Lawless meanwhile had renewed his acquaintance with Van Bleit. On
leaving Mrs Lawless' residence he had driven as he had come back to
Cape Town, and, dismounting from the taxi outside his hotel, was in the
act of paying the driver when Van Bleit passed him with the stream of
business men homeward bound while he stood upon the kerb feeling for the
change. But that scar on Lawless' face was unmistakable, and Van Bleit,
arrested by it, paused in his rapid march and glanced inquiringly at
him. Then he came back and waited until Lawless had paid and dismissed
his driver.
When the tall, spare man with the ugly scar faced round, it was to find
the broad figure of Van Bleit blocking his passage. He held out his
hand as carelessly as though they had met the day before.
"God, man!" said Van Bleit sharply. "Where have you sprang from? It's
a matter of nearly five years since we met, I believe, if one bothered
to calculate; and it seems almost a lifetime. It takes me back into the
past to see you. What are you doing here?"
"Damned if I know," Lawless answered laconically.
Van Bleit laughed.
"Grit, you haven't altered," he said.
He scrutinised the thin, handsome face intently. Then he looked from
the man to the hotel before which the latter had alighted.
"Stopping here?" he asked.
Lawless nodded, and Van Bleit's manner warmed.
"I've made lots of inquiries about you, but could never learn anything,"
he said. "I feared you had gone under, but," with a glance at the hotel
front, "this scarcely looks like it."
"On the contrary," Lawless answered, "I'm on top at present. I've been
under and afloat several times since last we met."
"You struck it rich at the mines, I suppose?"
Lawless laughed unexpectedly.
"Yes," he lied. "I struck it rich at the mines. Any man might who
wasn't a fool."
Van Bleit looked cunningly intelligent.
"True," he answered. "If a man wants to get there in Africa it don't do
for him to be squeamish. You didn't earn your nickname, Grit, in being
over soft."
At the mention of his nickname, Lawless looked fierce.
"Damn you!" he said irritably. "If I remember rightly I owe that to
you. It sticks closer than my own. That nickname has landed me in for
many a ridiculous adventure. Men seem to imagine that I'm a survival of
the mediaeval desperado; and I am offered any shady undertaking that
entails the slightest risk."
"They pay best, those undertakings," Van Bleit responded drily; and
Lawless, regretting the speech as soon as it was made, answered
indifferently:
"Very likely. But a man doesn't sweep sewers when he has his pockets
lined."
He advanced towards his hotel. Van Bleit walked beside him, and
together they passed from the glare of the pavement into the shaded
coolness of the vestibule.
"Come and drink to the good old times," he said,--"and to many more good
times ahead."
He led the way into the lounge. When they were seated, with drinks on a
table in front of them, he asked:
"What are you doing to-night? If you've nothing more amusing on hand,
will you dine with me?"
"If you care to repeat the invitation on some future occasion, you will
see how readily I shall respond," Van Bleit answered. "But this evening
I am dining at my cousin's. I don't know if that kind of thing amuses
you," he added, after a moment's reflection, "but, if it does, I am
confident my cousin would be delighted to welcome a friend of mine. Get
into your togs, and I'll pick you up on my way. It's at the Smythes'.
Smythe himself is a beastly prig, but my cousin is a good sort; and she
gets hold of the right people, and gives one the right things to eat.
What do you say?"
"Not for me," Lawless answered. "I'm not long returned to civilisation.
I'll look on at the game for a while. You go and eat your dinner, and
make yourself agreeable--I trust both the meal and the company will come
up to expectation--and give me to-morrow evening."
"Good!"
Van Bleit hesitated, looked at Lawless uncertainly, looked about him,
changed colour; then looked at Lawless again.
"The company for me to-night will consist of one," he jerked out in a
burst of half-eager, half-reluctant confidence.
His listener smiled unsympathetically.
"The one and only She of the moment; eh?"
"Man, you wouldn't say that if you could see her," Van Bleit returned,
his manner unusually earnest. "She is the most beautiful woman in the
world."
"That's a tall order," Lawless replied drily. "If my memory serve me,
you have happened across perfection a few times in your career."
"Never before," Van Bleit asserted. "My God, Lawless--"
He broke off abruptly, and stared at the other curiously, his mouth
agape.
"I had forgotten... it's the same name," he said. "Are you by any
chance related to Mrs Lawless?--at present living at Rondebosch."
"We are connected by marriage," Lawless answered. He removed the cigar
from his mouth and trimmed the ash deliberately. "If you want to stand
high in the lady's good graces, you will be well advised not to mention
my name. We do speak when accident throws us together, but I believe I
state the bare truth when I say that the fact of our paths seldom
crossing gives mutual satisfaction."
"Yes! In-laws don't always hit it, of course. I never got on with my
brother-in-law. I was glad when the beast died. Still, I regret the
breach in this instance; the relationship might have served me, I'm
going in to win. Grit. You give me your good wishes, I hope?"
"In consideration of what I have told you, I wonder what my good wishes
are worth?" Lawless returned. "But I'll give you a bit of good advice.
The lady is puritanical, unpleasantly so. You will never win her
favour in the character in which I have known you. Are you going in for
reform?"
"I'll go in for anything," Van Bleit answered promptly; "but I'll get my
own way." He leant forward and laid a hand on the other's shoulder.
"And when I've got it," he said boastfully, "there'll be other
changes... We'll close all family dissensions--my friends will be my
wife's. She'll soon see things from my view."
Lawless looked carelessly amused.
"Two people may use the same pair of binoculars," he remarked, "but they
almost invariably alter the focus. I never attempted the absurdity of
trying to make a woman see through my long-distance lens. Their horizon
is generally contracted, and few see beyond that restricted line of
their imagination. With your experience, Karl, I should have imagined
you had long ago discovered that woman, while appearing the most pliable
of substances, is as difficult to bend as wrought iron."
Van Bleit smiled unpleasantly.
"When I can't bend a thing, I break it," he answered.
Lawless regretted when it was too late that he had refused Van Bleit's
invitation to dine at his cousin's. He might have got some amusement
out of the evening, and the closer he shadowed the Dutchman the better
for the success of his undertaking. He decided that in future he would
avail himself of such a chance as Van Bleit's offer had promised; by his
refusal he had sacrificed a move in the game. That in going to the
Smythes' he would perforce meet Mrs Lawless did not weigh with him:
there was as much space between four walls as in the universe if one
person did not desire to be brought into contact with another. And he
had no intention of inflicting himself upon her. He knew her opinion of
him; it was not sufficiently complimentary to cause him to seek her
society. Nevertheless he experienced some curiosity to again encounter
this woman whose hard purity made her so severe a judge in human
affairs,--to measure weapons with her once more. There came to him
sometimes in the lonely watches of the night the belief that one day,
despite past failures, he would pit his strength against hers
successfully. He never attempted to determine the line his conduct
should take in the case of victory; it sufficed for him that the moment
should fashion the event. But with the passing years that dream of his
triumph steadily receded. He had even given up the expectation of
seeing her again... And now he had met her... He had spoken with
her... And their sympathies were as widely divergent as ever they had
been...
He got up and paced the room restlessly for some time. His thoughts
worried him so that inaction became unbearable. He left the hotel, and
wandered forth into the city in search of such diversion as it could
provide. But his mind still worked round the recent extraordinary
events, of which the interview of the afternoon had not been the least
surprising; and almost insensibly his footsteps turned in the direction
of the Smythes' house. For two hours he patrolled the roadway for the
purpose of getting a glimpse of the face he had seen so nearly only that
afternoon.
When eventually Mrs Lawless came forth she was attended by Van Bleit,
who saw her into her motor, and closing the door on her, leant upon it
confidentially while he made some low-toned remark to her where she sat
inside in the dark. Lawless was too far off to hear their voices, but
he judged fairly well from the pantomime what was taking place, and he
saw by the street light the admiration in Van Bleit's face. His own
face, when presently the motor passed him, was as expressionless as a
mask. The woman seated inside did not see him. She was sitting very
straight and motionless. The smile had faded from the beautiful lips,
and her eyes looked sad. Then the motor flashed out of sight, and the
man was left standing stiffly in the shadowy roadway like a sentinel on
guard.
The moon shone out suddenly through a rift in the heavy clouds, throwing
the tall figure into strong relief, and revealing his face distinctly,
stern and set, the scar on his cheek showing livid in the silvery light.
As though the unexpected brilliance disturbed him, he altered his rigid
attitude abruptly, swung round, and started to walk. He walked rapidly,
unconscious of his surroundings in the turmoil of his thoughts. By a
process of introspection his mind worked back continually. He regarded
himself in a detached, impartial light, as if it were a stranger upon
whom he looked, a stranger whose actions he was called upon to criticise
and pass judgment upon. Not until that night had he ever considered his
actions in a condemnatory light. Life was only a chance... Things had
just happened... That had been his philosophy. And he had acted upon
it until the thing happened that meant the finish of his career in the
Army. He had finished himself socially shortly after that event.
His dismissal from the Service had cut him deeply, and he had bitterly
resented it. He had enemies. That was what he had asserted at the
time, what he still believed. The other affair he treated as a
midsummer-night's madness, and spoke of as such. He refused to consider
it more seriously. But the midsummer-night's madness had been
responsible for more than the wrecking of his career. And it was of
that he was thinking chiefly as he walked along the warm, dusty road
between the motionless trees that lined the pathway and cast long black
distorted shadows upon the ground. He had not called it a midsummer's
madness always; he had thought of it--ay, and spoken of it--once as
Love. And he had believed the world well lost at the time. But that
form of madness is transitory. He had come out of the sickness
extraordinarily sane,--scarcely penitential, but with a proper
appreciation of the truth of certain lines that came to his sobered
senses unbidden, yet with an appropriateness that suggested some occult
influence, probably conscience, working upon his mind:
"If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
He would be utterly despised."
In a sense, he had done that; and he had won the despite such conduct
merited. He had been mad. He said it again to himself, muttering the
words under his breath. Then he smiled grimly at the thought behind the
words. Poor creature of circumstance! To be cured of one form of
madness only to develop another!
The ever-revolving wheel of fate turned relentlessly, now bearing him, a
mere puppet, upward, now downward in its revolutions. The wheel had
been turning steadily downward for a long while now. He wondered
whether, when it began to rise again, it would still bear him with it,
or whether before that time it would have broken him utterly and left
him in the uttermost depths.