasions even the most
matter-of-fact must marvel at the wanton freaks of their imaginations.
The real thing seems so inconceivably wrong after what the mind had
pictured. The appearance of a room, the outside of a house, are
ludicrously, hopelessly at variance with what one had thought they
should be. But it is, if possible, worse when the subject is a person.
I have many times travelled with men at night by coach, on horseback, on
foot, and in a waggon; have chatted sociably and exchanged all manner of
friendly turns; have slept at the same wayside hotel, and in the morning
found myself unable, until he spoke, to pick out of any two the one with
whom I had spent hours the night before.
In the case of Cassidy the difference was appalling.
I awoke in such light as might leak through the grass hut; which was
very little for light, but not bad for leakage.
The boy brought breakfast--coffee, bread, and cold venison, which suited
me well--and I was turning my thoughts to the matter of a fresh horse
for my homeward journey when I met the eye of one of my friends of the
previous night. I say the eye, because I don't count the one in the
black patch--I couldn't see it. But when Dan O'Connell stood in the
doorway and allowed his one bloodshot, pink-rimmed eye to rest
thoughtfully on me, it fairly fixed me. I used to recall his bandy legs
and undershot jaw long afterwards whenever I thought of Cassidy's
Cutting; but it was only when the luminous eye uprose before me that I
used unconsciously to twitch about and draw my legs up as I did the
morning I saw him in the flesh. Cassidy _was_ a surprise; O'Connell
wasn't. His appearance was only the cold chill of proof following a
horrible conviction. I was much relieved when the boy cleared Dan out
of the doorway with a bare-toed kick in the ribs and a vigorous "Ow!
Foosack!" I admired the boy for that, and even envied him.
Through the open doorway I saw a white man walking briskly towards the
hut, and I stepped out to meet him. He was a man of medium height, but
there was something in his walk and figure that arrested attention. I
am sure I have never seen in any man such lithe, active movement and
perfect symmetry. A close-fitting vest and a pair of white flannel
trousers were what he wore. I remember that because, somehow, I always
recall that first view in the morning light--the springy walk, the bare
muscular arms, the curve of the chest, and the poise of the head, as the
face was turned from me.
If I could tell this story without saying another word about his
appearance, I would stop right here. I would greatly prefer to do so,
but it is not possible. I hope no one will feel exactly as I felt when
this man turned his face to me. It serves no good purpose to give
revolting details, so I will only say that the man was disfigured--most
horribly so.
I cannot recall what was said or done during the few minutes that passed
after we met, but there are some impressions seared into my brain as
with red-hot irons; there are some recollections which even now make me
feel faint and dazed, and some which make me burn with shame. I take
shame--bitter, burning shame--that I failed to grasp his outstretched
hand, and that I let him read in my face the horror that seized me. It
is one of those pitiful things that the longest lifetime is not long
enough to let a man forget. Surging across this comes the vivid
recollection of my conviction that this man was Cassidy. The first
instant my glance lighted on him I felt what I can only call a sort of
joyous conviction that it was he. I felt, in fact, that I recognised
him. No doubt it seems odd, illogical, contradictory, even impossible,
that, strong as the gratifying conviction was, the other, when he turned
his face to me, was a thousand times stronger. It ought to have been a
reversal of the first conviction. It wasn't. It was a smashing,
terrible corroboration. It crushed me with a sense of personal
affliction. It never germinated a doubt.
I had to stay all that day with him, and he was most gentle and
courteous; most kindly and considerate. Every act heaped coals of fire
on my ill-conditioned head. God knows I tried my best, but I could
hardly look in his face, and I could not control my physical repugnance.
I schooled myself to speak, and even to look, without betraying my
thoughts, but I could not eat with him. I could not sit opposite a face
half of which was gone; I could not use the plate, the cup, the fork,
that he had used. I pleaded illness, and feigned it; but by night-time
I was ill enough to need no feigning.
It was common enough for anyone benighted on those unhealthy flats to
pay the penalty with a dose of fever. I got fever, and no one seemed
surprised; but for the life of me I cannot even now help attaching some
significance to the fact that I was certainly not ill before the scene
at the hut door.
I lay in that grass hut for a week or more, some of the time delirious--
all the time panting with fever and shivering with ague; tossing
wakefully and gasping for air; complaining of everything, unutterably
miserable and despondent; hating the sight of food, shrinking from each
act of kindness, scowling at the sound of a voice. My case was not
worse than hundreds of others. I mention these things only to make
clear what I mean when I say that never at any moment during that time
did I awake or want anything but Cassidy was there to tend me. His was
the care, the watchfulness, the gentleness, of a good woman. Can one
say more?
It is odd that during that time I only saw him as he ought to have
been--as I am sure at one time he had been--a man whose countenance
matched his character. It is not so odd, perhaps, that as I recovered
and became rational the feeling of repulsion did not return, only an
infinite pity for a hardly-stricken fellow-creature whose physical
endowments and whose prospects must have been far above the average, and
whose affliction was proportionately great.
When I left there was one feeling that was stronger than simple
gratitude to him. It was thankfulness that something had occurred to
prevent me from leaving with only horror and repulsion. I was thankful
for the sickness that left me richer by a heart full of pity and--I
think the right word is--reverence!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
My lines were laid in other places than Cassidy's, and as months passed
by without my either seeing or hearing of him, I might, for aught I
know, have forgotten him, or come to recall him only as one recalls,
after lapse of years, some curious experience. This _might_ have
happened, I say; but it didn't. Mainly because of a conversation which
revived my keenest interest in him.
Several of us had walked out to dine and spend the evening at the
Chaunceys', and as we sat on the stoep smoking and chatting, the ladies
being with us, the conversation turned on a concert or entertainment of
some kind which was being got up for the relief of some distressed
families in the place. Somebody hazarded the opinion that the
"distressed family" business was being somewhat overdone, and that there
was no evidence of it as far as he had been able to see.
The remark was unfortunate, for Mrs Chauncey happened to be one of the
promoters of the charity. She--good little woman!--had her young
matron's soul full of sympathy still; her store had not been plundered
by impostors, and she vehemently defended her project. She did more;
she carried war and rout into the enemy's quarters and surmised that
men, young men, whose lives are divided between money-making and
pleasure-seeking, are not the best judges of what those who keep their
troubles to themselves may have to endure.
"When you," (the young men) "are settling differences on shares or
cards, or having your occasional splits--or whatever else you do all day
long--there are women and children aching for one good meal, shrinking
back for want of ordinary clothing, languishing and dropping for want of
a man's arm to fend and support them."
Jack Chauncey--good chap!--must have thought this from his wife just a
wee bit spirited, for, after a pause, he gently drew a herring across
the trail.
"By--the--by, dear," he asked thoughtfully, "what became of that
good-looking young widow who came here with her kid and looked so jolly
miserable? By Gad! her face has been haunting me ever since. Did you
manage anything for her?"
"You mean Mrs Mallandane. She would not take anything. She wanted to
work; to earn, not to beg, she said. I have managed to get her some
needlework, but, oh, so little, poor thing! And the pay is too
dreadful! Now, there is a case in point. A widow, absolutely
penniless, with a child of four or five to support. A woman of
education and breeding, without a friend in the world, apparently;
shunned by everyone--by some on account of her poverty, by others for
her good looks and reserve. She certainly is difficult to approach. I
have been to her now four times, and it was only on the last occasion
that she thawed enough to tell me anything of herself. She has lived
for years on what she believed to be the proceeds of her husband's
estate. Until within the last few months she was under this impression.
But something happened which made her suspicious, and she found out
that the income left by her husband was pure fiction, and that what she
had been living on was an allowance from the only real friend she or her
husband ever had--the man who was her husband's partner when he died."
"Does she say that her husband is dead?" asked Carter, the unfortunate
"young man" who had before provoked Mrs Chauncey's ire.
Carter was very young, and I could see that he had no _arriere pensee_
in asking that question. He did not mean to be impertinent. But I
could also see that Mrs Chauncey did not take that view. Her little
iced reply finished poor Carter.
"I said that she was a widow, Mr Carter, and I do not care to make
another's misfortunes the subject of an argument."
I felt sorry for Carter, he was such an ass; and I believe the other two
fellows pitied him also; so we did not refer to the subject as we walked
home together in the moonlight. That, however, did not suit Carter.
After awhile he gave an uncomfortable laugh, and said:
"The little woman was rather down on me to-night about the charity show.
I rather put my foot in it, I think."
"Think!" said Lawton (one of our party), with heavy contempt. "Think!
I wonder you claim to be able to think! I never in my life saw anyone
make such a blighted idiot of himself!"
"Dash it all, man! give me a chance. The `distressed family' allusion
was unlucky, I admit; but I hadn't the faintest intention of returning
to the subject when I asked about the husband. Man alive! Why, the
nerve of the Mallandane woman fairly knocked the breath out of me. The
cheek of her cramming poor Mrs Chauncey with yarns of her husband's
death and estate, when everyone knows that he isn't dead at all; that
she gave him the slip, and went off with the `only friend'--his partner!
A man with half his face eaten away by disease. I've seen the fellow
at the house myself Old Larkin, of the Bank, knew them in Kimberley.
They were claim-holders and contractors there and used to bank with him.
The firm was Cassidy and Mallandane. I only wonder she continues to
call herself Mallandane. It's a formality she might as well have
dispensed with."
I knew Carter to be a gossipy young devil, so I held my peace about
Cassidy; but it was with an effort. My impulse was to give Carter the
lie direct, but I remembered Mrs Chauncey's last words and refrained.
We walked along in silence, and after a while Carter stopped in the road
opposite a small house, the door of which stood partly open. There were
voices outside, and as Carter said, "Hush! listen!" we stopped
instinctively, and my heart sank as I recognised a voice that said
"Good-night." I moved on hastily, disgusted at being trapped into
eavesdropping, and Carter laughed.
"That's the only friend! There's no mistaking _that_. But I wonder why
he's coming away," said the youth, with unmistakable and insinuating
emphasis on the last words.
No one answered his self-satisfied cackling. I was listening to the
brisk walk behind us. I would have known it in a million. Closer and
closer it came; his sleeve brushed mine as he stepped lightly past. I
let him go, and I don't know why. But I felt like a whipped cur for
doing it.
It seemed to me that I must heretofore have been living in extraordinary
ignorance of what was going on round about me in a small place; for, as
though it only needed the start, from the first mention of this story by
Carter I was always hearing it, or a similar one, or one half
corroborating it.
I made an effort to see Cassidy the first thing next morning, but he had
left his hotel--presumably having gone out to the works again. After a
day or two had passed I felt glad that I had not met him--glad because I
felt sure that he would have noticed that there was something wrong. He
would instinctively have detected the cordiality and confidence which
were controlled by an effort of will, and were not--as they should have
been, and as they did again become--spontaneous and real.
This worried me exceedingly and I turned it over and over again to get
at the truth, and eventually it came to this. I knew that they were
right as to the cause of his disfigurement; it was impossible to look at
him and not accept it. I had no high moral prejudices about this. I
only pitied him the more. But I did not believe a word of the rest of
the story. All presumption and a heap of circumstances were against me,
but I am glad to say that, but for the first hesitation, I never, never
doubted him.
It may have been a week or two after this that I met Mrs Chauncey in
camp one afternoon. I had not seen her since the evening already
referred to, and, as it was an off afternoon, I asked leave to join her
in her walk home.
We wandered on slowly through the outskirts of the camp, along the most
direct road to the Chaunceys' house. Since I had heard and seen what I
had that evening my interest in Mrs Mallandane had increased. I never
passed the house without looking. I claim--even to myself--that it was
real interest and not curiosity that prompted me. Once or twice I had
seen the figure in simple black, but not sufficiently clearly to have
known the face again. Her figure I don't think I should have mistaken;
it was rather striking. There was also a little girl who used to sit
under a mimosa-tree studying her lessons or doing sums on a slate. She
and I became friends. I was drawn to the youngster because, when
passing one day, I took the unwarrantable liberty of looking over her
shoulder to see what the sum was. After a decent pause, during which I
might have taken the hint, she turned up at me a very serious little
face lighted by large blue eyes, and lisped slowly:
"I don't like people to thtand behind, becauth I fordet my thums."
I laughingly patted the little head, and went on; but after this I
always stopped to chaff my little friend about her "thums," and I
generally brought an offering of some sort--sweets, cake, or fruit.
Thinking of the house and its people as we walked along, I was not sorry
when Mrs Chauncey asked if I would mind waiting for a minute or two
while she went in to see her _protegee_ about some work secured or
promised.
I sat down in my little friend's seat and waited. I had not long to
wait. Presently I heard behind me the awkward tiptoeing of a child
trying to walk very silently. Like Brer Rabbit, I lay low. Then came
the climbing on to the seat, and finally a pair of childish hands were
clapped over my eyes to an accompaniment of half-suppressed squeals of
laughter, broken by panting efforts to maintain the blind-folding hug.
I was busily keeping up the illusion by extravagantly bad guesses as to
who it was, when I heard the rustle of a dress, and someone ran out,
calling:
"Molly, Molly! how can you be so naughty, darling? Oh, do excuse her!"
I was released. My hat was in the dust and my hair rumpled. I saw Mrs
Chauncey in the background in peals of laughter; Mrs Mallandane before
me, looking most concerned, and holding the bewildered Molly by the
hand; and Molly vindicating herself by saying with much dignity:
"Mother, it's only the gentimell that dooth my thumth an' kitheth me."
As a defence this was, of course, adequate--not to say excellent; but it
was rather embarrassing for me. It was so effective, however, that I
was spared the necessity of saying anything myself Mrs Chauncey
introduced me to her _protegee_ as she would have done to any of her
lady friends, and the _protegee_ bowed, as it seemed to me, with a great
deal more grace and quite as much easy composure as the best of them.
That was my first thought. The next was to take myself indignantly to
task for instituting a comparison.
As we resumed our walk I was wondering what could be the tie between
this woman and Cassidy. There was no mistaking her class. She was a
gentlewoman to her finger-tips. I was roused from my rather
discourteous distraction by Mrs Chauncey saying:
"You are not so surprised now, perhaps, that I lost my temper with Mr
Carter the other evening. I am sorry I spoke as I did, but I felt it
deeply--indeed I did."
"I can well understand it," I answered. "How do you like her?" she
asked abruptly. "What! after on interview of two minutes--and such an
interview?"
Mrs Chauncey smiled, and said: "Well, I only wanted to know your
impression. And, after all, you have had time to form one, for you have
been thinking of her all the time since we left the house!"
"Perfectly true--I have. And to speak candidly, I think I have seldom--
indeed, I think, never--seen a face that interested me more; partly, I
suppose, because of what you told us. And I don't think I have ever
seen anyone look so infinitely sad. It is a pitiful, haunting face."
"I feel that also. I have never been able to forget her look since she
came to me a month ago for work--needlework or any work. I will never
believe that she could be an impostor. No, no! Truth is stamped in her
face--truth and sorrow."
I had always liked Mrs Chauncey. Just at that moment I was mentally
patting her on the back and calling her "a little brick," for it was
clear that she too had heard something--heard it and passed it by. Good
woman!
I was a bachelor, and not too old to feel; and, over and above my
interest in Cassidy, this whole affair fascinated me considerably. From
this time forward I never passed the house without greeting mother or
child with sincere warmth, or missing them with an equally genuine sense
of disappointment. I never met Mrs Chauncey without inquiring with
interest the latest news of her friend and all details of her affairs.
There was never much to tell. Now it was some commission for a dress,
now the mending of children's clothes--another time the trimming of hats
or working a tennis-net, that helped to make ends meet without hurt to
her pride. These were petty details which might pass in woman's chat,
but should fail to interest a man, you would think. Nevertheless, they
interested me. They did more. In the evenings, as I sat alone and
smoked out in the starlight they helped me to conjure up pictures and to
see her as she would at those very moments, perhaps, be employed.
I would have done anything to help her had I been able, but there was
nothing I could do. I had even learned that I might not as much as
evince sympathy or interest, except at the cost of insult to her. On
one occasion when I happened to meet and walk with her in one of the
main streets of the camp, I was frigidly cut by two ladies with whom I
thought I was on quite friendly terms. This disturbed me considerably,
not on my own account, but because of the insult and injustice to one
who was powerless to resent it. It hurt me even more to realise that it
would be wise to bow before this and prove greater friendship by showing
less.
I was still smarting under this next morning when I was accosted by one
of those puddle-headed, blundering idiots of whom there seem to be one
or more in any community, no matter how small.
"I say, old chap," he began, "look here, ye know! You're not playin'
the game, ye know, old chap! The missis has been complainin' to me
about you. You know what I mean."
I detest this "dontcherknow," "g"-dropping kind of animal at any time--
the thing that fondles you with "old chap" and "dear boy" and refers to
its wife as "the missis." But apart from this, I was to-day especially
unprepared to submit to further outrage. I was still smarting, as I
said before.
"My good man," I said, "may I ask you to be more explicit?"
"Why, dash it all, old chap! you know what I mean--er. It's no affair
of mine, of course, if you only keep it quiet, don't you know. But you
don't give one a chance, don't you know; and, after all, you can't run
with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and all that sort of thing,
don't you know!"
I was trying to keep my temper, but with no very marked success, I fear;
but I said as calmly as I could:
"That's a very original remark, my friend, and no doubt equally
intelligent, but I shall be pleased if you will be good enough to apply
it so that _I_ can understand it."
"Look here, old chap. If you will go and walk in broad daylight with a
woman like that, you know--well, you can't expect--"
"Stop now!" I said. I had hardly breath enough to speak, and there
must have been something unpleasant in my face, for he stepped back a
pace or two. "So far you are only a babbling fool. If you go on now
you will be an infernal cad and must take the consequences. You
understand what I mean. And further, as you have been good enough to
hint that I should choose my line, I may tell you--to adopt your happy
illustration--that I elect to `run with the hare.' You see! Perhaps
_you_ understand what I mean!"
Now, before two minutes had passed, I did not need anyone to tell me
that I had done the worst and most unwise thing possible under the
circumstances. Of course I knew well enough that when a woman is
concerned two things are very essential--that the man shall keep his
temper, and that he shall be judicious, even circumspect, in defending.
Having failed in the former, I necessarily failed in the latter, and I
felt sick with impotent rage when I realised it.
I knew how the story would circulate, and I knew exactly how it would be
touched up, amplified, and illustrated with graphic gesticulations when
it reached the club and Exchange and passed through the hands of certain
expert _raconteurs_; and to avoid the lamentable result of chaff and
further provocation I got away for a couple of days to give myself--and
the story--a chance.
Several weeks passed after this incident, during which I saw but little
of Mrs Mallandane, and heard not much more. Occasionally I heard of
Cassidy from men coming up the line. In spite of his grumbling and
seeming discontent with the nature of the country in his section nobody
believed that Cassidy's Cutting was such a very unprofitable job as he
gave out. Cassidy was too old a hand to be drawn into any admission
which could be used against him for the purpose of cutting down prices
in future contracts. Those best able to judge put him down to make
close on 10,000 pounds out of that job. His section lay some sixty
miles from Barberton, and, as far as I knew, he had been into camp only
twice during the five months that had passed since I had first met him.
One occasion was the night on which I had seen him; the other when he
called at the office to see me. I was out of camp that day and missed
him. I do not know how often he may have been in besides those two
occasions.
Mrs Chauncey and I were real friends. Jack was one of my oldest chums,
and when he married I found--what does not necessarily follow--that his
wife was just one to strengthen the friendship and not weaken it. With
regard to her, I felt that if an occasion should arise requiring that I
should make a confidante of any woman Mrs Chauncey would be the one. I
don't know that I ever realised this sufficiently forcibly to express it
even to myself until after a remark which she made to me about this
time.
She had been telling me some little thing about Mrs Mallandane, and I
may have shown by my attention--perhaps even by questions--more interest
than she expected or thought called for. There was quite a long
silence, during which I felt that she was thinking of something
concerning me. When she turned towards me her expression was one of
almost tender consideration, and in the gentlest possible voice she
said:
"It is good to be kind and generous, and to help those who need it; but
when a man means to help a woman it should be clear to him from day to
day, from hour to hour, not only how far _he_ means to go, but also what
she will understand."
The words went home to me, and I suppose I showed it, for she added a
little nervously:
"You must not mind that from me. `Faithful are the wounds of a
friend.'"
"Taken as meant, Mrs Chauncey; and--thank you!" I meant it.
I made a careful and impartial examination of conscience that night when
I had the silence and darkness to favour me; and although I honestly
acquitted myself, there was just the faintest suggestion of the finding
of the Irish jury: "We find the prisoner not guilty; but he's not to do
it again." I told myself again that Mrs Chauncey was a "little brick"
for her timely and well-judged warning; for I thought it was quite
possible that I might have drifted on and "gone soft" before knowing it.
I am satisfied that there was no cause for alarm, as the resolution to
"ease up" cost me neither effort nor pang.
I abided fairly by the spirit of my unspoken pact. I changed my daily
route to one that did not lead past Mrs Mallandane's house. I ceased
to talk of her; I even tried not to think of her. But just there I
failed--for the effort to forget makes occasion to remember.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was the tail end of summer. The heat was terrible, and in all the
outlying parts--even in the lower portions of the camp--malarial fever
was prevalent. The accounts from the line were particularly bad, nearly
all the engineers, contractors, and sub-contractors being more or less
laid up by attacks of the summer fiend. One of the engineers suffering
from a mild attack was brought in, and, being at the hotel when he
arrived, I heard accounts of what was going on. He told me that Cassidy
had had attack after attack, but that he would neither lie up there nor
come into hospital. It was work, work, work, with him, all day and
night, except when he was looking after others--and, in truth, his camp
was a kind of improvised hospital Cassidy, he said, with his superb
strength and physique would not give in. He would not believe that
fever could beat a man who was game, and he fought it.
There was no suitable conveyance to be got before night, so I arranged
to start after dark, for I was determined to do something to repay the
kindness I had had at Cassidy's hands. I took a serious view of his
case, for I knew how these things usually ended, and he was not going to
die without an effort on my part to save him.
I walked home that night worrying considerably about poor Cassidy and
wishing to Heaven that the trap was ready to start at once. I had
reached the crossing-stones in the little stream, where my old and new
paths forked out. It was dusk, and I was not thinking of whom I might
meet, so I started at the sight of Mrs Mallandane a few paces off
coming towards me, evidently to meet me.
"Oh, I have waited for hours to meet you!" she began without any
ceremony, and talking nervously and fast. "I thought you had gone
already, and yet I feared to annoy you by going to your office. Look
here--look! Tell me, is this true? Oh, you can't see--I forgot; it's
too dark. Here in the paper they say you are going down the line
to-night to bring in someone who is ill, very ill with fever. Tell me,
is it true?"
"It is quite true. I leave to-night after nine," I answered--I hope
without betraying surprise; but I could not help noticing that she did
not mention Cassidy's name, and that she was painfully excited. I drew
no conclusions--I had no time for thought; but these things left a
weight on my heart for all that, and it was not lightened as she went
on.
"I have come to ask you something. You will please bring him to my
house. I must nurse him! He must come to me!" This was not a favour
sought, it was rather a direction given, and there was only the
slightest note of interrogation in her voice. I could only repeat in
surprise: "To your house, Mrs Mallandane?"
"Yes--yes! You will do that for me, please?"
"I am sorry, but I do not think that would be right. His place is
clearly in the hospital, and I have no right to take him elsewhere."
"You refuse? Oh, you cannot refuse me!"
"Mrs Mallandane, you put it very harshly. You must see that I cannot
do otherwise. I know of nothing to justify me in not sending him to
hospital. It will be better for him, and far better for you."
She drew a sharp breath and faced me drawn up to her full height,
looking me straight in the eyes.
"I half expected this," she said. "I only asked you because I feared to
worry him. Your refusal is nothing. He will come to me all the same.
You will not refuse to take a letter to him, will you, if I detain you a
few minutes longer?"
We were quite close to her little cottage, and as we walked towards it I
tried to soften my refusal as best I could. She, however, did not seem
to hear me.
She left me seated in the little parlour. There was no light in the
room, but she carried in a lamp from an adjoining one; and I have never
been so struck by a face as I was by hers when the glow of the lamp
lighted it up. The charm of her beauty was not one whit abated--for
beautiful she was; and yet there was only one thing to be read in her
face, and that was resolution. It lay in her lips, the curve of the
nostrils, a peculiar look in the eye, and a certain poise of the head.
In very truth, she looked superb.
I sat waiting while the minutes passed, and not a sound broke the
perfect silence in the house. Everything was so still that it seemed as
if there could be no one within miles of me.
There was a book on the table before me, and I took it up unthinkingly.
It opened where a cabinet-sized photograph had been left in it--as a
marker I suppose. The photograph showed the head and shoulders of a
man, and the face shown in full was one of the gayest and most resolute
that I ever remember to have seen. There was something very attractive
about it, and there was, as I thought, a faint suggestion of somebody I
had known or seen. It was a _good_ face, splendidly strong and honest,
and, from a man's point of view, a right handsome face too.
To look at a photograph uninvited may be an impertinence; to read the
inscription on the back certainly is. And yet these are things which
one is apt to do unthinkingly and even instinctively. I turned the
photograph round and read:
"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" and under
that a date. I put it back in the book, feeling that I had been prying
into the secrets of a woman's grief.
Presently I heard a chair pushed back in the next room and Mrs
Mallandane's step approaching. She handed me a closed note.
"You will give that to him, please," she said politely, but very firmly.
"He will come here if he receives it; but it is possible that he may
still be delirious, and if so, I only ask you again if you will be good
enough to bring him to me."
With the knowledge which after-events have given me it is difficult to
say whether I was concerned only for Cassidy's health and Mrs
Mallandane's good name, or whether I was not pricked to anxiety by some
other feeling. My heart did sink at her suggestion, I don't know
whether through selfishness or something better. I felt that I was
beginning to yield before her evident purpose, but my answer was
evasive. I said I did not see how I could promise anything.
She waved that impatiently aside. I recall the motion of her hand, as
though she could literally brush such things away. She came a step
nearer to me, the light shone full in her face, on the waves of her
hair, on her slightly-parted lips, and glinted and flashed back from her
eyes. For half a minute she stood so looking at me, and I was conscious
of the grip of her hand on the back of a chair, and of the rise and fall
of her breast as she breathed.
"You know him! You have seen him?" she queried in a low, deliberate
voice.
"Yes," I answered.
"You know he is disfigured?"