Blue Aloes Part 6

"Just after you went. But you mustn't be cross with him; Mamma gave him permission."

"Mamma is gone, too, to see poor Mrs. Saxby," prattled Coral.

Christine put them gently away from her.

"Well, hurry up and earn your new dollies," she counselled, smiling; "I'll be back very soon to help you."

In the dining-room, she looked for the discarded roses and found them gathered in a dying heap on a small side-table. In the nursery, she found two of Roddy's roses in the jug. The third was missing!

Of one thing she felt as certain as she could feel of anything in the shifting quicksands of that house, and that was that Roddy had not gone to the dam, for he had promised her earnestly, the night before, that never again would he go there without her. Could he, then, have gone to the cemetery? Even that seemed unlikely, for he loved her to go with him on his excursions thither. Where else, then? The rose-leaf she had pa.s.sed on the road stuck obstinately in her memory, and now she suddenly remembered that the place she had seen it was near the barn from whence she had once found Roddy emerging. Perhaps he had gone there to amuse himself in his own mysterious fashion. He might even have been there when she pa.s.sed. Oh, why had she not looked in? But the omission was easily rectified. In two minutes she was out of doors again, walking rapidly the way she had come.

Roddy was not in the barn, however, and it seemed at a glance as harmless a place as she had thought it before. An end of it was full of forage, and one side piled high with old farm-implements and empty cases. Rather to the fore of the pile stood one large packing case, sacking and straw sticking from under its loose lid. Christine had just decided there was nothing here to warrant her scrutiny when, lying in front of this case, she saw something that drew her gaze like a magnet. It was another yellow rose-leaf.

"Roddy!" she cried, and was astonished at the sharp relief in her voice, for she had suddenly made up her mind that the boy was there hiding from her. There was no answer to her call. Very slowly then she went over and lifted the lid of the case. It was quite loose, and edged with a fringe of strong nails that had once fastened it to the box, but which now were red with rust. A quant.i.ty of sacking, of the kind used for winding about fragile goods, lay heaped at the top and came away easily to her hand, exposing that which lay firmly wedged at the bottom. What she had expected to find she did not know. What she did find astonished her beyond all things. It was a beautifully chiselled white marble tombstone in the shape of a cross. The whole of the inscription was clear of dust or any covering save one fading yellow rose. Awed, deeply touched, and feeling herself upon the verge of a mysterious revelation, Christine lifted Roddy's yellow rose and read the simple gold-lettered inscription:

TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED WIFE, CLARICE VAN CANNAN (BORN QUENTIN), WHO DIED AT EAST LONDON, JUNE 7, 19--, AND WAS BROUGHT BACK TO REST NEAR HER SORROWING HUSBAND AND CHILDREN.

(AGED 27)

The date of death was two years old.

Much that had been dark became clear to Christine. She understood at last. The woman whose sad fate was here recorded, cut off at twenty-seven--that fairest period in a happy woman's life--was Roddy's mother, the mother of all the little van Cannan children, living and dead. The woman who had ousted her memory from all hearts save loving, loyal Roddy's was the second wife and stepmother.

Much in the att.i.tude of the big, blond, laughing woman who reigned now at Blue Aloes, false to her husband, careless of the fate of his children, was accounted for, too. The sorrows of the van Cannans had never touched her. How should they? Had not Christine heard from her own lips, the night before, the confession of her love for another, and her hatred of Bernard van Cannan's home. How, then, should she love Bernard van Cannan's children?

The cruel taunt of cowardice she had flung at Roddy was explained. The boy's sensitive, loyal nature was a book too deep for her reading, the memory of his loved ones too sweet and tenacious for her to tamper with. Nevertheless, she had understood him well enough to set a bond on his honour never to speak of the dead woman who slept in the unmarked grave while her tombstone lay in the rubble of an outhouse.

The spell by which she had won the man to forgetfulness and neglect was not the same as that by which she had induced silence in the boy. A promise had been wrung from him--perhaps even under duress! Suddenly, terror swept over Christine Chaine. It was revealed to her, as in a vision, that the pink-and-white woman who laughed with such childlike innocence by day and whispered so pa.s.sionately to her lover by night could be capable of many things not good for those who stood in the way of her wishes.

Why had two of the van Cannan sons died sudden deaths? Why was the lure of a pink palace at the bottom of the dam fostered in the third?

How had the tarantula come into his bed, and why had someone said that it acted like a thing drugged or intoxicated, and that, when it woke up, it would have been a bad lookout for Roddy?

"G.o.d forgive me!" cried the distracted girl to herself. "Perhaps I am more wicked than she, to harbour such thoughts!"

Then, as if at a call that her heart heard rather than her ears, she found herself running out of the barn and across the veld in the hot, stormy sunshine, in the direction of the Saxbys' bungalow.

She had never been there before, though often, in their walks, she and the children had pa.s.sed within a stone's throw of the little wood-and-iron building. The door was always shut, and the windows hidden by the heavy creeper that covered in the stoep. She had often thought what a drab and dreary life it must be for a woman to live hidden away there, and even the children never pa.s.sed without a compa.s.sionate allusion to "poor Mrs. Saxby, always shut up there alone."

A dread of seeing the sad, disfigured creature seized her now, as she reached the darkened stoep, and held her back for a moment. She stood wondering why she had come and how she could expect to find Roddy there where the children had never been allowed to penetrate. But, in the very act of hesitation, she heard the boy's voice ring out.

"No, mamma; _please don't make me do it!_"

In a couple of swift steps she was in the stoep and her hand on the k.n.o.b of the door. But the door would not open. There were two narrow windows that gave onto the stoep, and, without pause, she flew to the one that she judged to be in the direction of the child's voice and laid hands upon it. It was closed and curtained with thick blue muslin, but there were no shutters, and to her forceful push the lower part jerked up, and the curtains divided. She found herself standing there, the silent spectator of a scene in which all the actors were silent, too amazed or paralyzed by her unexpected appearance.

PART III

The room was a common little sitting-room with a table in the centre, at either end of which sat Mrs. van Cannan and Mr. Saxby. Roddy was between the table and the wall, and Christine's first glance showed him white-faced and staring with fascinated, fearful eyes at a large cardboard box, with a flat-iron on its lid, which stood on the table.

The two elder people were each holding small k.n.o.bkerries, that is, stout sticks with wired handles and heavy heads made by the natives. A revolver lay at Saxby's elbow.

The little tableau remained stationary just long enough for Christine to observe all details; then everyone acted at once. Roddy flew round the table and reached her at the window, sobbing:

"Oh, Miss Chaine! Miss Chaine!"

Saxby laid his k.n.o.bkerrie on the table and lit a cigarette, and Mrs.

van Cannan, rising from her seat with an air of dignity outraged beyond all bounds, addressed Christine.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion, Miss Chaine? How dare you come bursting into Mr. Saxby's house like this?"

"I heard Roddy call out," was the firm answer, "and I consider it my duty to protect him." She had the boy well within her reach now, and could easily have lifted him out of the low window, but it seemed an undignified thing to do unless it became absolutely necessary.

"Protect him! From what, may I ask?" The woman's voice was like a knife.

"I don't know from what. I only know that he was in grave fear of something you were about to do."

Saxby interposed with a soft laugh.

"You surely cannot suppose Roddy was in any danger from his mother, Miss Chaine--or that I would harm him?"

He certainly did not look very harmful with his full, handsome features and melancholy smile.

"Your action is both ridiculous and impertinent," continued Mrs. van Cannan furiously. "And I can tell you that I will not stand that sort of thing from any one in my house," she added, with the air of one dismissing a servant: "You may go. Roddy, come here!"

Roddy gave a wild cry.

"Don't leave me, Miss Chaine. They've got a snake in that box, and they want me to let it out."

There was blank silence for a moment; then Christine spoke with deliberation.

"If this is true, it is the most infamous thing I have ever heard."

Even Isabel van Cannan was silenced, and Saxby's deprecating smile pa.s.sed. He said gravely:

"Mrs. van Cannan has a right to use what methods she thinks best to cure her boy of cowardice."

"Cowardice!" Christine answered him scornfully. "The word would be better applied to those who deliberately terrify a child. I am astonished at a man taking part in such a vile business."

She was pale with indignation and pity for the boy who trembled in her arms, and in no mood to choose her words.

Saxby shrugged his shoulders with a sort of helpless gesture toward his companion as if to say he had only done as he was told. Mrs. van Cannan gave him a furious glance before returning to Christine.

"Can't you see," she said violently, "that we have sticks here ready to kill the thing, and a revolver if necessary? Not that it is poisonous--if it had bitten that miserable little worm!" She cast a withering glance at Roddy. He shrank closer to Christine, who judged it time to pull him safely from the room to her side on to the veranda.

"There is nothing miserable about Roddy," she said fiercely, "except his misfortune in having a step-mother who neither loves nor understands him."

That blenched the woman at the table. She turned a curious yellow colour, and her golden-brown eyes appeared to perform an evolution in her head that, for a moment, showed nothing of them but the eyeball.