Cinderella in the South Part 13

He did not keep his gloom to himself, and he snapped at any excuse for snapping. Tommy left as the sweets came in, with an excuse about meeting some friends at 8:30.

'Don't be late,' said Julian peremptorily. 'I want you here at eleven sharp. I want to see about tomorrow's letters before I go to bed.'

At 8:30 a pink note came in with the coffee. Mrs. Puce had sent it down. It contained but a few lines:

DEAR JULIAN,

I'm so sorry, but I couldn't make head nor tail of the answer.

What I was told clearly was that you were likely to be in some trouble to-night about midnight. I don't know what sort of trouble, but somebody who lives at the back of your house may have something to do with it. Do take care of yourself. I trust you to do that for my sake. I think you are sensible enough to do it, now you are forewarned. Come up to-morrow to breakfast and rea.s.sure me,

Yours, in ever so much of a shudder,

CELIA.

Julian turned rather green as he read. 'I don't like it,' he growled, 'Two signs, and independent ones. The one sign death. I saw it myself when the bones were thrown. The other sign danger.

And Celia hasn't the sort of conscience that would let her invent it. I don't know what to set about doing. But I must do something or other.' He began to reflect. He started from the unsubstantial grounds of twofold superst.i.tion, and tried to be practical in his own defense.

'About midnight,' he thought, 'Well, I can trust Jim. And I can't trust the other two boys that inhabit my back kitchen. Piet has some of his own to get back for what I did last Christmas, and the other boy I simply don't know. He was only sent to me to-day.

I'll tell Jim to go over to the location and take the other two with him, and look after them for all of to-night. Tommy should be back by eleven. We two ought to be able to look after ourselves. Likely enough it's all moonshine this back-of-the-house business.' He pitied himself for his anxieties, and took an extra drink to dispel them. He went to the kitchen. Jim and the new piccanin were just discussing the movements of somebody as he arrived.

'When was it?' asked Jim.

'Just when the sun set,' the piccanin answered.

'Where?' asked Jim.

Then Julian cut them short, heedless of what they were saying.

'Lock up at once, and go over to the location. Mind, Jim, you must look after the other two and see they don't come back here.

I don't want any boys on the place to-night. D'you hear?' Julian proceeded to enlarge on the bigness of reward or punishment in certain eventualities.

Julian went to his study, and put on his slippers. He called Jim to light the wood-fire before he left. The night seemed a bitter one, or was it that he had taken a chill? He took up a local paper when Jim was gone. 'It's been a busy day,' he reflected, as he straightened it out. 'Fancy my not looking at a paper of any sort till this time of night.'

He searched the columns impatiently.

'No news to speak of,' he thought. But then he cried out as his eye caught an out-of-the-way corner. 'Why, Hunter's dead!' The news seemed to take his breath like a body-blow. 'A good man!' he said to himself. 'The man who gave me the sop when he had dipped it. The best of that Church gang! A man who called me an apostate straight out more than once! The man who sent me that weird card this morning! Yes and he sent me a quaint souvenir, a sort of "Memento Mori," once before, last Christmas, just when my boom came off. I haven't forgotten the words yet. I will say to my soul, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." And G.o.d said unto him, "Thou fool, this night."

'This night,' he muttered. 'I wish this night were well over.'

IV. VICISTI GALILAEE!

Julian was in a strange fit of tension when he heard Tommy Bates'

steps coming up the garden path. They were very uncertain steps.

Julian threw open his study door as the secretary reeled into the hall. He had longed for company this last grey craven hour or two, and this was all the company he was to enjoy for to-night at least!

Humming and lurching and stinking of whisky as Tommy was, there was not much comfort to be sought from him.

Julian swore at him sonorously then he hustled him off to bed.

Soon he was snoring. Julian had somehow shuffled away his fear in his coercion of Tommy.

'I'll get my blankets and pillow out of my room, and lie down in Tommy's. I feel I can sleep now,' he thought.

He went into his room heedlessly in the dark and trod on something or somebody, just as he was striking a match.

It was the big black snake that lived in the ant-hill at the back of the house whose movements Jim and the piccanin had been discussing. The snake dealt with Julian.

Julian staggered about looking for crystals and a lancet. They were locked up safely and perhaps Jim, or perhaps Tommy had the key.

Tommy would not wake to any purpose. Just as Julian was shaking him, the clock in the study a clock Julian had won in his sprinting days chimed twelve very melodiously. Everything seemed to be locked up. Had Jim the key of the spirit cupboard or Tommy?

Julian was growing drowsy in his struggles against the current of fortune. Hadn't he better give in, and let himself be carried down? Almost before he knew it, he was lying on the sofa in his study where the lamp with the red shade was burning so cosily.

Likely enough his eye caught a quaint ornament on his study table at the juncture the figure of the Serpent on the Cross.

It may be too, that some sort of startled respect came to him for the Worm that had turned at last, not vindictively, but in the interests of the Commonweal.

Probability points to this one fact at least, that Julian fumbled for something in his pocket-book ere he resigned himself finally to the growing torpor.

A card was found on the study floor when morning came; they found the pocket-book itself on the conch beside him.

The card was the one that had come at his last breakfast-time from d.i.c.k Hunter, the card that he had reserved rather indignantly for future consideration.

On the one side of it was a color-process reproduction, very good of its kind Christ in Glory the Rex Tremendoe Majestatis and also the Fons Pietatis of the Dies Ira with tears in His Eyes and thorns on His Brows as He judged just judgment. On the other side were four lines from Browning, faithfully transcribed save for the change of a name. They were written in the shaking writing of a sick man, in Hunter's round, unformed hand:

'For the main criminal I have no hope Except in such a suddenness of fate So may the truth be by one blow flashed out.

And Julian see one instant and be saved.'

There is no question as to the suddenness of the stroke of fate that ended Julian's career in South Africa. There is an open question as to the illuminative force of that blow, and we must wait for the answer.

THE DOUBLE CABIN

We had been close to a certain line of fire together, and yet we had not seen much fighting. That is to say, we were taking part in a campaign together that was for the time being an affair of patrols near a certain border an affair that flashed into fire now and then as between man and man. As between sun and man the firing was fairly continuous for eight hours of most days. Were we not within a hundred miles or so of the equator? In that climatic struggle (so much the more constant of the two for us Northerners) I on my noncombatant job came off lightly, he, as a combatant, suffered. He was down with malaria time and time again. He had it on him that night when he put me up at his place a night when the old year was almost out. He was then inhabiting a border outpost a clean little camp tucked away behind a native village. It was none too airy, I thought, with its heavy curtains of cactus hedging. He seemed a little better that next morning, when I said prayers, and afterwards rehea.r.s.ed a certain Rite. He stayed to the end of my ministrations. After breakfast I started again on my journey, a round that took me far from the centre of our small world. When I touched that centre again I heard his news, which was not so very rea.s.suring. He had gone down with blackwater, and been carried into a small hospital. There, having almost gone out, he had rallied enough to be put on board a ship crossing the lake. So he came to a greater hospital. It was thither that I followed him up. He had had another crisis, I found, but he was better again by the time I got to him. Then he improved a little, and seemed to be convalescing. Then malaria chose to interfere with the running of her sister fever's course.

This seemed extraordinarily meddlesome, and made things hazardous still, though they were as well as one expected, when the time of my going on leave came.

How glad I was to get off! My Good-byes were hurried when once the brown envelope had come. I saw him on the hospital stoep (baraza, did they call it in that alien part of Africa?) just as I was rushing down to the station. He had lost his blue color, but still looked rather flickery.

'If you go to Bulawayo, you'll remember, won't you?' he said.

'You've got the plan?'

He had given me an elaborate little drawing of two streets that converged. His bungalow stood upon an island betwixt their confluence and the shading that he had marked waste ground. The pink paper was in my breast pocket, but, knowing my way with papers, I had already learned those streets' names.

'All right,' I said. 'But I'm not likely to go that way. And the time's so short. I'll try though.'

His face lit, and his eyes gleamed. 'Do try,' he said.