"When I tell you, then, that _I am the cause of that_, will you deny me
the privilege of any reparation I can make?"
The words met me like a blow in the face. I was crushed! God knows
what I would have done but that I saw the flame of colour that leapt
into her face, and the trembling and quivering of her lips. I gasped
out:
"No, no! I will do it."
She seemed so upset, so unsteady, that I made a half-step towards her,
but she motioned me back, saying:
"Go now--go! Please go, and leave me." A hundred thoughts were surging
and churning in my head as I drove down the long, long valley of the
Lampogwana River that night. I felt as miserable as man need feel.
Everything seemed wrong--most of it horribly so--but turn as I might
from one phase to another, the one thing always recurred, pervading,
dominating everything: "I am the cause of that." The words rang in my
ears again and again, and the horrible significance shamed me afresh
each time, always to be answered by something which said, "No, I will
believe! I will trust!"
Poor Cassidy was very, very bad when I reached him, and his lucid
intervals were far between. His appearance was terrible, the ghastly
pallor adding, as I had thought nothing could add, to the face from
which one eye, the nose, half the upper lip, and portion of one cheek,
were gone. It was terrible--truly terrible!
There is no need to dwell on it all. I got him in and he lived for five
days. Fever didn't kill him; it couldn't have; he was too strong and
too stout-hearted. It was haemorrhage resulting from some old injury
received in an accident years before. The doctor told me that when the
artery had gone Cassidy knew he would be dead in a few minutes. He
begged the doctor to leave him, and turning to Mrs Mallandane, asked
her to cover his face with a handkerchief, and to hold his hand. He
said to her, "God bless you, Molly! Good-bye!" and died like the man he
was.
Mrs Chauncey was the real friend in that time of need. It was she who
had supplied everything that an invalid could want; it was she who
stayed all that long night through with Mrs Mallandane, who went with
her to the funeral and stood by her, and stayed with her when all was
over.
The day after the funeral I sat in my office dazed and stupefied with
worrying and puzzling over many things in connection with these people
whose affairs and whose lives seemed to have become suddenly entangled
with mine. Not the least of my worries was the document before me,
which was Cassidy's will: "I give everything absolutely to Mary
Mallandane," and nominating me as his executor.
I dreaded the first interview--so much so, in fact, that I got Mrs
Chauncey to go with me. The tall black figure and the excessive pallor
of her face smote very hard on my heart, but I was relieved by the
presence of little Molly, who stuck to me from the time I entered the
room until Mrs Mallandane sent her away. I had already stated my
object in calling when she sent Molly out, and I was about to resume,
when she asked me abruptly:
"Do you know anything of his past life?"
"Nothing whatever," I said. "Nor of mine?"
"No, Mrs Mallandane."
She laid a hand on one of Mrs Chauncey's, who was sitting near, and
said gravely:
"You, who have been my friend, know nothing either. It is right that
you should--that you both should."
We were sitting at a table in the parlour; the writing materials were
lying on it ready for my use. The two ladies sat close together
opposite me.
I cannot give Mrs Mallandane's own words, nor can I convey her manner
when telling us the story of her life. Sometimes she would talk in a
subdued monotone, telling, with an absence of feeling that was
infinitely pathetic, of their troubles. Sometimes she would be roused
to a pitch of feeling that left her voice but a husky whisper. Once--
just once--I fancied there was the faintest trace of contempt in her
tone when referring to--well, not to Cassidy. If it was so, it was at
any rate instantly lost in a flow of pity.
This is substantially what she told us. Mallandane and Cassidy had
owned claims in the Kimberley or one of the neighbouring mines, and were
in fact partners doing business together. They were both young
Irishmen, and had come out on the same boat some years before--which
were considered sufficient reasons for their entering into partnership.
Cassidy was the one with the brains, money, and work; and, from what I
gathered, there seems to have been no reason, except Cassidy's
good-nature, for the alliance with Mallandane at all. However, they
prospered, and Mallandane went home for a trip, and married and brought
his wife back to Kimberley.
For a couple of years all went well--in fact, until the firm began to
lose money. Reverses only stimulated Cassidy to harder work and more
cheery, indomitable effort. You couldn't beat him. But it was
different with Mallandane. All his wife said was that he lost heart;
used to go away day after day and night after night to where he could
forget his worries--drinking and gambling. When Cassidy first
recognised that his partner was falling, he gave up his own house,
suggesting that it would be doing him (Cassidy) a good turn if they
would let him board with them. He gave himself up to a splendid effort
to save his partner from ruin.
For a time it answered, but Mallandane, besides being naturally
unstable, must have been bitten by drink, for he broke out again, and
nothing either wife or friend could do could save him. There came
scenes--brutality and insult to the wife, ingratitude and insult to the
friend. She told us nothing except in pity and forgiveness of her dead
husband--nothing, that is, that justice to Cassidy did not require; but
it is not difficult to imagine what happened, and, indeed, I know now
that it was only the pitiful helplessness of the wife and child, and the
knowledge that his presence was food, and even life, to them, that held
Cassidy to his partner; for in his fits of drunkenness Mallandane would
have murdered both wife and child.
Cassidy worked from four in the morning until eight at night, and at
times through the day he would run up from the claims to the house, to
see that all was well. All he made went to keep the house going, and it
was given as a matter of course. No complaint was made, although
Mallandane now ceased even the pretence of work and spent the whole day
in the canteens.
But the end came when least expected. Mallandane, when he did come home
at all, did not get up until hours after Cassidy was at work. He used
to awake drunk and dazed, and wander off at once, unshaven, dirty and
half dressed, to the nearest canteen.
One morning, however, there was a change. He was grey-faced, puffy and
sodden, it is true, but he fussed about the house briskly, talking to
himself. He got out a clean moleskin suit, and told the servant that he
could not wait for breakfast, as he had to fire the eight o'clock shots,
and the holes were all charged and waiting for him.
Within a quarter of an hour Cassidy had come up for breakfast. Mrs
Mallandane met him on the way and told him what the servant had in the
meantime told her; and Cassidy raced back to stop his delirious partner.
With a madman's cunning and instinct he had slipped down the mine from
ledge to ledge and along dangerous slopes until he reached the lowest
workings, and when Cassidy, after some delay in getting a bucket on the
hauling-gear to go down in, reached the spot, the boys told him that
Mallandane "umtagati" (bewitched) had gone into the drive to fire the
charges, and would let no one go near him.
Cassidy looked at the black mouth of the drive. He did not think of the
worthless sodden wretch who had gone in there. He recalled the partner
of years, the mate of good times and bad, and he recalled, too, the
horror-stricken look on the face of the woman he had just left. He
dashed in to the sound of a warning yell from every man in the mine.
When occasion calls there is still no lack of brave men. Heroes spring
into recognition from every grade of life, from every class of material;
and while the half-dozen explosions still echoed and reverberated in the
circle of the mine, there were men dashing in to the rescue at the
imminent risk of their lives, heedless of the deadly fumes and of
possible unexploded charges.
"The firm" lay in one heap--Cassidy on his back, Mallandane athwart him.
To the only person to whom he ever spoke of the affair, Cassidy said:
"He was stooping to light another fuse when I reached him. I gripped
both arms round him as he turned on me and tried to carry him out. It
was a wrestling match, for he showed fight. My face was over his one
shoulder, as his was over mine; but mine was turned towards the shots."
A piece of the rock that shattered poor Cassidy's face entered the back
of his partner's head, and _he_ never stirred again.
Cassidy lay for months in hospital, bandaged, blindfolded, barely alive;
and the woman he had stood by, stood by him. When he was able to walk
about, it was on her arm he leaned. When he was fit to leave, it was to
her house he went to be tended for months longer. He never complained
nor lost heart, although he knew that one eye was gone and thought he
would lose the other.
Some seven or eight months had passed, and he was getting well and
strong--he was healing. She had always dreaded the effect of the first
sight of himself, and for this reason had removed the mirrors from the
rooms he frequented; but one day, when she had been out for a while, she
found him lying on the sofa, the bandage off his eyes, and a hand-glass
dropped on the carpet close by. It was the only time he had fainted or
in any way given in.
Later in the evening he said:
"I don't really mind so much now that I know. It was the suspense that
worried me." And, after a pause, he added in a voice that seemed to let
you _hear_ his heart lifting: "I'll be able to tackle work again soon,
and will be all right again."
"That was the only allusion," Mrs Mallandane said, "that he ever made
to his disfigurement. I believe it was out of delicacy and
consideration for my feelings that he never spoke about it. You could
not even see that he ever thought of it, for he had that splendid
manliness that doesn't know what self-consciousness means.
"Only one thing showed unmistakably that he did feel it, and that he
felt he was dead to all the promise of his past. You must have remarked
his manner of speech?" she observed, turning to me. "He spoke like a
working man. _That_ was his only shield. He deliberately sank himself
to that level to be spared the prominence and pity that would be given
him as a gentleman. It was his hope to pass through life unnoticed.
With me, and with me only, he had no disguise, no concealment, no
reserve!"
He used always to talk of their affairs as one and the same, in order to
keep up the illusion he had encouraged in her from the beginning when he
had told her very seriously that "it would never do to liquidate the
firm's business now. It would mean sacrificing _everything_." She
agreed to do whatever he thought right; and at the end of every month he
used to hand to her, scrupulously accounted for, a sum greater or less,
according to "the firm's profits for the month."
From his own "profits" he always managed to have something--no matter
how little--to spend on Molly, who was his pet and companion always.
The proceeds of the sale of house and furniture--when they had to be
given up--were handed over to Mrs Mallandane "for a stand-by," and she
went into lodgings because she "would feel more comfortable and have
more time to give to Molly there,"--not because he was watchful over her
good name and would not stay in the house once he was well enough to
walk alone.
When Cassidy extended the firm's "business"--that is to say, went to the
Cape Colony, Natal, and Transvaal, in search of contracts on the various
railway lines--he continued to remit the "profits" with the most
elaborate statements, which Mrs Mallandane, as a partner, felt bound to
study, and, as a woman, often wept over in despair.
This had gone on for several years, and it was not until after she had
gone to Barberton, "to be near the business," that something had made
her suspicious that the joint capital locked up in the business was all
a generous imposition.
"It only needed the suggestion," said Mrs Mallandane, "to show me an
appalling chain of evidence--evidence of his generosity and patient
tactful help--evidence of my blind content and foolishness. I spoke to
him when next he came in. He could see that I knew, and he simply said
that `Ralph would have done the same for him.' God forgive me! He gave
up his life to me! He suffered living death for me! He lived when it
would have been a million mercies to have died. He bore all that man
could bear and never grudged it. And I--I cut his heart in two when I
refused his help! I know it! I wished I had died before I got the look
he gave me when I told him that I could not take his help. Month after
month went by and he did not come to me--he, who used to be here on the
first day of every month. But I knew he was near. Twice I saw him
passing slowly by at night when he had come to watch over us. The first
time I was too surprised to call. The second time I called him and he
came to me. He stayed until late that evening; and he went away happy
again because we registered our second compact: that if we (Molly and I)
were ever in real need I would send for him; that if he were sick or in
need of friends the privilege of friends should be ours."
She stopped for quite a while, and when she spoke again her voice
trembled and it was all she could do to control it so that she could
speak at all. I could not bear to look in her face.
"You two have seen him," she said, and, turning to me, added, "You have
known him. I have liked to tell you all about him; and I like to tell
you now that I know he loved me--that I think it is the greatest honour
a woman can have to be loved by such a man: for not any woman that I
have ever known, or heard of, or read of, was good enough for him!"
She left the room for a moment, and returning laid something on the
table before us, saying:
"You remember him as you saw him. Try--try to think of him as I do--
like _this_! It is all you can do for the memory of a good and
honourable man."
It was the photograph I had seen in her book the day I left to bring him
in.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
All those things happened some years ago.
Out on the grass there, in front of my window, there is a little girl
trying to dissuade a very small boy from pulling the black ear off an
old white bulldog; but the fat little fists keep their grip, and as he
staggers under the effort the little chap says:
"Molly mus' pull Danl Conn! olla ear! _Make_ him det up!"
Watching them with the brightest, merriest smile in the world, and
looking years younger than when I first saw her, Mrs--
But if I mentioned her name this would not be an anonymous story.