She did not venture to take Lynette with her to the Hospital next day, but
secretly charged Sister Tobias and Sister Hilda-Antony to carry her
whithersoever they went, and not once to let her out of sight. This done,
she knew herself impotently helpless to do more. This strong and salient
woman, lapped in unseen, impalpable serpent-coils that tightened every
hour, was waxing weak. By her own deed she had barred out help and put
counsel far from her. She had known the punishment would not be long in
coming, when, for the sake of Richard's daughter, she had lied to
Richard's friend.
Now she knew, poor, noble, suffering soul, that it would have been wiser
to have saved her spotless garment from the smirch by telling him the
truth. Then she could have fought this invisible tarantula Thing, with the
conjectural hairy claws, the baleful, glittering eyes, and the padding
feet that dogged her in the dark, with a strong man's arm to aid her. God
was in Heaven, and in Him were her faith and trust, but the comfort of a
human counsellor would have been unspeakable.
In a purely spiritual difficulty she would have gone to Father Wix. The
kindly, fussy, feeble little old priest could hardly help her in this
extremity. She had never told _him_ what had happened at the tavern on the
veld. Deep in her pitying woman's heart the child's cruel secret had been
buried, once learned. Sister Tobias was the only one who shared it.
Meanwhile she was followed that night and the next night; and on the
morning of the Thursday, when she rose from her sleepless bed, another
letter weighted with a stone had been dropped down the ladder-hole. She
was to give the anonymous writer a meeting and receive a message, unless
she wished them that chose to be nameless to lay in wait for the girl.
Most likely that would be the better way. She could choose.
She burned the second letter before she went to the Hospital. She found
there the single sheet of the _Siege Gazette_ fluttering in every hand.
Even her dignified reserve could not ward off the well-meant
congratulations, the eager questions, the interested comments on the news
contained in the three last paragraphs of the column that was signed "Gold
Pen." Then came the telephone message from Lady Hannah. We know what words
of hers the wire carried back. All the more firm, all the more courageous,
all the more determined that her knees shook, and her heart was as water
within her. For the Thing that coiled in the dark would surely strike now.
Perhaps it was some premonition of approaching death that made her, always
gracious, always infinitely kind, untiring in helpful deeds, move about
among the sick that day, with such a sorrowful-sweet tenderness for them
in her noble face and in her gentle touch, and in that wood-dove's voice
of hers, that they spoke of it long afterwards with bated breath. A
perfume as of rare incense was wafted from the folds of her veil, they
said, and a pale aureole of light shone about her white-banded forehead,
and her eyes---- Ah! who that met their look could ever forget those eyes?
It was before twilight when she left the Hospital and went to the Convent,
a tall, upright, mantled and hooded figure, stepping through the heavy
rain that had fallen since noon, under a quaint monster of a cotton
umbrella with ribs of ancient whale,--Tragedy carrying Farce.
It was not the custom to linger in the neighbourhood of the Convent, even
among those who were most indifferent to shot and shell. No one was
visible in its vicinity, except one burly, bushy-bearded, dark-skinned man
in tan-cords and a moleskin jacket. He lounged against a bent and twisted
lamp-post, near the broken entrance-gates, cutting up a lump of something
that might have been cake-tobacco upon his broad, thick palm with a
penknife.
She passed him as she went in. His slouched hat made shadow for his eyes.
But so curiously shallow and flat and rusty pale were they against the
purplish-brown of the full-blooded, bearded face, that their sharp, sly,
sudden look as she went by was as though the adder-fangs had slashed at
her. She knew it was the man who had written those two letters. And
something else she knew, but did not dare to admit her knowledge even to
herself as yet.
She mustered all her forces to meet what was coming as she went up the
broken stairs. The wind and the long, driving lances of the rain came at
her through the gaps in the walls. The sky was a driving hurry of muddy
vapours. The grey hills were blotted out by mist and fog. Long flashes of
white fire leaped from them, and the heavy boom of cannon followed. Then
all would be still again. She passed down the whitewashed, matted, sodden
corridor, and drew out the heavy key of the chapel door from a deep pocket
under her black habit, and went in.
Rain beat in here through jagged holes in the soft brickwork and poured
through the broken roof, whose rubbish littered the floor. Whiter squares
on the whitewashed walls, sodden now with damp, and peeling, showed where
the pictures of the Stations of the Cross had hung; with them all
draperies had been stripped away and hidden. The crimson-velvet-covered
ropes that had done duty instead of altar-rails had been removed, their
brass supports unscrewed from the floor. The naked altar-stone was covered
with fragments of cheap stained-glass from the little east window of which
the Sisters had been so proud. The Tabernacle gaped empty; sandy,
reddish-grey dust filled the tiny piscina, and lay thick upon the
altar-stone and the shallow wooden altar-steps, and wherever else the rain
had not reached it to turn it into yellow mud.
Why had she come here? Because she felt as though the Presence that had
housed under the veil of the Consecrated Element were still guarding Its
desecrated home. And near the door of the tiny sacristy dangled the rope
communicating with the bell that hung, as yet uninjured, in the little
wooden cupola upon the roof. The bell could be rung, should need arise.
She did not formulate in thought what need. But the recollection of those
poisonous adder-eyes stirred even in that proud, dauntless woman's bosom a
cold and creeping fear. And when she heard the padding, stealthy footsteps
whose sound seemed burned in upon her brain, traversing the soaked matting
of the corridor, she caught her breath, and an icy dew of anguish
moistened her shuddering flesh.
Then slowly, cautiously, the door opened. He came in, shutting it
noiselessly after him. It was the man she had seen loafing by the
lamp-post. And, standing tall and forbidding on the bare altar's
carpetless steps, she threw out her white hand in a quick, imperious
gesture, forbidding his nearer approach.
For an instant the dignity and authority of the tall, black-robed figure
gave pause even to Bough. Then he touched his wide-brimmed felt hat to her
with a civility that was the very essence of insolence, and took it off
and shook the wet from it, and dropped it back upon his head again. He
leaned against the wall by the door where there was a little holy-water
font, and stuck his gross thumbs in his belt, and waited for her to begin.
Always he followed that plan when the woman was angry. Nothing remained
for any bloke to teach Bough about the sex. You let her row a bit, and
when she had done herself out, you put in what you had got to say. That
was Bough's way with them always.
"You have written letters to me and followed me."
His grinning red mouth and tobacco-stained teeth showed in the beard. He
looked at her and waited.
"Why have you done this? And, now that you have brought yourself into my
sight, quitting the safe shelter of darkness and anonymity, what is to
hinder me from handing you over to those who administer and enforce
Martial Law in this town, and will deal with you as you deserve?"
His light eyes glittered. His teeth showed again in the brown bush. He
spat upon the floor of the sacred place, and answered:
"That's all blow. How do I know what you mean about writing letters and
following? Who has seen me doing it? Not one of the mob. I'm just a man
that has come in off the road out of the rain. Maybe I have no business in
this crib? That's for you to say.... Maybe I have a message for somebody
you know. So you don't choose to give it, then that's for her to hear."
He swung about in pretended haste, and laid his hand upon the door.
"Stop," she said, with white lips. "You will not molest the person to whom
you refer. You will give your message--if it be one--to me, and to me
alone."
"High and mighty," the ugly, wordless smile that faced round on her again
seemed to say. "But in a little I'll bring you down off that...." He spat
again upon the Chapel floor, and scratched his head under his hat, and
began, like a simple, good-natured fellow, a rough miner with a heart of
gold:
"No offence is meant, lady, and why should it be taken?"
She seemed to grow in height as she folded her arms in their flowing black
sleeves, and looked down upon him silently. The boiling whirlpool in her
breast mounted as it spun, stifling her. But she was outwardly calm. He
went smoothly on, with an occasional display of red mouth and grinning
teeth in the big beard, and always that baleful glitter in his strange
light eyes:
"I'm a man that, in the goodness of his heart, is always doing jobs for
other people, and never getting thanked for it. I started to push my way
up here, two hundred miles from Diamond Town, three weeks back, with a
letter from a woman to her husband. She couldn't pay me nothing, poor old
girl. Said she'd pray for me to her dying day. There was a pal of mine put
up the grubstake. His name"--his evil eyes were glued upon her face--"was
Bough. You've heard that name before!"
It was an assertion, not a question. The fierce rush of crimson to her
brow, and the flame that leaped into her eyes, had already spoken to her
knowledge. She was deadly quiet, gathering all her superb forces for a
sudden lioness-spring. He went on:
"He's a widower now, Bough, and well-to-do. Getting on for rich. Got
religion too, highly respected. Says Bough to me, 'There's a young woman
at the Convent at Gueldersdorp that's not the sort for holy, praying
ladies to have under their roof, for all the glib slack-jaw she may have
given them.'"
Her great eyes burned on him.
"Say what you have to say, and be brief. Go on."
He shifted from one foot to the other, and licked his fleshy lips.
"I've got to tell the story my own way, lady. Don't you quarrel with it.
Says Bough: 'They picked her up on the veld seven years ago, a runaway in
rags. As pretty a girl she was,' says he, 'as you'd see in a month's trek,
and from what I hear they've made a lady of her.'"
Still silent and watchful, and her eyes upon him, searching him. He went
on:
"'However the years have changed her,' says Bough, 'you'll spot her by her
little feet and hands, and her slender shape, and her big eyes, like
yellow diamonds, and her hair, the colour of dried tobacco-leaf in the
sun....'"
She quivered in every limb, and longed to shut her eyes and bar out the
intolerable sight of him, leering and lying there. Had she not
interrupted, she must have cried out. She said:
"You tell me this man Bough is at Diamond Town?"
"I said he was there when I left. The young woman he talked of was brought
up at his place in Orange Free State, a nice respectable boarding-house
and hotel for travelling families on the veld between Driepoort and
Kroonfontein. Bough was good to the girl, and so was his wife, that's dead
since. Uncommon! Not that they had much of the dibs to spend in those
days. But, being an honest Christian man, Bough treated the girl like his
own. And right down bad she served him."
He licked his thick lips again, and the flattish, light-hued adder-eyes
glittered.
"There was a bloke that used to hang around the place--kind of coloured
loafer, with Dutch blood, overgiven to Squareface and whisky. He got going
gay with the girl----"
She stood like a statue of ebony and ivory. Only by the deep breaths that
heaved her broad bosom could you tell she lived--by that, and by the
unswerving watchfulness of those burning eyes.
"And Bough, when he caught them together, got mad, being a respectable
man, and let her taste the sjambok. Then she ran away."
He coughed, and shifted again from one foot to the other. He would have
preferred a woman who had loaded him with invectives, and told him that he
lied like hell.
"The man that had left her to Bough's guardianship was a sort of
broken-down English officer by the name of Mildare----"
Her bosom heaved more stormily, but her intense and scorching regard of
him never wavered.
"--Mildare. He left a hundred pounds with Bough, to be kept for her till
she was twenty. There was a waggon and team Bough was to have had to sell,
and use the money for the girl's keep, but a thief of a Dutch driver
waltzed with them--took 'em up Johannesburg way, and melted 'em into
dollars. Bough got nothing for all his kindness--not a tikkie. But he's
ready to hand over the hundred, her being so nigh come to age. There's a
locket with a picture in it, and brilliants round, that may be worth
seventy pounds more. All Bough wants is to do the square thing. This is
the message he sends her now. The money and the jewels will be handed
over, as in duty bound; and, since she's turned respectable and got
education, I was to say there's an honest man--widower now, and well
off--that's ready to hang up his hat for her, and wipe all old scores off
the slate in the regular proper way...."
She said in tones that were of ice:
"Bough is the honest man?..."
"Just Bough.... 'Maybe, in my decent anger at her goings on,' he says, 'I
went a bit too far. Well! I'm ready to make amends by making her my
wife.'"
The lioness crouched and leapt.
"You are Bough! You are the evil man, the servant of Satan, who wrought
abomination upon a helpless child!"
The onslaught came so suddenly that he was staggered. Then he swore.
"Not me, by G----!"
She pointed her long arm at him, and some strange force seemed to be
wielded by that unweaponed woman-hand that struck him and pierced him
through flesh, and bone and marrow....
"You are the man!" She stretched her arms to the wild, hurrying clouds
that looked in upon her through the yawning rifts in the roof, and called
upon her Maker for vengeance. "How long wilt Thou delay, O Lord, righteous
in judgment? Fulfil Thy promise! Bind Thou Thy millstone about the neck of
this wretch, hated and accursed of Thee, and let it drag him down to the
uttermost depths of the Lake of Fire, where such as he shall wallow and
howl throughout Eternity!----"
She was infinitely more terrible than the lioness who has licked her
murdered cubs. No Pythoness at the dizziest height of the sacred frenzy,
no Demeter wrought to delirium by maternal bereavement, was ever imagined
by poet or painter as half so grand, and terrible, and awe-inspiring, as
this furious cursing nun.
"--Delay not Thou, O Lord!" she prayed....
Rain fell in a curtain of gleaming crystal rods between them. Seen through
it, she appeared supernaturally tall, her garments streaming like black
flames, her face a white-hot furnace, her eyes intolerable, merciless,
grey lightnings, her voice a fiery sword that cleft the guilty to the
soul.
The voice of Conscience was dumb in him. He knew no remorse, and made a
jest of God. But his callous heart had been filled from the veins of
generations of Irish Catholic peasants, and, in spite of himself, the
blood in his veins ran cold with superstitious fear.
Yet, when no palpable answer came from that Heaven to which she cried, he
rallied, remembering that, after all, she was a woman, and alone with him
in the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Her
eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as though
about to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the
prelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, her
eyes were wide and preternaturally bright, and held him. He snarled:
"You'll not take the girl my message, then?"
She reared up her tall form, and laughed awfully.
"Did you dream I would defile her ears with it? Now that I know you, you
will be wise to leave this place; for it is a spot where your sins may
find you out!"
He jeered:
"That flash bounce doesn't go down with me. The trouble'll be at your end
of the house, unless you listen to reason and stop giving off hot air.
What's to hinder me making a clean breast to that swell toff she's
wheedled into asking her to marry him? What's to hinder me from standing
up before the whole mob, saying as I've repented what I done years back,
and I've come to make an honest girl of her at last?"
The whirling waters of bitterness in her breast were rising, drowning
her.... He realised her momentary weakness, and moved a step or two
nearer, keeping well between the woman and the door.
"What's to hinder me, I say?"
Her rapier of keen womanly intuition flashed out at him again, and drew
the blood.
"Your fear will hinder you. You are here in an assumed character, and
under a false name." The long arm shot out, the white hand pointed at him
again. "You never came here from Diamond Town. That letter was a forgery.
You have papers on you now that would prove you to be a spy, if you were
taken. Ah, I can see it written in your coward's face!"
The devil was at the woman's ear, prompting her. Or was it----? Bough's
dark, full-blooded face bleached to muddy-pale as her terrible voice rang
through the desolate place, and echoed among the broken rafters.
"You boast yourself ready to admit your infamy. You shall be compelled!
Everything shall be made known! I will go to Lord Beauvayse now, and tell
him all--all! And if he loves her, he will marry her. And you who have
secrets upon your soul even more perilous, if less vile and
hideous"--again the terrible hand pointed, and that sense of a
supernatural force that it wielded knocked his knees together and dried up
his mouth--"I see the millstone round your neck!..."
The clarion voice mounted on a great note of triumph. With her inspired
face, and with her floating veil, she looked like a Prophetess of old.
"The Lord is not mocked! He will avenge His little one as He has promised!
Move aside, you lost, and branded, and miserable wretch! Do you dare to
dream you can hinder Me from doing what I have said?"
He was at the bottom of the altar-steps as the tall, imperious figure came
sweeping down. The curtain of rain no longer fell between them, but behind
him. He must silence that railing voice that cried in the house-top--put
out the light of those intolerable eyes....
He drew out his revolver with a blasphemous oath. At the gleam of steel in
the thickening twilight she dropped her upraised arms, and made a swift
rush to the rope of the bell, and set it clanging. Two double strokes rang
out; the third was broken in the middle.... For as she swung round,
panting and tugging at the rope, he shot her in the back above the line of
the white wimple from which the veil streamed aside, and ran to the door
as she cried out and swayed forward, still clinging to the vibrating rope,
and turned there and fired a second shot, that struck her in the body.
Then he was gone, and the walls were crowding in on her to crush her, and
then receding to immeasurable distances, and the blood and air from her
pierced lungs bubbled through the bullet-holes in the serge stuff and the
scorched linen.
She stumbled a few steps blindly, then fell and lay choking, with that
strange gurgling and whispering in her ears, the rushing blood mingling
with the water of the puddles that the rain had made upon the littered
floor. She faltered out the name of her Master and Spouse, and commended
her pure soul to Him in utter humility. Death would have been a welcome
loosing of her bonds but for the Beloved left behind, at the mercy of the
merciless.
The stab of that remembrance lent her strength to struggle up upon her
knees. Ah, cruel! cruel!... But she must submit. Was it not the Holy Will?
She signed the Cross upon her bosom, with fingers already growing stiff,
and made a piteous little act of charity, forgiving the sin of the man
against herself, but not his crime against dead Richard's child. And she
stretched out long black-sleeved arms gropingly in the thick, numbing
darkness that hemmed her in, and moaned to the Mother of the motherless to
have pity!... pity!...
She swayed forwards then, like a stately falling column, and lay with
outspread arms upon the altar-step.
"Jesu.... Mary.... _The child!..._"
The sacred names were stifled in her blood. The last two words were nearly
her last sigh. Thenceforward there was no sound at all in the Convent
chapel, save the dull splash of rain, falling through the holes in the
broken roof upon the sodden floor, where the dead woman lay, face
downwards.