A Veldt Official Part 32

His arrival was the signal for a sodden silence. Of this he took no notice--standing in the doorway, with his back to the street, while Jones went inside to receipt the bill.

"And how are ye, Mr Musgrave? It's a long time since I've seen ye, anyway, and me only just back."

Roden turned quickly. The jolly voice with its touch of brogue, the rusty black coat and stove-pipe hat, the kind face and thick white hair, could belong to no other than Father O'Driscoll. And--he was advancing with outstretched hand. Roden stared, first at that very substantial member, then at its owner. But he did not respond, beyond a stiff bow.

"Ah, an' is it like ye, to wish to cut an old friend?" said the old man, his hand still held forth, and a look in his eyes that there was no mistaking. For it said, as plain as words, "I know all--all. But understand, _I_ am not called upon to judge you, however some here may reckon themselves to be, G.o.d forgive them!"

Roden's hand closed upon that of the old priest in a warm grasp.

"An old friend, did you say, Father? I am proud of the word as coming from you; of the thing as existing between us."

"Ah, and what'll I do now without all our talks about the ould counthry and the fishing? Sure they've brought back the chimes of Shandon bells, and the days when I was a bit of a gorsoon a whippin' the trout out of the Shournagh, wid a long shtick and a crooked pin, faster than the garrison officers could get at 'em with their grand new rods. See now, I've only just got back, and the moment I heard ye were leavin' us I hurried off to find ye. Now come and have a bit of dinner with me before ye leave, and a parting tumbler of punch."

This in the face of all Doppersdorp, for the benefit of those who had condemned and shunned him. No one was more capable than Roden of keenly appreciating the manner in which his old friend had come forward to stand by him, combining as it did a rare delicacy with the maximum of effectiveness. But this last invitation he could not but decline. To delay his departure even for an hour could serve no good purpose, and he shrank from laying bare so much as a corner of his heart, even to the sweet-natured old Irishman.

The latter, quick to read thoughts, saw through his motive, and did not press him.

"Well, if you've got to go I won't be detaining you. Good-bye, Mr Musgrave," shaking his hand heartily. "We don't profess the same creed; but it'll do ye no harm to know that wherever you go, and wherever you are, there's an old man's blessing following you. Good-bye now!"

Such was the end. And as the great spur of the mountain, glowing green and gold in the afternoon sunlight, shut out the last of Doppersdorp behind him for ever, Roden Musgrave was conscious of a feeling of starting forth once more into the world, dest.i.tute and alone. Since the day which witnessed his entry into that sordid little township, he had gained that which he had never thought to win again--a restored faith in that marvellous mystery, which, while it lasts, avails to make a very paradise of the heart in which it takes up its most inexplicable abode.

Was it a gain? Well, he had lost it now. Never, never could it be restored. Had he done wrong in refusing to speak that word which should exculpate himself? No. Whatever others might think, however circ.u.mstances might point most conclusively to the truth, Mona ought to have stood firm. Not for a moment could he admit that he ought to have conceded. Rightly or wrongly that one falling away was enough. Even had he yielded, that would have stood between them for ever.

Now he began to feel strangely aged as he went forth once more into that most dreary of exiles to the man who is no longer young, and whose means are too scanty even for his barest needs--to face the world afresh, that is. In the braced-up strength, and freshness of mind, and elasticity of spirits, of youth, such a prospect is not one to shrink from; on the contrary, it is one which is welcomed with many a buoyant laugh. But later, when strength is waning, and all things pall, and hopes and illusions are laid to rest for ever, buried in a grave of corroding corruption and bitter ashes;--ah! then it is a dark and craggy desert prospect indeed. And as these thoughts started up spectre-like in Roden's mind, he began to think of death.

Not of the suicide's death. Oh no. Putting it on the lowest grounds, such an act would be a feebleness, an imbecility, such as found no part within his nature; for it would be a concession to the unutterably contemptible tenet that there existed such a reality as love. Not in him was it to afford such a triumph as that to his enemies, let alone to her who, when tried, had been found so pitiably wanting. No, it was death in its natural order that now filled his mind. Would all things be at rest then? or would it be indeed, as the jarring tongues of striving sects and hair-splitting 'ologies all agreed--the one point on which they did agree--that that death, not so very formidable in itself, was only to open the gate of woe, endless, unutterable, to those who had eaten their full share of the bread of affliction in life--namely, the vast bulk of human kind?

He pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes. Had it all been a dream? No, no! and yet in a way it had; but a dream from which he had now thoroughly awakened. Nevertheless, as he paced his horse steadily on, mile after mile over the glowing, sunlit landscape, the torment which seethed the soul of this outwardly cool and imperturbable wayfarer might have moved the pity of angels and men. For strive and reason as he would, the love which burnt within his heart flamed more strongly than it had ever done--yet now he had renounced it--and its object he would never again behold in life.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

"O LOVE, THY DAY SETS DARKLING."

The same proud, fearless strength of nature which had allowed Mona to give herself up so unreservedly to this wonderful, all-absorbing love, once she were sure of it, now enabled her to suffer and make no sign.

She was not one to wear the willow ostentatiously. Suffield, indeed, was lost in amazement over what he had termed her cool way of taking it.

His wife, however, who could see below the surface, knew what a smouldering volcano this "coolness" covered. Sadly, too, she recalled her own words, "Wait until it comes, Mona, and then tell me how enjoyable you find it." Well, "it" had come, and could anything be a more disastrous, more complete wreck? She would watch her relative with a kind of awed wonder; for Mona never made direct allusion to anything that had gone before. A trifle graver, more reserved perhaps; otherwise as serene, as imperturbable as before. Yet deep down in her heart the wound bled, ached, and throbbed--and that almost unbearably. For she could not move a step without being reminded of the times that were past--if she needed reminding. No way could she turn her eyes without being so reminded. Every object, every feature in the surroundings was fraught with such a.s.sociations.

Then she would force herself to look things in the face--to take to herself a kind of reckless, _bizarre_ comfort. She had youth, and the glow of healthful beauty throbbed warm and strong within her. The world was great. Life was all before her. And she had pride. She could face the whole world with such an armoury.

There was one thing which, so far as the outside world was concerned, rendered her position easier. There had been no regular engagement.

Nothing formal or binding had so much as been hinted at between them.

They had been content to live on, penetrating deeper and deeper into the golden mazes of love; no thought for the end, no thought of a barred gate across their way, beyond which should lie a smooth, dead-level road, unending in its placid monotony. Nothing therefore had been "broken off," nothing claiming explanations, and, more hateful than all, laying her open to condolences.

But the fact that there had been nothing definite between them had its drawbacks. She could not shut herself up; and at times, when visiting among their acquaintances, she would be forced to listen to remarks which cleft her heart, but which she must bear and show no sign; to strictures on the absent one which made her blood surge and boil with suppressed wrath. One such occasion befell about a month after his departure, the time and place being an afternoon call, and the offender Mrs Shaston, who, she suspected, was talking not without design, expatiating to a roomful of people upon what a snake in the gra.s.s had been so providentially hunted out of their midst. The hot, pa.s.sionate blood coursed madly in Mona's veins, and her eyes began to flash.

Suddenly they met those of Father O'Driscoll, who, with his hands crossed on the head of his stick, was seated on the other side of the room as though not hearing what went on. Suddenly the old man leaned across towards the speaker.

"Is it Mr Musgrave ye're talking about, Mrs Shaston?" he said in his gentle Irish tone.

"Yes. He was once a great friend of yours, Father O'Driscoll, if I remember rightly," and there was a scarcely veiled sneer underlying the remark.

"Was once a great friend of mine?" repeated the old priest quietly, but in a tone clear enough to be audible to all in the room. "But he is still a great friend of mine, Mrs Shaston, though I doubt if we shall ever meet again, I'm sorry to say."

It was like flinging a bomb into that coterie of scandalmongers. The lady stared, wrathful--then smiled sweetly. The magistrate's wife was not an easy person to "put down."

"As a clergyman you would of course take a charitable view of things, Father O'Driscoll," she answered, "and I'm sure it's quite nice to hear you. But we poor every-day people--"

"See here, Mrs Shaston," broke in the old man, in his most genial tone.

"I remember in the old days in Cork springing a riddle on some of the fellows; there was a lot of talk going on at the time, I forget what it was all about, something political most likely. This was it: Why is Shandon steeple like every question? D'ye think they could answer it?

They couldn't at all. The answer was 'Because there are two sides to it; a dark one and a light one.'"

The application of this was pretty obvious, and gave rise to a constrained sort of silence. Pausing just long enough to lend effect to this, the old man went on, in his frank, merry way. "And the best of the joke is, that some of the fellows, although they'd been born and raised in old Cork, didn't know that Shandon steeple had two sides at all. I give ye my word they didn't. They thought it was all dark or all light all round."

And then, turning to a fellow-compatriot of his, Father O'Driscoll asked whether that particular curiosity of their native city had escaped her notice too, and having launched forth, manoeuvred from one droll anecdote to another, of course leading the conversation farther and farther from the topic of Roden Musgrave; whither indeed it did not return upon that occasion.

By accident or design, Grace Suffield and her cousin took their leave at the same time as the old priest.

"Why do you never come out and see us, Father O'Driscoll?" said Mona, as they gained the street. Her eyes were eloquent with thanks, with unbounded appreciation of the tactful, yet unequivocal manner in which he had championed the absent. "We have not the claim upon your time which your own people have, still you might ride out and see us now and then."

"Ah, don't be putting it that way, Miss Ridsdale. Sure, we're always very good friends in spite of our differences, are we not, Mrs Suffield?"

"I can't answer that, Father O'Driscoll, until you positively promise to come out and dine with us at the very earliest opportunity," replied Grace. "My husband will drive in and fetch you and take you back again, if you will only fix the day. If you don't, why, then I sha'n't believe you mean what you say."

"Our _friends_ do come and see us, Father O'Driscoll," added Mona with meaning; and her eyes again were eloquent, for they said, "_You_ at least were his friend. _You_ at least lifted up one voice on his behalf, and that with no uncertain sound, when all tongues clamoured against him. I want to say more about it, and--perhaps about _him_" And it is probable that their meaning was read aright, for the required promise was readily given, and as, having bidden the ladies good-bye, Father O'Driscoll took his way down the street, he shook his head sadly to himself as he thought over what had happened; for the heart of this sweet-natured old man was very full of the pain and trouble and separation which had come upon these two.

Beyond the successful working out of it, Lambert had not taken much by his vindictive scheme. In fact, he had taken rather less than nothing; for if he expected to find the road now clear, or at any rate rapidly becoming so, into Mona's good graces, why, then he never made a greater mistake in his life. She would hardly speak to him, and then only to snub him pitilessly, and with a cold and haughty politeness which left him no road open for a colourably dignified retreat. His revenge must be its own reward. Well, at all events, he had that.

So had Sonnenberg, but he, at any rate, fell into evil case. For he was a good bit of a Lothario of a kind, was this vindictive and plotting child of Israel, and somehow it happened that during the height of his exultation over the utter discomfiture of his enemy, a great and mighty fall awaited himself; for in the very thick of an intrigue whose central figure was a native damsel, "black but comely," he was surprised by a party of Kaffirs, and most soundly and unmercifully thrashed. Now prominent among the thrashers was the thrashee's former store-boy, Tom; wherefore the rumour failed not to creep around, that Roden Musgrave had bequeathed a debt of vengeance and a largess to that sometime warrior; and, in short, that Sonnenberg had walked blindly into what was nothing less than a cunningly devised and successfully baited trap. Whether this was so or not, we are uncertain. But the evil Jew, though his bruised bones smarted for many a long day from the whack of the Kaffir kerries, dared make no public stir, by reason of the very circ.u.mstances of the case, towards securing the punishment of his a.s.sailants; wherefore these went unpunished, and laughed openly.

So time went on, and weeks grew into months, and even the strange affair of Roden Musgrave became ancient history in Doppersdorp, and discussion thereof began to pall, except upon "old Buzfuz," who was never tired of publicly thanking Heaven for having chosen him as its instrument in unmasking and driving from their midst a most wicked and dangerous impostor; and Roden's successor, a good-hearted sort of youth of the very ordinary type, fell desperately in love with Mona, but at a distance; and Grace Suffield thought regretfully over that terrible night in the post-cart, and wondered uncomfortably if they had not given their support to a very great act of injustice; and her husband ceased to think any more about it; and things jogged along in Doppersdorp pretty much as they had always done. And some wag, of malice aforethought, turned loose the whole of Emerson's "Chamber of Horrors,"

the ingredients composing which spread themselves over the township, and took a week to collect, save such as incontinently retreated to their native wilds, and two snakes which got into the bank-house and bit Emerson's native boy, involving much treatment from Lambert, for which their owner had to pay, swearing terribly.

Thus several months went by.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

THE PORTAL OF THE SHADOW.

The R.M.S. _Scythian_, homeward-bound, was steaming through the smooth and fast darkening waters of Table Bay.

She had hauled out but two or three hours since, and now, as the flashing light of Robben Island was dwindling astern, the second dinner bell rang forth its welcome summons; welcome this evening, at any rate, for, as we have said, the water was smooth, and it would take a very determined sea-sick person indeed to remain away from table. So the pa.s.sengers, of which there was a full complement, trooped in, to a man and to a woman, and there was much arranging of seats, and a little of discontent with the result of such arrangement.

"This is your seat, sir. And the captain sends his compliments, and hopes to be down before dinner is over."

Roden Musgrave took the seat indicated by the steward. It was the end chair of one of the three long tables, which ran the length of the saloon. That at the head of the table was the captain's chair, at present empty. Unoccupied, too, was the seat on the captain's right.