The post at Sunningdale was a weekly, not a daily event. Happy
Sunningdale!
It was conveyed from the nearest Field Cornet's, by a ragged native,
bestriding a still more ragged pony, and who was "run" by general
contribution on the part of those residents whose letters he delivered.
We have said that the postal delivery at Sunningdale was a weekly event.
After rainy weather, when the Umtirara and other rivers were down, it
was a fortnightly business; sometimes even three weeks would go by
without postal communication with the outer world. Happy, happy
Sunningdale!
To-day, however, the courier was up to time, and Christopher Selwood,
unlocking the weather-beaten leather bag, began to sort and distribute
its contents.
"Miss Avory--Miss Avory--Miss Avory--heavens! There's no end to them.
We shall have the postboy striking for double pay if Miss Avory's
correspondents don't hold their hand."
Violet--devouring with her eyes the contents of the bag as they came
forth--laughed at her host's remark, but the laugh was a hollow one.
The missive she hungered for was not there. True, she had expected this
contingency sooner or later--yet now that it had come it did not seem
any the less poignant. Every post hitherto had brought letters from her
lover, each with a different postmark. Now his silence meant that he
was beyond the reach of any such civilised institutions. She would see
no more of his handwriting until she should again have heard the sound
of his voice. But--what if it were fated that never again should she
hear that voice?
"That's all the `hopes and fears' this week," said Selwood, holding the
leather bag upside down. Then gathering up the bundle of his own
correspondence he crammed it carelessly into his pocket and went out.
There was some irrigating to be attended to down at the "lands," and for
the next two hours Christopher was very busy. Then as he returned to
the house, he suddenly remembered his unopened correspondence. It was
near sundown, but there was half an hour to spare before counting-in
time.
Looking around, he espied a seat--the same rustic bench where we first
witnessed Violet's stolen interview. The place was shady, and cool and
inviting withal. Selwood sat down, and dragging the letters out of his
pocket and having laid them out, face downwards, along the bench,
proceeded to open them one by one.
They were mostly of the ordinary kind--business letters relating to the
sale of stock or corn--an official notification or two--soon disposed
of. But one he had opened near the last must have been of a different
nature. First a puzzled look came into his eyes--then he guffawed
aloud.
"Pray do not flatter yourself," began the missive, dispensing entirely
with the regulation formality of opening--"pray do not flatter yourself
in the idea that I am in ignorance of your whereabouts. Clever as you
may imagine yourself, not one of your disreputable movements takes place
unknown to me. I know where you are now, _and who is with you_. But it
is of no use. If you exercise your influence over that abandoned
creature to the utmost she can never be anything but your mistress. For
mark my words, Maurice Sellon, whatever you may do I will never set you
free. You are bound to me by a tie that nothing but my own will or my
death can sever. But I will never consent to play into your villainous
hands or into those of your creature Violet Avory--"
"Oh, good God in heaven," cried Selwood, horror-stricken. "What in the
world have I gone and done now! `Maurice Sellon! Violet Avory!' Good
Lord, what does it all mean?" Then, instinctively he did what he should
have done at first, turned the sheet to glance at the signature. There
it was.
"Your shamefully injured wife,
"Adela Sellon."
"Oh, good Lord, I've done it now!" he cried again, the horrible truth
dawning upon him that he had not only opened and read another man's
letter, but had surprised another man's secret, and that a secret of a
peculiarly awkward nature. How he anathematised his carelessness. He
snatched up the envelope, which he had thrown down among the others.
There was the address--plain as a pikestaff. Yet, stay, not so very
plain after all. It was directed "M. Sellon, Esq." But the long
letters were dwarfed and the short extended. The "M" at a casual glance
looked not unlike "Ch," a common abbreviation on envelopes of Selwood's
longish Christian name. Then like lightning, his memory sped back to
the day of his guest's arrival and his own joke relative to each of them
holding half their names in common. "We are both `Sells,'" he had said
with a laugh, and now into what a cursed mistake had that coincidence
led him.
Poor Chris groaned aloud as he thought of the awkward position in which
his carelessness had placed him. It would have been bad enough had the
letter been of an ordinary nature. But being such as it was, the
probabilities that its real owner would believe in accident having
anything to do with the matter were infinitesimal. No. He would
certainly suspect him of a deliberate intention to pry into his affairs.
And what made things worse was the fact of the other man being his
guest.
But only momentarily did this idea serve to divert his thoughts from the
extreme awkwardness of his own position. Violet Avory was his guest,
too; and with far greater claim on his consideration than this
stranger--for was she not under his care? And as the full force of the
disclosure with which he had so involuntarily become acquainted--and its
consequences--struck home to his mind, honest Chris felt fired with hot
anger against the absent Sellon. What business had the latter--a
married man--laying himself out to win poor Violet's heart? That he had
succeeded--and thoroughly succeeded--had been only too obvious to every
member of the Sunningdale household--and that for some time past. No,
no. Sellon had abused his hospitality in a shameful manner, and in so
doing had almost forfeited any claim to consideration. Had he learned
the ugly secret in the ordinary way Christopher would not have hesitated
for a moment. He would have forbidden Sellon the house in terms which
should leave no sort of margin for dispute. But then--the manner of his
information. There lay the rub. Never in the whole course of his life
had Christopher Selwood found himself in so difficult--so perplexing a
situation.
Then he did the very worst thing he could have done. He resolved to
take his wife into confidence in the matter at once. Bundling the whole
heap of correspondence into his pocket again, he rose, and took his way
to the sheep-kraals for the evening count-in. But it is to be feared
that if Gomfana or old Jacob had carelessly left a sheep or two in the
veldt that evening _pro bono_ the jackals, their master was too
uncertain in his count to be sure of it.
Mrs Selwood's indignation at the disclosure was as great as that of her
husband, but the method by which that disclosure had come about,
womanlike, she dismissed as a comparative trifle. Indeed, had she been
the one to open the letter, it is pretty safe to assert that so far from
resting content with the fragment which Christopher had found more than
enough, she would have read it through to the bitter end. For to the
feminine mind the axiom that "the end justifies the means" is a
thoroughly sound one. Not one woman in fifty can resist the temptation
of reading a letter which she is not meant to read when it is safe to do
so, and not one in ten thousand if she suspects any particular reason
why she should be left in ignorance of its contents.
"Well, now, Hilda, what's to be done?" said Selwood, when he had told
her--for with scrupulous honour he had refused to let her see one word
of the letter itself. It was only intended for one person's eyes. It
was horribly unfortunate that two had seen it, but it would be worse
still to extend the privilege to a third.
"What's to be done?" she echoed. "It's a shocking business, and the man
must be an arrant scoundrel. The only thing to be done is, in the first
place, to request him not to return here; in the next, to sound Violet
herself. Things may not have gone so far as we think, but I'm very much
afraid they have. Why, latterly the girl has become quite changed, and
for a week or so before he left she could hardly bear him out of her
sight."
"Yes, that'll be the best plan, I suppose," acquiesced Chris, ruefully.
"I hope Violet will show a proper amount of sense and self-respect,"
concluded Mrs Selwood, in a tone which seemed to convey that the hope
was but a forlorn one. "But remember, Chris, we must take up a firm
position and stand to it. The girl is very young, and we are
responsible for her until she returns home, and indeed I begin to think
the sooner she does that the better, now. She is very young, as I said,
but she has turned one and twenty, and there's no knowing what mad
suicidal act of folly a girl of her temperament, and legally her own
mistress, may be capable of under these circumstances."
"It'll be a difficult thing for me to explain matters about the letter,"
said Selwood, ruefully. "The fellow is sure to scout the idea of a
mistake. However, there's no help for it. I must explain, and that,
too, at the earliest opportunity."
Tact is not, as a rule, a feminine characteristic, but Hilda Selwood
possessed a larger share of it than many women with considerably the
advantage over herself in training and general knowledge of the world.
She began as she had said by literally "sounding" Violet. But there was
something in the latter's manner which seemed to show that the news of
Sellon's previous appropriation was no news to her at all--in fact, that
she had known it all along. Finally she admitted as much, and rather
gloried in it.
Then ensued a tolerably lively scene. What if he was chained to a fiend
of a woman whose sole end and object had always been to make life a
burden to him? burst forth Violet, with livid face and flashing eyes.
The creature would die some day, it was to be hoped, and then ten
thousand heavens were as nothing to the happiness before them both.
Give him up? Not she! She would rather die a thousand times over, and
would do so first. She was his real wife in the sight of God, she
declared, as the stock blasphemous balderdash runs, whatever the other
woman was in name, and so forth. Rebuke, reason, appeals to pride, to
self-respect were all alike in vain before this furious outburst of
uncontrollable passion. The girl seemed possessed of a very demon. She
hurled reproaches at her hostess and friend, taxing her with playing the
spy upon her--conspiracy, amateur detective business, everything--and
declared she would sooner sleep in the veldt than pass another night
under that roof. Finally she went off into a fit of shrieking, violent
hysterics, and in this condition articulated things that set Hilda
Selwood's ears tingling with outraged disgust.
"The most painfully shocking scene I ever witnessed in my life, and I
hope and trust I never may again," was the latter's comment to her
husband some time afterwards.
"And the curious part of it is I can't for the life of me make out what
the deuce she can see in the fellow," had been Christopher's rejoinder.
"He's not much to look at, and although he's good company in a general
way, I don't think his brain-box holds a very close fit."
A common enough speculation, and one which must ever remain in the
category of things speculative. "What the deuce can she see in the
fellow?" Who is to say?