A Veldt Official Part 30

Cool though he was, however, the incident had disturbed him not a little. How had this thing come about? Who there could know anything of his past? He saw in this the beginning of the end.

Was it with design, too, that throughout breakfast Chandler should so persistently keep dragging round the conversation to the year 1868? It looked like it. Nor was there any mistaking, either, the constraint in the manner of others. Well, if they intended that sort of annoyance they should learn that they might just as well spare themselves the trouble.

Thus musing he went down to the office. A few Court cases had to be disposed of, during which from his seat in front of the bench he could see Tasker, the agent, who bore him no goodwill either, ostentatiously sketching a gallows on his blotting pad. Darrell was absent, having returned to the Main Camp.

"Would you mind stepping this way, Mr Musgrave?" said Mr Shaston, when the court had risen, leading the way into his private office. "Sit down, please. There is a matter of very serious moment on which I should like a little conversation with you. Perhaps it will save a great deal of explanation, and beating around the bush, if we come to the point at once. In a word, _this_ has come under my notice--no matter how--and if you have any explanation to offer I shall be glad to hear it."

"This" being the file of the _Bryonville Sentinel_ open at the report of the Stillwell's Flat case. Roden took it, and looked at it hard and earnestly--his own portrait, lifelike at the present day, the sensational headlines, the equivocal verdict, the acquittal.

This, then, was how the matter had been unearthed; for as he glanced at the paper he recalled old Dr Simpson's hobby. That kindly-natured old man would not have stirred a finger to harm him. It was Lambert who had unearthed this, Lambert whom he had to thank. Ten long years ago! and now here, in another hemisphere thousands and thousands of miles away, this blood-spectre sprang up once more, hideous and blighting.

"Well?" said Shaston, as he handed it back.

"I have no explanation to offer."

"Do I understand then that you admit your ident.i.ty with the--er--the person, whose trial is here reported?"

"You will please understand that I admit nothing. I do not feel in the least called upon to make either admissions or explanations. I will, however, just add this remark. The person, whoever he may be, whose trial is there reported, appears to have been acquitted. That means, I take it, that he has been cleared of the charge."

"All very well as a legal fiction, Mr Musgrave," was the icy rejoinder; "but you and I know perfectly that the manner of a person's acquittal makes all the difference in the world."

"Then, if a man is once under suspicion, he is always under it, no matter how completely or publicly he may have been cleared? Is that your deliberate opinion, Mr Shaston?"

The other turned white with rage as he glared blankly and furiously at his imperturbable subordinate, whose countenance betrayed no sign of purpose underlying his rejoinder. Yet the latter contained about as hard a hit as could have been dealt, for rumour darkly hinted that Shaston in his younger days had been badly mixed up in some defaulting transaction; and although exonerated, on inquiry, from anything more culpable than gross negligence, the circ.u.mstance had placed a black mark against his record, materially r.e.t.a.r.ding his advancement in the Service.

As a matter of fact, however, the shaft was an accidental one, Roden being entirely unaware of such an occurrence.

"That may be why I afforded you the opportunity of making an explanation," said Shaston as soon as he had recovered himself; "for I have considered the matter very carefully, and deem it my duty to bring it to the notice of the Government; unless, of course, you would prefer to resign of your own accord, and thus avoid unnecessary scandal and publicity. In that case I shall be willing to stretch a point."

"I shall certainly do nothing of the kind, Mr Shaston. And allow me, with great respect, to recommend you to consider the matter yet more carefully; for any step you may take in it as regards myself will be taken at your own serious risk. The same holds good concerning others."

"As you refuse explanation, I may tell you, sir, that I have no doubt whatever as to your ident.i.ty with the Roden Musgrave mentioned here.

Moreover, I am informed that the inhabitants of this place are preparing a strong memorial on the subject. I have even reason to fear that you may become the object of a most unpleasant popular demonstration. All this means scandal to the Service, and serious detriment to the efficiency and smooth working of my establishment. Wherefore you must see, I am sure, that in bringing the matter officially under notice, I am discharging a most necessary though painful duty."

"We are alone, I believe, Mr Shaston," answered Roden, and there was a look in his face which the other had never seen there before and did not half like now. "That being so, we may as well talk with a little more plainness. I would ask you, therefore, to glance at that report; and granting, for the sake of argument, that your theory as to my ident.i.ty is correct, to say whether you think it likely that the man whose record is there given is the man to be bullied into anything, let alone cowed by such a threat as that of a 'popular demonstration,' on the part of the runaway swindlers and fraudulent bankrupts and forgers and ex-convicts who form such an important element in the population of this highly moral village? Do you really share such an opinion?"

The other stared. He simply did not know what answer to make. Roden continued--

"It might be as well, if I may respectfully say so, before undertaking the grave responsibility of branding me or anybody else as a murderer on the strength of a report in so authoritative an organ as the _Bryonville Sentinel_, to ascertain first, that there is such a place as Stillwell's Flat; secondly, that a murder actually was committed there; and, lastly, that I ever was there in my life. And now, have I your permission to return to my work, sir?"

"You have, sir. It's only fair to tell you that my opinion and the course of action I have decided upon in consequence of this--er--of this revelation, remains unchanged."

But, after his subordinate had withdrawn, Shaston felt horribly uncomfortable. That last bolt had gone right home. What if the whole thing should turn out a fiasco after all?

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

"THOU SHOULDST HAVE KNOWN ME TRUE."

In hinting that a public demonstration, hostile to his subordinate, was preparing, Mr Shaston was so far right in that it was no fault of Sonnenberg, and one or two others of like kidney, that something of the sort did not come off. Even then the tender conscience of collective Doppersdorp, whose main ingredients Roden Musgrave had not inaccurately defined, was wounded to the extent of expressing its feelings in a series of petty manifestations of spite and malice. Thus the disfigurement of his front door was repeated, with the difference that this time a gallows, with a man hanging on it, was subst.i.tuted for the axe. Or, if he pa.s.sed a knot of youthful loots loafing at a street corner, his ears could not fail to catch some deft allusion followed by a yahoo bray of laughter. And although once or twice reference would be made to tar-and-feathers, still no act of overt hostility was attempted.

It might have been, indeed, that upon this virtuous crowd was forced home the same consideration which Roden himself had suggested to his official superior--that, granting the ident.i.ty, a man with his fighting record was not one to be roughly handled with impunity; especially as during that brief expedition into the Gaika location, he had given substantial guarantee that the record might be a true one. And if in any way this consideration influenced the virtuous public of Doppersdorp, why, it only showed that, among that agglomeration of mischievous turnip-heads, there lingered even yet a stray grain or so of wisdom.

Still his position was an unpleasant one, and grew daily more so. Here and there would be somebody not ill-disposed towards him, but, beyond a feebly apologetic defence when he was out of hearing, they did not care to say so, let alone to parade their sympathy, fearing public opinion or their own women-kind, who in turn feared Mrs Shaston; for of such are the wheels which revolve within each other in the small community.

Now the tongue of Mrs Shaston wagged oft and freely enough to have laid her open to any number of distinct actions for slander. But although Roden had a.s.serted his intention to "take it fighting," he was growing more and more sick of the whole position every day. This wretched poky little hole-and-corner village, where people grovelled away their lives by the score of years at a time; what was it to him? What was this handful of shopkeepers and pettifogging pract.i.tioners, whose main ambition was to squeeze a few extra shillings out of the unwary native, or the wooden-headed Boer, on some pretence just falling short of legally fraudulent, and not always that? Why, nothing, of course--less than nothing. A month after leaving it he would have forgotten that such a place ever existed, have forgotten it utterly and entirely.

All but for one consideration; and that he owned to himself, both in sorrow and in wonder, would never suffer him to forget this pa.s.sage in his life as long as that life should last. In sorrow, because unaccountably he had a chill presentiment that even that stay would fail him in the hour of need. In wonder, because it seemed little short of miraculous that, having left the cream of life behind him with the capacity for faith and warm trust, he should have been required to take up that life again almost, as it were, from the very beginning--should be called upon to suffer the ordeal of trust and feeling, even after losing all belief in the genuineness and durability of any such transitory illusions.

Since the bursting of the bomb he had not seen Mona, nor bad he heard either from or of her. The same held good of Suffield's household in general. It almost looked as if they pointedly refrained from coming into the town. Had they heard about it? Why, of course. How should they not have? When a community such as Doppersdorp fastens on to a scandal of that magnitude, why, it worries it for all it is worth.

Now, Charles Suffield, though an excellent fellow under the ordinary circ.u.mstances of life, was not the man to stand by a friend at a pinch, if the said pinch should chance to be of abnormal tightness. He was one of those good, commonplace souls to whom a public scandal is a thing of terror; wherefore it is not surprising that, when he came to learn that the friend with whom he and his had been upon such intimate terms, had stood his trial for murder of a peculiarly brutal and sordid nature, narrowly escaping conviction, and that only on the cleverness and eloquence of his counsel rather than on the merits of the case, it is not surprising, we repeat, that he should have been, to use his own definition, knocked end ways. He remembered that friend's studied reticence, instances of which were continually cropping up, and how they had all frequently laughed at and over such; now these all stood accounted for. The whole thing was hideous, hideous beyond words; less the actual murder than the motive--the pitiful, paltry robbery which had prompted it. And to think that the man should have been mixing with them all this while upon intimate terms. And Mona--oh, great Heavens!

what amount of mischief might not be done there?

Suffield's mind, being largely diluted with commonplace, floundered about in a panic, landing its owner in rather a contemptible hole. For in his horror of scandal, and disgust for the reputed crime, he was quite ready to condemn his former friend right out of hand. His reasoning was of the feminine order, "Everybody says so, therefore it must be true." Curiously enough it was from a feminine mind that a little wholesome common sense was brought to bear upon the question--the mind of his wife, to wit.

"I won't believe it, even now," said Grace st.u.r.dily; perhaps with a vivid recollection of that awful post-cart journey, the flooded river, and the broken cord. "There may be some explanation, but anyhow it seems rather unfair to put a man on his trial again after he has been acquitted."

"Where there's smoke there must be fire," rejoined Suffield, with proud originality. "And here I'm afraid there must be a great deal more fire than smoke."

"Still I won't believe it. Looking at only one side of the question is supposed to be a feminine characteristic. It strikes me that our s.e.x has been libelled."

"That's all very well, Grace, but we've got to be practical. What about Mona? They are engaged."

"Not actually."

"Well, as good as. It amounts to the same thing."

"I don't know," was the reply, more thoughtfully given. "Speak to her yourself about it."

Mona received the news as though semi-dazed with its ominous magnitude, and by some curious and subtle instinct believed it. Yet not quite--not quite the whole of it, that is. The motive was too horrible. In that she would not believe, unless he a.s.sured her to the contrary. Still, the other was bad enough, whichever way you looked at it. It was appalling. A gulf, a chasm, seemed to open under her feet, paralysing her faculties, deadening everything.

Such was the state of the family councils when Roden, resolved to know the worst, saddled up his horse and started for Quaggasfontein. It was Sunday morning, so he would have the whole day at his disposal, and as he cantered out along the familiar track--how many times had he been over it before?--it was with a very sure foreboding that he was travelling it now for the last time. And as he journeyed he called to his aid all the iron hardness of his now schooled nature; a hardness which he had suffered to be penetrated, though never dispelled, but which events of late had riveted once more in armour layers. Not upon any softening reminiscence would he allow his mind to dwell now, and the very first glance at Mona's face would justify his resolve; justify it for all time, or--

He was prepared for the constraint with which the Suffields greeted him--so different to his former welcome--the more marked perhaps because of a certain laboured effusiveness in order to render it equally cordial; for even Grace, her first spirited defence of him notwithstanding, could not quite free her manner from the effect of the distilling canker-drop of suspicion. He was prepared for this, and at the moment thought but little of it as he entered with them.

It was a lovely, cloudless morning, and the scent of flowers with the hum of bees and the chirrup of the cicada wafted in at the open windows of the cool, half-darkened sitting-room. By one of these Mona was standing. She turned, as with an effort, jerkily, constrainedly, and her eyes met his.

All was over.

What her countenance expressed it would have been difficult to define.

What it did not express was that loving, eager sympathy, that proud, fearless trust, which should range itself beside him in defiance of the whole world, such as he had scarcely expected, yet still owned a deep-down hope that he might find there.

All was over.