Karl Van Bleit was neither popular nor especially respected among his
fellows, nevertheless a sensation that had in it something of
consternation supervened when the news burst like a bomb over Cape Town
that he had been arrested on a charge of murder. His connection with
the Smythes added considerably to the interest, and lent a social
importance to the affair. Speculation was rife concerning the crime,
the details of which were tardy in forthcoming; only the barest facts
were known, and these were sufficiently unusual to strain public
curiosity to the utmost. A sense of mystery enveloped the affair: the
lonely bungalow; the hour; the unexplained connection between the three
men, who had met by arrangement seemingly, for what reason had not
transpired; the shooting affray, in which one man, Simmonds, had been
killed; and finally the arrest of Van Bleit, who had on leaving the
bungalow walked into town and given himself up to the authorities.
The whole business was, in the opinion of Theodore Smythe, worthy the
shady character of his wife's undesirable connection. Out of a feeling
of delicacy he kept the verbal expression of his views from her. He did
his utmost to console her; for she was not only inexpressibly shocked,
but acutely alive to the danger of Van Bleit's position. He even
promised to secure for his defence the best services that money could
procure. But he entertained no great belief that Karl would get out of
the present mess. He had been extraordinarily lucky hitherto through a
career of suspected crime; nothing beyond suspicion had clung to him;
but it seemed as though this time at least the law had got its iron grip
on him and would not be likely to let go. Putting his wife's feelings
out of the question, Smythe had a distinct dislike to the idea of a
connection of his own suffering the penalty of the law.
"It's such a beastly low-down, undignified position," he complained.
Mrs Lawless read the news while she lingered over her breakfast. The
midnight tragedy had already been seized upon to fill a column of the
daily paper. Her face turned paler as she read, and the hand that held
the newspaper was not quite steady. When she had read to the last line
she laid the paper down beside her plate and sat staring out at the
sunshine with wide startled eyes... Murder! ... There was something
terrible in the mere sight of the word in print--something horribly
revolting. Could it be possible that this man with whom she had talked
so often, who had touched her with his hands, was guilty of this foul
crime? She shivered at the mere remembrance that only the night before
he had held her hand and touched it with his lips. He had parted from
her and had gone straightway and done this thing... What violent deeds
men who engage in desperate ventures will commit!
She rose from the table, and leaving her unfinished breakfast, went out
into the garden. The news had shocked her. She looked like a woman who
is frightened and at the same time infinitely relieved. As she paced up
and down beneath the trees that cast their pleasant shade upon the path,
one thought kept beating upon her brain with an insistence that drove
out every other thought and lulled a long-endured pain at her heart like
some blessed anodyne. She smiled as she looked up into the green
tracery above her head.
"If she by her evil influence over him has saved him from danger," her
thought ran, "then I am grateful to her for coming into his life."
And so she put behind her her jealousy of the woman who for the present
dominated Lawless' life.
Later in the morning Mrs Lawless ordered the car and drove into Cape
Town to call on her friend.
She found Mrs Smythe reclining on a cane lounge on the stoep, a book
beside her, which she was not reading, and the morning paper open at the
page with the gruesome headline lying in her lap. She looked round as
Zoe Lawless mounted the steps, and seeing who it was, got up and went to
meet her.
"Oh! how good of you to come," she said. "I have been thinking of
you... Zoe, isn't it awful? ... I can't believe it. I can scarcely
realise it yet."
Tears rose in her eyes, already spoiled with futile weeping for a man so
little worthy of her grief. She dabbed at them ineffectually with a wet
handkerchief, and added with unconscious absurdity:
"Karl couldn't have done it... He wouldn't hurt a fly."
Mrs Lawless put her hands upon her shoulders, and bending from her
superior height, kissed the tremulous mouth.
"Poor Kate!" she said, and led her gently back to her seat.
"I feel," said Mrs Smythe plaintively, "as though he were dead
already... as though he, and not the other man, had met with a violent
end. Oh! surely he will be able to explain... They were two to one...
What could they have wanted with him? And why were they armed? Men who
are peaceable citizens don't carry firearms. Karl must have distrusted
them to take a revolver with him... And yet, Colonel Grey--"
She broke off suddenly, and added in a voice of puzzled questioning:
"Zoe, you never liked Colonel Grey!"
Mrs Lawless leant back in a chair, her chin tilted slightly upward,
gazing into the remote blueness of the sky. The flicker of a smile
shone in the dark eyes, but the gravity of her features remained
otherwise unchanged.
"That isn't quite a correct statement," she said. "As I told you
before, it is Colonel Grey who doesn't like me."
Mrs Smythe regarded her doubtfully.
"I thought you were joking when you said that," she replied. "If you
really believe it, I think you are mistaken. He has often spoken of
you, and it seemed to me that he greatly admires you. It is a strange
thing to say in face of what has happened, but I always felt he was a
man to be trusted."
"You can't be certain," replied Zoe, "that your first impression of him
is wrong. Quarrels between men--even violent quarrels--don't
necessarily make them rogues. I feel the same about him. I think he is
an eminently trustworthy person."
"But," objected Mrs Smythe, "there is this affair with Karl... Karl
always disliked him--he was rude to him once in this house. He made me
angry, I remember, poor fellow!"
She sighed and again dabbed at her eyes with her ruined
pocket-handkerchief.
"We've been more like brother and sister than cousins," she explained
apologetically. "He has confided his troubles to me since he was a boy,
and now in this great trouble I can't even help."
She did not think it necessary to explain that in those early days, when
he was an impecunious young man and she a good-looking girl with a
larger dowry than most girls, he had expended much time and eloquence in
endeavouring to persuade her to accept his name in exchange for her
fortune. She had believed then in the honesty of his professions of
love, though she had felt too sisterly towards him to yield to his
wishes; and it had been her one desire ever since her own happy marriage
to see him happily married also. In Mrs Lawless she believed she had
found a worthy mate for him.
"Zoe," she exclaimed suddenly, turning appealingly towards her friend,
"you won't let this shocking affair prejudice you against the poor boy!
He may be able to justify himself. I can't believe that there isn't
some explanation. It seems a horrible gigantic mistake... You won't be
prejudiced, will you?" she pleaded.
"I am not prejudiced, Kate," the other answered.
There was in the steady voice, in the expression of the composed face,
so little encouragement to be read that Mrs Smythe for the first time
entertained serious doubts of Karl's success. She had imagined that his
suit was prospering satisfactorily; now, like a further darkening of the
already dark cloud that depressed her spirit, it was borne in upon her
consciousness that Zoe Lawless did not love him. She could not love him
and remain so entirely unmoved in face of the awful fate that
overshadowed him.
"Of course," she went on, still more dejectedly, for her heart was
sorely troubled, "no woman cares to have her name mixed up in a scandal
like this. It would be only a great love that could live through such
an ordeal. I suppose I'm foolish, Zoe, but I had hoped--"
She paused, unable to complete the sentence, and surveyed the dark
glowing beauty of her silent companion with added distress in her eyes.
"Oh, Zoe!" she burst out impulsively. "He thinks the world of you...
There's a new quality comes into his voice whenever he speaks of you.
You are the sunshine of the land to him--it's his own phrase. If he
thought he stood no chance of winning you, I don't believe he would
attempt to defend himself against this awful charge--I truly don't."
A wave of colour swept over Zoe Lawless' face, but beyond the swift
blush she showed no sign of embarrassment.
"My dear," she said, "you are mistaken--utterly mistaken."
"How can I be mistaken, Zoe, when I had it from his own lips? He would
never forgive me for telling you... And, indeed, I ought to have held
my peace. He could tell you so much more convincingly himself. I'm a
fool to have spoken... It's the wrong time to speak of such things.
But my mind's so full of him, poor boy!"
Mrs Lawless got up, and stooping over her chair kissed her
affectionately.
"Don't worry. You have done no harm," she said. "If anyone could plead
for him it would be you, you kind, dear soul. You make me feel--" She
hesitated, and straightening herself stood slowly upright, looking
gravely into the lifted face,--"mean," she added, after a pause.
She clasped her hands behind her, and turning her back to the puzzled,
questioning, tear-swollen eyes that stared up at her in helpless
wonderment, gazed out upon the view. Through a break in the trees the
great square rock that is Table Mountain showed in the clear atmosphere
so surprisingly near that it seemed as though it formed a boundary to
the garden. The sunlight lay warmly on its rugged prominences leaving
the clefts and crannies in its grey sides cold and dark and secretive,
the lurking-places of mystery and shadows, hiding ever from the light
like the evil thoughts of a man's mind. Zoe Lawless gazed at the
mountain, looking blue in the brilliant sunshine, and her eyes were
clouded as the dark clefts in its sides. She was ashamed of the part
she had deliberately played, ashamed above all of having deceived this
woman who was her friend.
"I'm wondering what you are thinking of me," she said quickly. "And it
hurts. I care... so much. You tempt me to tell you things--things that
I keep double-locked in my heart--in order to justify myself."
She turned round suddenly, frowning, and tapped her foot impatiently on
the stone floor of the stoep.
"Merely to justify myself!" she repeated... "Was ever a more paltry
reason given than that? Shall I tell you, Kate? ... Shall I show you
the wound in my breast... the ugly, raw, unhealing wound that I am for
ever tearing open with my own hand? I would tell you what I would not
tell another human being sooner than you should think ill of me."
"If that is your only reason for giving me your confidence, there is no
need," the other answered. "It's just because I think so highly of you,
Zoe, that I feel the disappointment so keenly. But perhaps it's as well
that you don't care, because... in the event of..."
Here she broke down completely, her thoughts so charged with gruesome
possibilities that Mrs Lawless' efforts at reassurance were futile. It
was impossible, she declared, to accept comfort with the idea of the
hangman's rope ever present in her mind.
"I'm waiting for Theo to come up from town," she said tearfully. "He's
gone to interview lawyers and barristers, and anyone who is likely to be
able to help. Thank Heaven the assizes are on this month! I don't know
how I should bear a longer suspense."
Mr Smythe reached home as Mrs Lawless was driving away. She stopped
the car when she saw him, and he got out of the taxi he had driven up
from town in and went to speak to her.
"You've been with Kate," he said. "I'm glad of that. She's horribly
cut up, poor girl! It's a bad business... very. Looks black for Karl."
"You think,"--Mrs Lawless shivered involuntarily--"that he won't be
able to clear himself?"
At sight of the shiver and her white face he remembered her friendly
relations with Van Bleit, and hesitated to give free expression to his
thoughts.
"Oh! I don't know," he said... "You see, we know so little. The only
thing that is positive is that he killed the man... He admits it. But
men have done that before, you know, and haven't swung for it. We won't
look on the worst side until we've got to."
She realised that his desire was to spare her feelings, and a soft blush
mantled her cheeks at the knowledge of what he was thinking.
"I'm not Kate," she said quietly. "I wish you wouldn't hold out hopes
you don't in the least entertain. You are afraid the case will go
against him... Why don't you say so frankly?"
"Because," he answered jerkily, "I've got no grounds for supposing
anything of the sort. But I've been interviewing men this morning whose
business it is to see the more serious side, and it doesn't tend to
reassure one. Don't let that worry you, though, Mrs Lawless; we are
going to do the best we can for him."
Again the swift rush of embarrassed colour warmed her face. The
tell-tale crimson strengthened his misapprehension. He fell to
wondering what women saw in Van Bleit that won their liking. His wife's
partiality for her cousin was the greatest unsolved puzzle of his life.
"We'll do our best," he repeated, wishful to allay her anxiety. "If it
wasn't for Grey... It'll be rather like two dogs worrying over a bone.
It will be interesting to see who wins. The odds are against us... But
we'll do our best."
That phrase rang in Zoe Lawless' ears like a refrain as she drove on...
"We'll do our best." ... So Theodore Smythe, as well as his wife,
imagined that Karl Van Bleit's danger mattered to her. He had sought to
hearten her with encouraging words; the very pressure of his hand when
he bade her good-bye had conveyed a silent kindly sympathy, and his
smile was meant to be reassuring. Apart from the shock the news had
occasioned her, Van Bleit's danger concerned her no more than the danger
of the man in the street. Yet she by her actions had led these people
to the inference they had drawn.
She frowned as the car spun along the dusty road, under the huge
straggling trees that lined it on either side, and waved their long
gaunt arms musically in the wind. It troubled her to remember now, in
face of all that had happened, that she had stooped to such deception,
even though her motive had not been entirely unworthy. She had taken
advantage of Van Bleit's attitude towards herself, had sought
deliberately--as some women seek from motives of vanity--to attain an
influence over him, and she had succeeded so far beyond her expectation.
Her object had been to get possession of the letters that men were
risking and sacrificing their lives to obtain. She had meant to destroy
the letters had they come into her possession, and so put it out of the
power of any man to turn them to his own use. In the accomplishment of
this her one hope had been to save from danger the man who had so
recklessly, for a sordid compensation, undertaken their recovery. Van
Bleit's feelings, as also to what extent she would have to lower her
pride in the pursuance of her project, had scarcely been taken into
consideration. All that had seemed up to now beside the main issue.
But now things had undergone a change, and the man for whose sake she
had been willing to sacrifice her own prejudices, had gone out of her
life, slaying by his own act all possible hope of intercourse between
them in the future...
She leant back in her seat, and closed her eyes to the sunshine, the
garish, laughing, intrusive sunshine that seemed to mock her pain. She
was mourning for him, setting up a headstone to him in her memory; for
he was as dead to her as though Van Bleit's bullet after effecting its
deed of violence had sped through the darkness and spent itself in his
heart. And upon the headstone she inscribed the one word "Waste."