A Veldt Official Part 31

While this trial and verdict, swift as a lightning flash, was going on, Suffield had been bustling about the room with the blundering, ostentatious tactlessness of a not very clever man under awkward circ.u.mstances, who has more than half lost his head; under cover of which bustle Mona slipped away and was gone, but ere vanishing she left behind a whisper:

"Soon. At the willows."

"Hallo, Musgrave! I thought Grace was here," cried Suffield, turning.

"Have a gla.s.s of grog after your ride, eh?"

"No thanks."

"What? Did you say you wouldn't? By the way, you haven't off-saddled,"

glimpsing through the open door the other's horse still standing in front of the _stoep_.

"I'm not going to off-saddle," said Roden. "I don't think I can stay very long."

Suffield hardly knew what to answer, so he fired off volleys of commonplaces, which, treading on each other's heels, soon merged into the most drivelling of incoherences. Roden, watching him, felt moved to pity and contempt: pity for the man who could make so gratuitous an a.s.s of himself, contempt for one whose "friendship" thus collapsed at the first knock, and that knock an outside one.

"If you don't mind, Suffield, I rather want to have a word or two with Miss Ridsdale," he said at last. "I think I saw her strolling in the direction of the willows."

"Certainly, certainly; you're sure to find her there," a.s.sented Suffield effusively. "When you come back you'll perhaps change your mind about not off-saddling."

Roden did not hurry as he took his way along that well-known path. His gait to the superficial observer was that of a bored lounger, strolling to kill time; and as he caught the glimpse of a white dress beneath the leafy canopy in front, so far from quickening his pace, he deliberately halted, and affected to pick up and examine a leaf or a pebble which lay in the path. And as he did so he began softly to hum to himself, and the words which he found himself humming were:

"'Twas here we last parted, 'twas here we first met."

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

"DEAD SEPARATE SOULS..."

She turned as he overtook her. For a moment they thus stood face to face. Then he spoke.

"I have come to say good-bye."

"To say--good-bye?" echoed Mona, dully, staring at him as though she were walking in her sleep.

"Yes. There is a gulf between us now such as can never be bridged, never. It is not good that you should even so much as speak with a murderer. A murderer, I repeat."

The faces of both were white as death. The frames of both were rigid and motionless, as they stood confronting each other beneath the willows--there, where they had first met, there, where those pa.s.sionate words of undying love had been interchanged, there, where those long, long kisses had stamped their seal upon that love. And here they had met again--to part.

"Roden, say it was not true!" she gasped at last. "You were acquitted at the trial. It is not true; it cannot be true! Say it is not; say it is not!"

"But, what if it is?"

The words forced themselves out with something of a snarl. His lips seemed drawn back, and his eyes glowed like those of a cornered wild beast, as he watched her troubled face.

"But it is not! No, you could never have done such a thing--you! You could never have been a cold-blooded midnight murderer, and robber. No, Roden, I will not believe it!"

"But you do believe it. You believed it from the first, because that half-start away from me when our eyes first met this morning meant nothing short of belief. That little act of shrinking fixed my mind irrevocably--reft a gulf between us never to be pa.s.sed in this life. A cold-blooded midnight murderer--and robber--_and_ robber!" he repeated; and now indeed the expression of his face was more than ever like that of a dangerous animal at bay. "And you believe that!"

"But say it is not true! Oh, Roden, say it! Your bare word will be sufficient to restore me, to restore us both, to the blissful heaven we were in before!" she adjured, her voice quivering with anguish.

"Nothing on earth will ever restore that. You killed the possibility that little lightning-like moment when you half turned away from me, looked at me with doubting horror. Now I will say nothing--nothing, you understand. Form your own opinion and hold it, for henceforth it can be nothing to me. We disappear out of each other's lives for ever."

Mona made no reply; her face half averted, her lips compressed, her beautiful form erect and rigid. Why was he so terribly strong, with a strength of purpose that was almost appalling, demoniacal, scarcely human in its unparalleled inflexibility? Why did he give no sign of softness, of yielding? She had, as he said, involuntarily, though half-unconsciously, shrunk from him. That was enough. Never again would she see those eyes gladden to the light of hers, never again hear the love tone of that voice. And yet, amid the awful agony of her loss and its realisation, there was still room for that same feeling of shrinking as from the perpetrator of a hideous and sordid crime; and like the mocking whoop of demons in her ears came that cutting, stinging, gibing refrain--the echo of his words, spoken there:--

"Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!"

She had reached that point where mental anguish becomes physical pain, without in any way losing itself therein. Her brain seemed bursting, her heart refusing to beat. The climax came. She sank down in swooning unconsciousness.

Even then that human being turned to iron repressed the step which he had made towards her--repressed it with a shiver, but still repressed it. Not his the right to touch her--he from whom she had shrunk as from a murderer and midnight robber. Then another thought struck him.

"Yes, it is better so," he muttered, stepping to the side of the unconscious form, its n.o.bly moulded lines as beautiful as ever in insensibility. "It is better so. Looked at thus for the last time, I can think of her ever as though I had looked upon her in death."

Then he struggled with himself, fought to restrain the overmastering impulse, for the last time to bend down and press his lips long and hard to her unconscious ones--fought, and conquered, and refrained.

"It would be a murderer's kiss," he muttered, between his teeth. Then turning, he lifted up his voice and sent forth a long, loud call.

"Miss Ridsdale has fainted, Suffield," he said, as the latter came running up. "You had better get her taken to the house. Good-bye, Suffield!"

"Stop, Musgrave, stop!" cried Suffield, who was now supporting Mona's head. "Don't go away like that, man. Hang it! after all this time, you know."

"I won't shake hands with you, Suffield," answered Roden without pausing, as he was walking rapidly away to where he had left his horse, still saddled. "You don't want to take the hand of a murderer--_and_ thief, especially the thief. Good-bye, Suffield."

He rode away in the broad glare of noontide, the shimmer of heat from the scorching plains rising mirage-like in the distance. The screech of cricket vibrated shrilly upon the burning, glowing atmosphere, to cease abruptly in a silence that was well-nigh as oppressive; then bursting forth again with a strident suddenness which brought back the nerve-racking din tenfold. In the cloudless blue of the heavens, high overhead above the brink of the rock-embattled crest of the mountain range, something black was wheeling and soaring. He looked up, drawn by the distant and raucous cry of the huge bird. It was a _dasje-vanger_ of n.o.ble size, like that which he had shot on the eventful day whereon the secret of this new love had been opened to him, and now, in his fierce and hard despair, it seemed that the great eagle was the sprite of the one which he had slain, shrieking forth its hate and exultation.

This then was love! A thing that could take sides with the spiteful clamour of the mob against its object. This then was the Ever Endurable! The first adverse blast had scattered it to the winds.

"Mine for ever, throughout all the years," had been the declaration of that love, yet the course of but a few months had sifted the pa.s.sionate vow, and had left--a few husks of chaff!

He had gained the "neck" where the waggon road crossed it, and beneath lay the unprepossessing little township. There not a friendly hand would be extended to him, not a friendly voice be lifted in greeting.

Those who looked on him would turn their backs, any group he approached would quickly melt away. Yet, for such as these what cared he? Hugging themselves in the security of their sordid daily swindles, in whose very pettiness lay their safety, they would thank G.o.d devoutly they were not as he, not as one who had struck down life, sacred life! No, not for the good word, the good fellowship of such as these, cared he. But his mind, seared beyond all further capacity for feeling, reverted to that one heart which was shut towards him, to the pallid death-like face upon whose lips he had refrained from pressing that last kiss, upon those eyes into whose depths he had looked his last upon earth, as surely as though the dull echo of the clods was sounding above a coffin. Yet now--now, while realising the ever-impa.s.sable gulf which lay between, he loved her as he had never loved. Yet now he would have given all the world for the one consoling memory of that last kiss, which he had refrained from, had refused. The sterility of those long pent-up springs of love had lent tenfold force to the effort by which at last they should burst their rock-prison--only to end thus. Yet towards the eternal ruling of things it was that all bitterness of feeling was due, not towards her, for had not his uttered premonition from the very first been, "Nothing lasts, nothing lasts?"

That afternoon he sought out his official superior. The latter looked coldly surprised, also a little uncomfortable.

"I desire to say, Mr Shaston, that I have changed my mind. I am prepared to resign my position in the public service, and I have no doubt it will save you a good deal of trouble. If I adopt this course, however, it is subject to one stipulation. I wish to leave at once."

"When do you desire to leave, Mr Musgrave?" said the other, unbending somewhat, for he was overjoyed. He could get his wife's relation into the berth now, and would be rid of a subordinate whom he thoroughly hated and at times feared.

"To-morrow at midday, if it can be managed. I shall be prepared to submit everything to your inspection, and formally hand over the keys."

Shaston readily a.s.sented, hardly able to conceal his misgivings lest Roden might think better of it in the interim. He began, however, a pompous commendation of the very proper wisdom displayed in deciding upon such a course, which at once put an end to a very unpleasant state of affairs, and so forth, but found himself ruthlessly but very politely "shut up." He had got his way, however.

The next day, accordingly, having formally handed in his resignation "on the ground of very urgent private affairs," and delivered over all that had to be delivered over, Roden prepared for his start. He placed his effects in the hands of an auctioneer, except such few as he cared to remove, and these could follow him at leisure. His intention was to leave the country which had brought him nothing better than an irremovable curse, the curse of a mind roused to feeling again after many years of cold, philosophical quiescence.

In his desolation, his hardly acknowledged longing for one friendly word, the lonely and shunned man thought of Peter Van Stolz. Would he too have turned against him--he with his open, generous nature? Alas, and alas! When love failed, what was friendship? The voice whose quivering whisper had entranced his ear, had irradiated his heart, had been lifted against him in cold condemnation. The head which had lain upon his breast was averted in repulsion. The lips which had kissed his were hardened in scorn. Where then was there room for friendship?

Nothing lasts!

Leaving his private quarters, he rode over to the Barkly Hotel, to settle up his score at that sumptuous caravanserai. A group of men were on the _stoep_, smoking their after-dinner pipe in noisy discussion.