It is not only in the heroic moments of life that the depth of human
feeling is sounded; occasionally in the simple and seemingly commonplace
incident the stress of emotion is greater than at times of a higher
mental tension. Tragedy passes often unsuspected, and the eye of the
casual observer rests without recognition on many intimate crises in the
destiny of the race. It is well that this is so. The heart that is
wounded prefers to cover its scars, and the breast that holds a sorrow
carries usually a jealous dread of discovery. For the eye of the world
is unsympathetic towards what it fails to understand. As the searching
light of the sun reveals not only the beauties of life but all its
sordid inequalities, so the judgment of humanity rests upon the obvious
and appraises and condemns with relentless indiscrimination. When Eve
ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she did not eat largely
enough. We recognise Good and Evil, but we miss the liner shades.
It was but a commonplace incident that happened in the square close to
Parliament buildings on the morning following Lawless' return to Cape
Town, but for the two people concerned it marked a moment of intense
significance,--a moment during which for them their world stood still.
Quite a number of eyes witnessed the meeting, but in the slight
encounter there was nothing to excite the faintest interest or comment--
merely the swift advance of a motor-car, to allow which to pass the tall
man with the scarred face, who was crossing the square at the moment,
was obliged to fall back a few paces, or risk being run down. The
occupant of the car looked straight into his eyes for the fraction of
time occupied in passing, and unsmiling, with white set face, slightly
inclined her head. He raised his hat, his own face quite as gravely
set, and standing where he was, with the dust of the road which the car
had raised upon his clothes, looked after it till it whirled out of
sight.
"Beastly things!" a stranger remarked to him sympathetically... "Jolly
nice when you're in 'em, but spoil the roads for pedestrians."
Lawless nodded, and stepping on the pavement pursued his way. The
spring sunshine poured warmly on the glaring white surface in the
square, and bathed in a yellow radiance the fine facades of the block of
buildings where the administrative affairs of the Colony are directed.
It was still blowing from the south-east, and little whirlpools of dust
rose in unexpected places, catching in their vortex any straying scrap
of paper, whirling it giddily and then ejecting it, or subsiding with it
in untidy heaps that the next gust disturbed and roused into fresh
activity.
Lawless walked in aimless fashion along the street. Time, since he had
nothing to do but wait, hung heavy on his hands. The men he had known
before fought shy of him, less, he felt, for what he had done than the
public manner of the doing. If one sin, sin secretly, was their gospel.
And what he had done had been done in the light of day before the eyes
of all men. It is easy when one lives in the world to become a cynic.
He left the busier thoroughfares and turned into the road that led past
the Weebers' house. There was one person in Cape Town, he knew, who
viewed his failures leniently, and just then he was curiously eager to
meet her. He had not sufficient effrontery to call at the house, but he
passed it slowly, and even retraced his steps and passed it a second
time, without, however, the result he had hoped for. Disappointed, he
returned to his hotel.
It was a surprise encounter when eventually he met her. He was walking
along the road one afternoon towards Rondebosch when she overtook him on
her cycle as she had done once before, only on this occasion she was not
alone. Young Bolitho was riding with her, and they both carried tennis
rackets slung on the handlebars of their machines.
She did not recognise him until her machine came abreast of him. She
had been unprepared for the encounter, not knowing that he was in Cape
Town, and when she met his glance she flushed hotly, and losing control
of her machine, swerved violently to one side. Bolitho swerved after
her, but she righted herself dexterously, and smiled into his anxious
face.
"I'm getting off, Teddy," she said. "Don't wait for me. I'll probably
overtake you,--at any rate, I shan't be far behind... Ride on, please."
He nodded, and only dimly understanding, and greatly troubled in mind,
kept on his course, while Julie slowed down her machine and alighted,
and waited for Lawless to come up.
"You!" she cried, and held out her hand to him in glad surprise.
He took the hand, pressed it warmly, and relieved her of the charge of
the cycle--the same old well-worn cycle he had wheeled for her before.
"I didn't know you were back in town," she said, walking along beside
him with flushed, glad young face and smiling eyes. "You've come--to
stay?"
"For a few days only," he replied... "I've spent three of them already.
I began to fear I should miss seeing you."
"Oh!" she said, and gasped with consternation at the mere thought. "I
wish I'd known..."
"I've been past the house a few times," he said.
"And I never saw you! ... It was nice of you to take the trouble," she
added, blushing.
"When a man counts his friends on the fingers of one hand--and then has
fingers to spare," he returned, looking into her eyes with a grave
smile, "he can't afford to overlook the truest of them."
"Not the truest," she contradicted quickly, her thoughts unconsciously
reverting to a scene she was little likely to forget, when a woman with
beautiful tear-filled eyes held in her hands a portrait of this man, and
spoke of her wasted youth.
Julie turned her face away from his and looked along the sunlit road.
She was wondering whether she could find the courage to tell him what
she knew. It was so difficult to talk to one towards whom, perhaps on
account of his reserve, she had always felt a certain shyness, of such
private and intimate things.
"No!" he said quietly.--"A very true friend, then... And one I value
highly,--perhaps because I know that I have her regard quite
independently of any merit. A man doesn't prize his fair-weather
friends; it's the friends of his adversity he holds dear."
"There is someone," Julie began, and hesitated, and then gathered fresh
courage and essayed again... "There is someone who--if you would let
her--would be the best friend you ever had... I don't understand why
you won't see it,--there are many things about you I fail to understand.
And I'm horribly afraid I'm going to annoy you. It's so impertinent to
interfere in other people's lives."
"It's an impertinence a great many people are guilty of," he returned...
"I don't fancy, myself, it ever does much good."
"You aren't going to be very severe with me, are you?" she pleaded.
"I'm not in the least likely to be severe with you," he answered. "But
since you feel like that about it, why not leave it alone?"
"Because," Julie replied bravely, "it's the saddest thing in all the
world that you shouldn't know what I do. I'm convinced you can't
know... You'd act differently if you knew."
"You are a little mystifying," he said, and looked at her uncertainly.
"It sounds rather like a grammatical conundrum to which the key may be
found in the tense. I'm not good at riddles. If you want me to
understand, you'll have to take the plunge, and not stand shivering on
the brink."
So Julie took the plunge, but took it after a feminine method, going in
by degrees with the instinctive aversion for putting her head under
water.
"I'm speaking of someone," she said, "I've grown to know and to love...
I think she also loves me."
"That wouldn't be very difficult," he interposed.
"Because," Julie went on, as though there had been no interruption, "she
talks to me sometimes of intimate things."
He stared at her.
"You are not going to repeat her confidence to me, surely?"
"Why, no," she answered. "But--I'm trying to explain."
"You're doing it very badly," he said; and it occurred to Julie that he
was anxious to prevent her explaining more fully. But because this
thing mattered to her, mattered tremendously, she persevered.
"I'm sorry for that," she said... "I so want you to understand. Please
try... And be a little patient with me. Once she spoke to me about
you. She didn't say much. But she had your photograph in her room, and
when she looked at it the tears were in her eyes. And then--"
Julie broke off abruptly and searched about after words. He waited in
silence. She had at least succeeded in gaining his attention. But his
interest was not of an entirely agreeable order. A heavy frown
contracted his brows, and the grey eyes sought the dust of the road in
preference to her earnest face. There was that in the quality of the
dust that was seemingly absorbing.
"She spoke of her wasted youth," the girl went on in a voice scarcely
above a whisper. "I wish--oh! how I wish I could give you some idea of
the sorrow in her voice,--the longing. She's proud. She tried to hide
her emotion. But I know."
He turned towards her suddenly, making no pretence of misunderstanding,
though she had mentioned no name, to whom she referred.
"You've allowed your love of romance to lead you astray," he said
curtly. "I am a better judge than you are in this matter."
"Ah! now," she cried quickly, "I have angered you, and done harm."
"Not so," he returned. "I shall cease to think of what you have told
me. You've jumped to a wrong conclusion, that's all. The friend you
speak of took away her friendship from me long ago. It was her own
doing. She would not thank you for your intercession."
"You are hard," she said unexpectedly. The accusation hit him; it was
what he had recently called himself. "And you're wrong. I understand
better than you do--perhaps because I'm a woman, and have suffered
myself."
"You are not a woman," he said, with sudden gentleness of manner. "You
are a child almost, and to children their sorrows appear
disproportionately great. As for suffering! ... Who among us can
expect to escape his share? And a little suffering is not harmful. The
human heart that hasn't been through the fire is inclined to be shallow.
All the pleasant pools in life are shallow; the great thoughts and the
great deeds come from the deep seas."
They walked for a while in silence after his last speech. When they had
covered a few yards in this manner Julie stopped and offered to take the
cycle.
"Teddy will be wondering what has become of me," she said. "We are
playing tennis this afternoon at Mrs Lawless'."
He stopped also and held the machine for her.
"I should like to see you again before you go," she added.
"Every evening at about five o'clock I will pass your house," he
replied.
She mounted and rode off, and Lawless, wheeling about, returned to the
city, his mind, for all his assertion that he would think no more of
what she had said, busy with the picture she had conjured up, a picture
which in his larger knowledge of the circumstances struck him as
exaggerated and unreal.
Julie overtook Bolitho round the first bend. He had dismounted and was
waiting for her at the roadside.
"I told you to go on," she said, when she came up with him.
"I know," he answered. "But I preferred to wait."
She slipped from her saddle to the ground, and, seating herself beside
him in the hedge, to the young man's intense embarrassment, dissolved
into tears.
"Oh, don't, Julie!" he pleaded... "Don't! I will go on and leave you,
if you wish it, dear."
"Silly!" she sobbed. "I don't wish it. You're the best fellow I ever
knew. Oh, Teddy! I'm so miserable. I've made a hash of things with
the best intentions in the world. There's nobody understands me, but
you. And you don't understand altogether."
"If you'll give me the cue, I'll try," he declared earnestly, leaning
towards her and encircling her with his arm. "You know that I'd do
anything on earth to please you. Julie, my darling! I love you so, I
can't bear to see you cry."
She suddenly sat up straighter, and laughed, and dabbed at her eyes.
"I know," she said. "I know... Oh, goodness! what a scarecrow I must
look! And anyone might come along."
She put up her hands and rearranged her hat.
"Is it straight, Teddy!" she asked.
"Yes," he answered, and looked her steadily in the eyes.
"My dear, don't try to deceive me," he said... "Better hurt my feelings
now than later... If it's the other fellow who wins I'll go my way."
"Stupid!" she cried, leaning her wet cheek against his shoulder.
"There's someone else for the other fellow--only he won't see it."
"I can't blame him," Teddy answered, "when there's you."
She laughed again.
"There has never been me for anyone besides yourself," she said. "If I
lower the prize in your eyes by that admission I can't help it. And
there's still left to you the choice of grabbing your machine out of the
hedge and riding away."
Teddy Bolitho sat gravely stiff and expectant. Beneath the light banter
of her manner he caught at a deeper note.
"Julie," he said nervously, "will you--If you don't mean anything, for
God's sake I don't lead me to hope falsely... You know that I've loved
you for years with the whole force of my nature. There's no one else
for me though I live to be a hundred. I've met you... That's enough.
It's you or no one. I'm not much of a catch, but if you'll have me,
such as I am, I'll spend my life in trying to make you happy."
"You make me happy as it is, Teddy," she answered quietly. "It is I who
will need to spend my life in trying to satisfy you."