"Heard the latest, Violet?" said Squire Courtland, as they got up from
lunch.
"There are so many latests," was the reply, somewhat acidly made.
"So there are. But this is a local `latest,' and touches a nearish
neighbour. What do you think of Lamont?"
"I never do think of him," she answered, even more acidly.
"Well, he's coming home. His place is being done up, and they've got
people working at it night and day. He's not only made a big name for
himself as a fighter, but he appears to have struck a gold mine into the
bargain, and now he's cleared off all the encumbrances and is having the
place put into tip-top order. What do you think of that?"
"I don't think anything of it either way. In fact the matter has no
earthly interest for me whatever," snapped Violet, with her nose in the
air.
"Not? That's lucky. You did make a mess of your chances there, Violet,
and no mistake."
"Did I? I don't know that I agree, and at any rate it's all ancient
history, and like most ancient history rather flat and stale and
humdrum. Anyway the whole subject has lost all interest for me."
Squire Courtland looked at his daughter, with a mischievous pucker round
his eyes.
"What instinctive liars all women are," he was saying to himself.
Violet made some excuse, and took herself out of his presence. She had
to, or her temper would have got the upper hand: result--a stormy scene,
recrimination on her part; cold, withering sarcasm on that of her
father; then rancour and bitterness for days. She knew he had never
forgiven her for breaking off her engagement with Lamont; less, that she
had done so than her manner of doing it. And the worst of it was, he
seemed determined never to allow her to forget it; and now the man was
coming back--coming to settle down at his ancestral home, almost, so to
say, next door to them. And--he was bringing with him a bride.
He had been quick to console himself, she reflected, her lips curling
with bitterness--oh yes, quite quick. Only two years. Two years to
this very day. But two years mean a great deal to a man of action; and
following his career in the newspapers, as she had done, this one, whom
she had thrown over, was very much a man of action indeed. For
herself--well, her intimates had noticed a very considerable change in
Violet Courtland. She had gone through her seasons and social
functions, but somehow she had done so listlessly. All her adorers,
whom formerly she had patted and made sit up and fetch and carry, she
now snubbed ruthlessly, including more than one eligible; and what had
formerly afforded her keen enjoyment she now went through perfunctorily.
During the war in Matabeleland she had developed a feverish thirst for
reading newspapers, and about them she had found Lamont's name pretty
frequently strewn in connection with that disastrous rising and a
certain dare-devil corps known as Lamont's Tigers, from the fight at the
Kezane Store onwards. But ever he seemed to be the leader of this or
that desperate venture, wherein the rescue of some outlying, half-armed
band, comprising women and children, was the object, and that against
large odds. And this saviour of his countrymen--and women--from the
horrors of savage massacre, was the man whom she, Violet Courtland, had
denounced that very day two years ago, had denounced in public, with
every expression of aversion and disgust, as a coward.
She had not been able to escape from the sound of his name. At the
dinner-table, in the ballroom--everywhere--his deeds came under
discussion and comment; and that in one key--admiration. Moreover,
certain newspaper men began to rake up two or three of his doings during
the former war in the same wild country, causing Violet Courtland's eyes
to open very wide as she recalled the scene by the mere, and how she had
driven this very man from her as a coward.
Two years ago that very day! Strange that exactly the same conditions
should prevail: the same hard frost; the same silver sparkle on the bare
trees; even the same Christmas Eve bells practising their carillon at
intervals. A wave of association it might have been that moved Violet
to take her skates, and start for the frozen mere. She was alone now,
but she would be sure to find somebody there--the rector's girls
perhaps, and a few others.
She has judged correctly. The surface of Courtland Mere is covered with
a smooth and glassy sheet. The ring of the skates is melodious upon the
air, and gliding forms dart hither and thither: but these are few--only
four, in fact--for the mere is not yet thrown open, and the ice,
undulating freely, here and there with an ominous crack, is none too
safe even for these four.
"Come back, Violet," cries a girl's clear voice. "You're too far out.
It's awfully thin there. Do you hear?"--as a couple of warning cracks
dart along the heaving surface.
"Yes, do come back, Miss Courtland," echoes the only man in the party.
"You're near the spring hole. Do come back. It's beastly dangerous."
Violet Courtland throws back her head and laughs defiantly, circling
ever nearer to the fatal spot. One, seeing but unseen, amid the
undergrowth beneath the black pines, takes in the picture--the warm kiss
of the frosty air upon the flower-like face, framed so seductively in
its winter furs; the curve of the red lips, laughing mischievously; the
sparkle in the large clear eyes, as the answer is shrilled back--
"Not for me. I'm light enough to go over even the spring hole itself.
Oh--h--!"
For, with these words, the ice wave beneath her gliding feet rises and
falls like a sheet in the breeze. A crack, and then another--then a
horrid shattering sound as of shivered glass. The water, forced through
the cracks, spurts upward in blade-like lines, and, with hardly time to
utter a shriek, Violet disappears, feet downwards, beneath the surface.
A great slab of blue ice, momentarily dislodged, heaves endways upward,
then settles down above the head of the girl. The grim mere has
literally swallowed its prey.
Those who behold are petrified with horror. Full a hundred yards are
they from the disaster, but the man skims straight for the spot. He can
do nothing, for he is heavy of build, and the ice will give way beneath
his weight long before he reaches her. It will only mean one more
victim. But almost instantaneously with the catastrophe a startling
thing happens.
A man dashes from beneath the pines, and with a loud warning shout to
the others to keep away, he flings himself upon the ice, and, lying
flat, propels himself straight for the deadly spring hole, which is here
but a score of yards from the bank. Now he is fighting his way through
the heaving, crackling ice--now he disappears as if gives way beneath
him. Now he is up again; then once more, with a hiss and a splash and
the splintering of glass-like ice, he is beneath the surface again.
Those on the bank are turned to stone. Will he--will they--never come
up? Ah--h!
A head shoots above the surface--two heads! Panting, nearly winded with
his terrible exertion and the deadly cold numbing his veins, Piers
Lamont is treading water, supporting Violet in a state of
semi-unconsciousness; but powerful and wiry as he is, it is all he can
do to keep her head above the surface.
"Soames!" he shouts, recognising the man, "there are some chopped poles
lying there just inside the trees. Run, man, and throw some out. You
girls run for help--keeper's lodge the nearest. And yell--yell for all
you know how," he pants gaspingly, for the exertion of speech has
frightfully sapped his remaining strength.
"God--will they be all day!" he groans through his blue and shaking
lips. He can hear Soames tearing through the wood--then things become
mixed. The familiar landscape is whirling round. Now he is beheaded--
no, it is only the cold ice-edge against his neck. Now he is charging
an enemy, using Violet, held in front of him, as a shield. Oh yes, of
course he is a coward, for did not she say so--here--on this very spot?
And--Something comes whizzing at him. A spear--and he is unarmed.
Well, he will grasp it. No, it eludes him. Another! He has it--
grasped hard and fast. "Hold tight, old man! Now, are you ready?"
yells a voice from the bank.
"Ready? Yes--shoot away!"
And Lamont, with his half-unconscious charge, is hauled to the bank, he
gripping with death-like force the end of the fir-pole, under the
impression that he is warding off a hostile spear from his heart. Once
on firm ground though, and relieved of the strain, he soon recovers
himself.
"Put her between the sheets and give her something hot," he enjoins.
"Quick, not a moment to lose. I'm off to try the same prescription
myself. So long--but it was a near thing."
Those who came up had been present on that other occasion that day two
years ago, and remembered it vividly--remembered this man's answer, "I
daresay I can risk my life for an adequate motive." Here, then, he had
literally fulfilled his words. And--now he was married.
Clare--no longer Vidal--about to start for a drive, looking lovelier
than ever in the sharp English winter air, and the dainty furs which set
off the beautiful face, was mightily astonished to behold her proprietor
sprinting up the avenue, looking, as he asserted he felt, like a
half-drowned rat.
"Had an adventure?" he panted. "Must first get dry, then tell you all
about it."
"Oh, I'm dying to hear. The carriage can go back now. I shall not go
out this afternoon."
Half an hour later she was hearing about the accident at the spring
hole.
"You ran a great risk," she said. "Piers, did you never think of me
when you took your life in your hands?"
"Very much so. But I couldn't stand by and leave her to drown, could
I?"
"Of course not I was only trying you. But--tell me. Did it bring back
just a little of the old feeling? Not a wee tiny echo of it?"
He took her hands in his.
"Not the faintest shadow, darling. You believed in me from the very
first--that other one did not. And besides--"
"And besides--what?"
"You are infinitely the more beautiful of the two."
"I shan't be that long if you go on giving me what you men call `swelled
head'," she answered brightly. "Look. There's the post African mail
day too."
"So it is," taking up the letters which were brought in. "Here's a
great screed from Peters. Full of the mine, I suppose."
We heard Squire Courtland refer to Lamont having struck a gold mine. As
an actual fact he had, and it had come about in rather a peculiar way.
After peace was restored he and Peters had made their way out to the
farm, to see how things were looking; but the enormous hole blown out of
the ground where the house had stood astonished even them. It was while
fossicking in this that the keen eye of the professional prospector was
at once attracted. A few more quick strokes with the pick, and the
yellow treasures of the earth lay revealed. Up went Peters' hat high in
the air, and from his throat a roaring hooray.
"We can put on our jackets now," he said. "We're rich men for life."
"It may be only a `pocket,'" was the more cautious comment of the other.
"Pocket or not--there's enough stuff there to get us a fat offer from
any syndicate. But there's more. Well, didn't I tell you we'd make our
fortunes here."
"Yes, but who'd have thought we should have to blow up the old shack to
do it?"
They had realised on it well--uncommonly well--declared those who knew;
and at once Lamont had set to work to clear off the encumbrances on his
ancestral home.
"Peters threatens to run across to see us, if we promise not to make him
wear a top-hat and a long-tailed coat. I've often told him he can wear
anything he likes. Hallo, here's a yarn from Ancram. Christmas cards
too--um--um. `Kind regards to Mrs Lamont.'"
"It was good of you to get him that berth, Piers. He behaved very
meanly to you at first, I thought."
"He couldn't help it. He's built that way. And even then--if the poor
devil got so desperately `stony'--when you see a chance of putting him
on his legs again, you naturally take it."
"_You_ do. You are always setting somebody on his legs again."
"Ah! ah!"--holding up a warning finger. "Who is likely to suffer from
`swelled head' now?"
"Well, it seems to me you are going to get no rest on earth. You spent
about six months pulling everybody out of holes, and now no sooner do we
get here for good than you start in the same line again," said Clare
softly.
"It's different, dearest. On that side one got them out of hot water;
on this side one gets them out of cold--oh, very!" with a shiver at the
recollection of his recent ice-bath.
Pearly and grey the Christmas gloaming deepens, a few stars peep
frostily out, and in the gloom of the fir-woods an owl is hooting
melodiously. And the stillness, with the peace of the hour, is sweet to
these two, as it rests upon them.
The End.