It was late afternoon. The sun hung low in the blue sky and shot its
beams between the palm slits, making a brilliant tracery on the smooth
paths where it pierced a passage between the branches of the mimosa
trees, yellow with their golden balls. The chirrup of a cricket was the
only sound that broke the quivering silence, save when every now and
again the warm wind swept lazily through the gum trees and made music
with their leaves.
Looking out upon the sultry stillness of the garden, her pose stiller
even than the almost motionless trees, with tense features, and eyes
that were stirred with emotion, as the eyes of one who looks back upon
the past from the stage of the present, seeing things with the broadened
vision of experience, stood the woman of whom the Colonel had spoken in
his interview with Lawless. She was tall and dark and splendid, with
large brown eyes flecked with a lighter shade as though they held
imprisoned sunbeams in their pellucid depths. Her rich dark hair waved
back from a low brow that was like ivory in its smooth whiteness, and in
the thin lips, scarlet as the flower of the pomegranate, showed her only
touch of colour. She wore a white dress of some Indian embroidery, and
the plain gold band of her wedding-ring comprised her sole ornament.
A clock inside the room chimed the half-hour, and scarcely had the sound
died away into silence when the door behind her opened and a native
servant showed a visitor into the room. Mrs Lawless turned slowly
round, and with a hesitating, reluctant step moved forward a few paces
and then stood still, her arms hanging motionless at her sides, her lips
slightly parted, perhaps in a greeting that never passed them, for she
did not speak when she met the straight gaze of the visitor's keen eyes,
and looked into the scarred yet still handsome face of the man she had
not seen for eight years. He had halted just inside the doorway, and he
remained where he was, staring at her, the light falling direct upon his
face. The scar showed livid. She gazed at it with fascinated eyes.
She had not seen it before.
"It was good of you to consent to see me," he said with grave
politeness. "I would not have troubled you with a visit had it not been
important. But what I have to say to you could not be written in a
letter."
"I quite understand," she answered quietly. "Won't you sit down?"
And in this commonplace manner passed a moment that marked a crisis in
two lives.
He waited until she was seated, then he crossed to the window and stood
with his back to the sunlit scene.
"I'd rather stand, thank you."
He looked at her uncertainly, looked at the handsome furnishing of the
room and frowned. Where had she got her wealth from, this woman whom he
had always understood to be poor?
"I did not know," he said slowly, bringing his gaze back to her face,
"that you were in South Africa until a few weeks ago. It was a surprise
to me. I trust you do not consider it intrusive that I took early
advantage of the knowledge to solicit an interview. I would not have
done so in ordinary circumstances, but it is a peculiar coincidence that
you and I should be mixed up in the same shady concern. I want you to
believe," he added earnestly, "that I had no knowledge of your part in
the business of which I am here to speak until after I had volunteered
my services. What part you actually played in it I am hoping you will
confide in me, and not consider that I am guilty of an impertinence in
seeming to interfere in what you do."
"Oh no!" she answered gently, in her rich, deep voice, and added: "I
expect it is the affair of that poor boy and the letters you have come
to speak about. I always felt that I should hear of it again."
He confirmed her surmise.
"You are suspected," he said in conclusion, "of having assisted in their
recapture."
She sat forward on the low sofa upon which she had taken her seat, and,
gripping the cushions tightly, questioned him with her eyes.
"Suspected by whom?--You?"
"That question is unnecessary, surely," he replied coldly. "Had I
suspected such a thing I should not be here. It is because I want to
hit the next man who breathes such a slander that I desire to have from
your own lips an explanation of that night's work. Will you tell me all
you know of the affair? It may be a help to me in tracing those
letters."
"What have the letters to do with you?" she asked.
"That's easily answered," he replied. "I am a soldier of fortune; my
hand and brain go to the highest bidder. Personally, I am not
interested in this matter--or rather, I was not interested; it has now
become a matter of life or death to me. I am pledged to recover those
letters,--and I mean to do it."
She released her grip of the sofa cushion, folded her hands loosely in
her lap, and looked calmly into his sombre eyes. He thought as he
watched her that she was the most alluringly beautiful woman he had ever
seen.
"I did not know," she said slowly, halting between the words. "I
haven't been out very long--barely six months; and I had not heard--
anything... I will tell you all I know about the letters, though I
don't quite understand their importance. It's a case of blackmail, of
course--at least, I gathered from Mr Hayhurst that they were being held
for blackmail. He had succeeded in getting hold of them. The boy
drinks too much, and when he has been drinking he talks. I met him at a
friend's house, and he was talking, boasting of his achievement. He had
these most important papers on his person at the time, and was inflated
with success, I suppose--and too much wine. I persuaded him to come
home with me; and in the carriage he told me so much about the letters
that on arriving here I asked him to show me the packet. I intended to
induce him to leave it with me until he was sober and more discreet."
"That was very unwise," her hearer interrupted. "He would probably have
gone away and blabbed further, with the result that this house would
have been broken into during the night. It was a risky thing to do."
"Perhaps you are right," she said. "But I doubt whether I should have
succeeded in persuading him. I think I only roused his suspicions as to
the honesty of my intentions. And in any case I should not have been
allowed to keep them, for he had evidently been shadowed without knowing
it. While I talked with him in this room I fancied I heard a sound on
the stoep. The window was open. I walked over to it to look out, but
before I could reach it, or realise quite what was happening, a man
sprang past me into the room. He struck the poor drunken boy one blow
over the head with a stout short stick he carried that stunned him, and
I--I was paralysed with terror. I neither moved nor made any sound,
until I saw the man coming towards me, and then I suppose I fainted; for
I remember nothing more until I came to my senses later and found myself
alone."
"And you never communicated with the police?" he said quickly.
"I sent for the police the following day," she explained; "but before
the inspector arrived I received a message from Tom Hayhurst asking me
not to move in the matter."
She got up and walked with a certain restrained excitement in her
movements to the mantel, where she stood, tall and graceful and
outwardly composed, with one arm on the high shelf, her face turned away
from him.
"There is danger in this undertaking," she said. "I don't like it. Why
should a man risk his life to do another man--a stranger--a service?"
"You forget the reward," he said cynically. "The pay is high."
"The reward would be no compensation to a man for the loss of his life."
He laughed bitterly.
"We have only to die once, and no amount of prudence will release us
from the obligation."
She faced round quickly.
"The men who hold those letters in their possession are desperate," she
said.
"So am I," he answered carelessly. "It's the same on both sides, I
imagine--merely a matter of gain."
"It doesn't only amount to that with you," she exclaimed sharply, and
her eyes darkened in her pale face.
"No. There are other considerations; but it is not necessary to go into
them."
His tone was quietly aloof; it almost seemed that he would remind her
his doings were no concern of hers. She withdrew within herself; and
for the space of a few seconds there was silence between them. He broke
it.
"You did not tell me who the man was who entered your house that night,"
he said.
"He was a stranger to me," she replied. "I had not, to my knowledge,
seen him before."
"It was not Van Bleit?"
"No." She met his eyes steadily. "Why should you suppose it might be?"
"I would warn you against him," he said curtly, "if I might presume to
give you advice."
"Thank you," she answered coldly. "I do not think I stand in need of
advice. And your warning is quite unnecessary."
He drew himself up stiffly as a man might who realises a rebuff.
"I beg your pardon," he said.
He looked at her fixedly in the pause that followed his brief apology,
and his eyes were hard.
"I have heard what I came to hear. It won't be of great service to me,
but I scarcely expected to learn more, and I am obliged to you for
receiving me. I will now relieve you of the embarrassment of my
presence." He bowed to her with formal politeness. "Good afternoon,"
he said. "With your permission, I will leave by the window. I see a
path which leads direct to the gate."
He turned his back towards her and stepped through the aperture on to
the stoep. She followed him with her eyes, those beautiful sun-flecked
eyes shadowed with the stirring of memory; but she made no move to
detain him. Not until after he had left her did she remember that she
had said no word in parting. She had simply let him go in silence out
of her sight--out of her life. He had come into her life that
afternoon, a spectre of the past, and, like a spectre, he had vanished,
leaving only another memory to add to those that already disturbed her
peace.
She stood quite motionless, gazing, not out through the window whence he
had disappeared, but at the place where he had stood, and as she gazed
it was suddenly borne in upon her that an opportunity had come to her
with the presence of this man, and she had missed it. She had travelled
nearly six thousand miles for this,--to realise when it was too late
that she had missed her opportunity. It happens thus frequently: we
refuse to grasp the event when it entails the smallest sacrifice of
self. Could she have humbled her pride sufficiently, she might have had
this man's destiny in her hands and have fashioned it to brave issues.
She moved forward deliberately and took her stand where he had taken
his, with her back to the glowing garden. Save where his foot had
pressed the carpet, he had touched nothing; he had not so much as rested
a hand against the window frame. She could have wished that he had
touched things so that she might touch them also, and imagine in so
doing that she drew near to him. Despite the firmness of her nature,
despite the ugly facts of the man's past that were well known to her,
she could not crush the love of him out of her heart. The woman never
learns to hate the man who has once brought romance into her life. That
he had brought romance into the lives of other women this woman who
stood in the opening with her hands locked together knew. The knowledge
was torture to her. It wrung her anew each time her thoughts dwelt on
it, and they dwelt on it often. Even now, while she stood there with
the remembrance of their recent interview vividly impressed on her mind,
the sight of the scarred face photographed on her brain with a
distinctness that was almost as though she had his image still before
her eyes, the old gripping, agonising jealousy, the wounded self-esteem,
were tearing her heart as with searing pincers.
This man, who had brought her romance, had come to her with a gift in
either hand. While one gift was goodly, the other had been evil; and
the evil had spoilt both.