A tiny sea-side village, red roofs and grey church tower nestling
between the slope of great hills clothed with velvety green woods, and
the uplands beyond brilliant with yellow gorse and crimson heather. And
the triangle of sunlit sea just glimpsed, is blue as the sky above.
Up the single street two persons are walking, and the summer loveliness
of the fair English scene is something of a contrast to the vaster, but
not less beautiful, landscape in which we last saw these two framed; for
we have seen them before.
Now they gain the modest, but clean and comfortable farm-house lodgings
overlooking the village and the sea, and which is nearly the only
accommodation so out-of-the-way a place can offer.
"Post in," says Lalante, womanlike eagerly making for several letters
spread out upon the table. "Why here's one from father, forwarded on.
Oh I am glad. He hasn't written for quite a long time."
"Getting homesick, child?"
"Darling, you know I'm not. Still I shan't be sorry to be duly
installed at dear old Seven Kloofs."
"But there are no shops."
"Don't tease. Oh, but--" and her eyes grew soft--"if you only knew how
he appreciated what you did, I mean that offer you made him. He says it
was the saving of him."
"In the words I used to him on a somewhat similar occasion--`shut up',"
rejoins Wyvern, stopping her mouth with a kiss. "Here's a yarn from
Fleetwood! Now we'll each see what each says."
"Joe's news is good," he goes on, glancing down the sheet. "He's
working the oracle fine about the plunder, but he says that nearly six
months of England, and that mostly London, is about enough for any
self-respecting up-country man, and wants to go back again when we do."
"Why of course," absently and not immediately. Then with a start. "How
dreadful! Oh how dreadful!"
"What is?"
"Mr Warren's dead!"
"No! Poor chap. What did he die of?"
"He committed suicide. Look. You read it out. I can't," and Lalante
looked very pale and distressed as she handed over her father's letter.
"You'll probably have seen about poor Warren's death in the English
papers--" it went on--"but in case you haven't, he was found in his
sitting room, shot through the heart three weeks ago. All the
evidence went to show that it was a case of suicide, even if he hadn't
left a letter to say so. But it gave no reason, and at the adjourned
enquiry--held the day before yesterday--nothing could be discovered to
throw any light on the matter. All his affairs were in perfect order,
in fact he turns out to be a great deal better off than was supposed,
and that means a good deal. And the medical evidence proved him to be
absolutely strong and healthy. So the thing remains and will remain a
complete mystery. Poor chap! One would have thought him the last man
in the world to have done such a thing. I send you a cutting with a
report of the adjourned enquiry."
"Your father's about right, dear," said Wyvern handing back the letter.
"Warren is absolutely the last man I should have suspected of suicidal
tendency. Why he had everything under the sun to make life attractive.
And yet--I don't know. Life is such a deuced rum thing, and every
donkey knows where his own saddle galls him. Poor Warren may have had
something upon his mind."
Did some shadow of a suspicion cross that of Lalante as to the real
state of the case? If so it was not a thing that she cared to put into
words. But she was very shocked at Warren's sad end. She tried to
forget the instinct which had led to her cold suspicions of him of late,
and remembered his intrepid courage in rescuing her small brother from
the raging waters of the flooded Kunaga.
"Let's see what the newspaper says about it. It's the _Gydisdorp
Herald_!" went on Wyvern running his eye down the cutting. "It's all
pretty much the same as what your father says--By Jove! here's something
though. Listen to this:--
"It will be remembered that one of the last services our lamented
fellow-townsman was able to render to society at large, is that he was
instrumental in procuring the arrest and conviction of that atrocious
scoundrel Jonathan Baldock, who was hanged at Beaufort West, only a
week before Mr Warren's sad end. This Baldock or Bexley, or Rawson--
he had several aliases--it will be remembered, was convicted of the
murder of a Dutch farmer and his wife under circumstances of great
barbarity, and for some years had managed to escape detection. But if
the feet of Justice are sometimes slow they are nearly always sure.
His whereabouts became known to Mr Warren by the merest accident, and
that model citizen caused him to be lured from the wild border of
Northern Zululand--where his business, we may be sure was of no lawful
nature--and his arrest and conviction promptly followed, once he set
foot within the confines of British civilisation."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Well, Lalante, that is a startler," said Wyvern, when he had concluded.
"Why this is no other than that unmitigated ruffian who gave us such a
lot of trouble up there. When we saw no more of him after finding the
stuff, Joe and I of course took for granted the Usutus had managed to
get hold of him again. Well I thoroughly agree with the Gydisdorp rag--
if ever a scoundrel richly deserved hanging it was our old acquaintance
Bully Rawson."
"I should think so from what you've told me of him alone," assented
Lalante. "But it is very sad about poor Mr Warren. Come dear, let's
get through the letters and go out again. The evening is going to be
perfectly divine."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is an element of self about most phases of happiness, and notably
about that called Love. They wandered forth, these two, and in the joys
and glories of the radiant evening, outer misfortune soon became dimmed
in the all absorbing happiness of being together again and together for
all time. But they had gone through much.
The End.