After the explanations attendant upon Christopher Selwood's awkward
discovery, relations between Violet and her entertainers became somewhat
strained.
Spoiled and petted ever since she could remember, bowed down to as a
very goddess as she grew up in her fascinating girlhood; accustomed to
the most unbounded admiration, and undivided withal, Violet Avory was
now receiving almost her first check.
It was all very well for her host to wonder "what the deuce she could
see in the fellow," the fact remained that her love for Maurice Sellon
engrossed her whole headstrong and passionate nature, and opposition
served no other purpose than to rivet her determination.
To reasoning she was deaf. All appeals to her sense of self-respect
rendered her sullen--but underlying this sullenness lurked a dogged
intensity of resolution. If ever a woman was on the road to ruin Violet
Avory was that woman, and she would be lucky did she escape the final
goal.
The days that followed were tolerably uncomfortable for all concerned.
Violet sulked. She was an adept in the art of putting on an air of
outraged innocence, and managed to make everybody supremely
uncomfortable accordingly. She kept to her room as much as she
conveniently could, and when she did venture out she shunned Marian's
companionship, taking her solitary wanderings in secluded places. Her
hostess, angered and disgusted, after one or two further attempts at
reasoning with her, fell in with her mood, and left her severely to
herself. But kind-hearted Chris--with whom she had always been a great
favourite--persisted in declaring that she was not the one to blame in
the matter--that she was rather deserving of sympathy--and he
accordingly was the only one to whom she condescended to unbend.
She was so sorry to be such a nuisance to everybody, she would say,
putting on the most winningly plaintive air for his benefit. Had she
not better go at once instead of waiting for opportunities, which might
not occur for weeks? She would be quite safe, and had no fear of
travelling by herself. She was only a "wet blanket" in the house, and
an intolerable burden--she could see that. Everybody was so strange
now--as if she had done something awful. He, Christopher, was the only
one who ever gave her a kind word, or seemed to care whether she was
alive or dead. And then out would come the daintiest little lace
handkerchief in the world, and, of course, poor old soft-hearted
Christopher felt extremely foolish--as she intended he should--and
wilder than ever with the absent Sellon, which she did not intend.
Then he would endeavour to reassure her and reiterate again and again
that nobody blamed her, which, of course, did not impose upon her, for
with the freemasonry existing among women Violet knew better; knew that
she was in fact the very one whom her hostess indeed did think the most
to blame. She must not hurry away from them like that, he would say.
Things would come right again--it was only a temporary misunderstanding,
and they would all be as jolly again together as before. And Violet in
her secret heart rejoiced--for any day might bring back her lover.
However great was her apparent anxiety to relieve them of her presence
it would not do to be hurried away just in time to miss him. That would
be too awful.
Her relief at the welcome reprieve would not, however, have been so
great had she been aware of a certain fact as to which she had been
designedly kept in ignorance. Selwood had written to Maurice, directing
the letter to the principal hotel of a town through which the treasure
seekers were bound to pass on their return. He had taken steps to
ensure its immediate delivery, or return to himself if not claimed
within a given period, and in it she asked Sellon not to come to
Sunningdale until he had had an interview with the writer--at any place
he, Sellon, might choose to appoint. No, assuredly, her equanimity
might have been a trifle disturbed had she known of that. So the days
went by.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
One afternoon she was indulging in a solitary stroll, according to her
recent habit. It was nearly sundown. She walked along absently, her
dress sweeping the crickets in chirruping showers from the long dank
herbage under the shade of the quince hedge. She crossed, the deserted
garden, and gained the rough wicket-gate opening out of it on the other
side. Down the narrow bridle-path, winding through the tangled brake
she moved, still absently as in a dream. And she was in a dream, for it
was down this path that they two had walked that first morning--ah! so
long ago now.
She stood upon the river bank, on the very spot where they had stood
together. The great peaks soaring aloft were all golden in the slanting
sunset. The shout and whistle of the Kaffir herds bringing in their
flocks sounded from the sunlit hillside, mellowed by distance. Doves
cooed softly in the thorn-brake--their voices mingling with the
fantastic whistle of the yellow thrush and the shrill chatter of a cloud
of finks flashing in and out of their hanging nests above the water.
She stood thus in the radiant evening light, trying to infuse her mind
with a measure of its peace.
But above the voices of Nature and of evening came another sound--the
dull thud of hoofs. Some one was riding up the bridle-path on the other
side of the river. Heavens! Could it be--?
The thought set her every pulse tingling. Nearer, nearer came the hoof
strokes.
The horseman emerged from the brake. Tired and travel-worn he looked,
so too did his steed. The latter plunged knee-deep into the cool
stream, and drank eagerly, gratefully, of the flowing waters.
But the glint of the white dress on the bank opposite caught the rider's
eye. Up went his head. So too did that of the horse, jerked up
suddenly by a violent wrench of the bridle. There was a prodigious
splashing, stifling the horseman's exclamation, as he plunged through
the drift, and the water flew in great jets around. Then scarce had the
dripping steed touched the opposite bank than the rider sprang to the
ground and the waiting, expectant figure was folded tight in his arms.
"Oh, Maurice, darling, it is you at last!" she murmured, clinging to him
in his close embrace. And then she felt that it was good indeed to
live.
"Me? Rather! And `at last' is about the word for it. And so my little
girl has been waiting here for me ever since I went away. Confess!
Hasn't she?"
"Yes."
"Of course. This was always our favourite retreat, wasn't it? Still, I
thought just the very moment I happened to arrive you would be anywhere
else--with the rest of the crowd. It's just one's luck as a rule. But
mine is better this time--rather!"
"But--but--where's Renshaw?" she asked, lifting her head, as she
suddenly became alive to the other's non-appearance. Sellon looked
rather blank.
"H'm--ha!--Renshaw? Well--he isn't here--hasn't come, anyhow."
"But--is he coming on after you?" she said, awake to the inconvenience
of their first meeting being suddenly broken in upon.
"M--well. The fact is, Violet darling, you don't care about anything or
anybody now we are together again? The long and the short of it is,
poor Fanning has rather come to grief!"
"Come to grief!" she echoed, wonderingly.
"Well--yes. Fact is, I'm afraid the poor chap will never show up here
again. He got hit--bowled over by those cursed Bushmen or Korannas, or
whatever they were. We had to give them leg-bail, I can tell you. They
pinked him with one of their poisoned arrows. He's done for."
"Oh! Poor Renshaw!" cried Violet, in horror. "But you--you are unhurt,
dearest? You have--have come back to me safe!"
"Safe as a church. I got a trifle damaged too. Sprained my ankle just
at the wrong time--those Bushmen devils coming on hard in our rear.
Touch and go, I'll tell you all about it by-and-bye. I shan't tell the
others about Fanning all at once--break it gradually, you know. So
don't you cut in with it."
"Poor Renshaw!" That was all. In those two words she dismissed the
memory of the man but for whose unselfish heroism the lover in whose
embrace she nestled so restfully, so gladsomely, would now be lying in
ghastly fragments among the weird mountains of that far-away land.
"Poor Renshaw!" Such was his epitaph at her lips. Truly her
all-absorbing clandestine passion had exercised no improving, no
softening influence upon Violet Avory--as, indeed, how should it?--for
was it not the intensely selfish absorption of an intensely selfish
nature! "Poor Renshaw!"
And the man--he who owed his life to the other many times over, but
never so much as in the last instance--what of him?
Nothing! For from such a nature as his nothing was to be expected.
This modern Judas, unlike his prototype, was prepared to enjoy to the
full the price of blood. No compunction on that head troubled him.
"Oh, Maurice. I must warn you!" cried Violet, suddenly. "Everything
has come out."
He started then. A grey scared look came over his face. His conscience
and his mind flew back to those grim, iron-bound deserts.
"Everything?" he stammered, blankly.
"Yes, dear. About ourselves, I mean. I can't imagine how, but it has.
They have been leading me such a life. Hilda has been perfectly
hateful. The way in which she has treated me is absolutely scandalous.
And Marian--sanctimonious sheep! Pah! I hate them all," she broke off,
her eyes flashing.
"My poor darling. But how do you suppose it happened? You haven't been
leaving any letters about?"
"No--no--no," she interrupted quickly. "No, no. My belief is--
she--_she_--has found out where I--I am--where you are--and has written
to them."
His face grew dark.
"That devil!" he muttered between his teeth. "That she-devil would do
anything--anything."
"I want to warn you, Maurice. The only way out of the difficulty, while
we are here, is for us to pretend to care nothing about each other--that
the past was only a matter of a passing flirtation, and not to be taken
seriously. Do you follow my plan?"
"Yes; but I don't like it."
"That can't be helped. Do you suppose I like it? But it will not be
for long. I am going away very soon--it might be any day now--home
again. Then we can make up for the present hateful restraint. What is
to prevent you returning by the same steamer? You will, Maurice,
darling--you will--will you not?" she urged, clinging closer to him, and
looking up into his eyes with a piteously hungering expression, as
though fearing to read there the faintest forestalment of a negative.
But her fears were groundless.
"Will I? I should rather think I would. Listen, Violet. This mad
expedition of poor Fanning's has turned up trumps. I have that about me
at this moment which should be worth two or three hundred thousand
pounds at least. Only think of it. We have the world at our feet--a
new life before us. You are, as you say, going home. But it will be to
a real home!"
She looked into his eyes--her gaze seemed to burn into his--her breast
was heaving convulsively.
They understood each other.
"Do you mean it, Maurice?" she gasped. "My darling, do you really and
truly mean it?"
"Mean it? Of course I do. It was with no other object I went risking
my life a dozen times a day in that ghastly desert. With the wealth
that is ours we can afford to defy all the world--that she-devil
included. And we will."
"Yes, we will."
Their lips met once more, and thus the compact was sealed. Alas--poor
Violet! She had given herself over, bound, into the enemy's hand. She
had sold herself, and the price paid was the price of blood--even the
blood of him who had sacrificed his own life for her sake.