Grit Lawless Part 3

"I did not know," she said slowly, halting between the words. "I haven't been out very long--barely six months; and I had not heard-- anything... I will tell you all I know about the letters, though I don't quite understand their importance. It's a case of blackmail, of course--at least, I gathered from Mr Hayhurst that they were being held for blackmail. He had succeeded in getting hold of them. The boy drinks too much, and when he has been drinking he talks. I met him at a friend's house, and he was talking, boasting of his achievement. He had these most important papers on his person at the time, and was inflated with success, I suppose--and too much wine. I persuaded him to come home with me; and in the carriage he told me so much about the letters that on arriving here I asked him to show me the packet. I intended to induce him to leave it with me until he was sober and more discreet."

"That was very unwise," her hearer interrupted. "He would probably have gone away and blabbed further, with the result that this house would have been broken into during the night. It was a risky thing to do."

"Perhaps you are right," she said. "But I doubt whether I should have succeeded in persuading him. I think I only roused his suspicions as to the honesty of my intentions. And in any case I should not have been allowed to keep them, for he had evidently been shadowed without knowing it. While I talked with him in this room I fancied I heard a sound on the stoep. The window was open. I walked over to it to look out, but before I could reach it, or realise quite what was happening, a man sprang past me into the room. He struck the poor drunken boy one blow over the head with a stout short stick he carried that stunned him, and I--I was paralysed with terror. I neither moved nor made any sound, until I saw the man coming towards me, and then I suppose I fainted; for I remember nothing more until I came to my senses later and found myself alone."

"And you never communicated with the police?" he said quickly.

"I sent for the police the following day," she explained; "but before the inspector arrived I received a message from Tom Hayhurst asking me not to move in the matter."

She got up and walked with a certain restrained excitement in her movements to the mantel, where she stood, tall and graceful and outwardly composed, with one arm on the high shelf, her face turned away from him.

"There is danger in this undertaking," she said. "I don't like it. Why should a man risk his life to do another man--a stranger--a service?"

"You forget the reward," he said cynically. "The pay is high."

"The reward would be no compensation to a man for the loss of his life."

He laughed bitterly.

"We have only to die once, and no amount of prudence will release us from the obligation."

She faced round quickly.

"The men who hold those letters in their possession are desperate," she said.

"So am I," he answered carelessly. "It's the same on both sides, I imagine--merely a matter of gain."

"It doesn't only amount to that with you," she exclaimed sharply, and her eyes darkened in her pale face.

"No. There are other considerations; but it is not necessary to go into them."

His tone was quietly aloof; it almost seemed that he would remind her his doings were no concern of hers. She withdrew within herself; and for the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds there was silence between them. He broke it.

"You did not tell me who the man was who entered your house that night,"

he said.

"He was a stranger to me," she replied. "I had not, to my knowledge, seen him before."

"It was not Van Bleit?"

"No." She met his eyes steadily. "Why should you suppose it might be?"

"I would warn you against him," he said curtly, "if I might presume to give you advice."

"Thank you," she answered coldly. "I do not think I stand in need of advice. And your warning is quite unnecessary."

He drew himself up stiffly as a man might who realises a rebuff.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

He looked at her fixedly in the pause that followed his brief apology, and his eyes were hard.

"I have heard what I came to hear. It won't be of great service to me, but I scarcely expected to learn more, and I am obliged to you for receiving me. I will now relieve you of the embarra.s.sment of my presence." He bowed to her with formal politeness. "Good afternoon,"

he said. "With your permission, I will leave by the window. I see a path which leads direct to the gate."

He turned his back towards her and stepped through the aperture on to the stoep. She followed him with her eyes, those beautiful sun-flecked eyes shadowed with the stirring of memory; but she made no move to detain him. Not until after he had left her did she remember that she had said no word in parting. She had simply let him go in silence out of her sight--out of her life. He had come into her life that afternoon, a spectre of the past, and, like a spectre, he had vanished, leaving only another memory to add to those that already disturbed her peace.

She stood quite motionless, gazing, not out through the window whence he had disappeared, but at the place where he had stood, and as she gazed it was suddenly borne in upon her that an opportunity had come to her with the presence of this man, and she had missed it. She had travelled nearly six thousand miles for this,--to realise when it was too late that she had missed her opportunity. It happens thus frequently: we refuse to grasp the event when it entails the smallest sacrifice of self. Could she have humbled her pride sufficiently, she might have had this man's destiny in her hands and have fashioned it to brave issues.

She moved forward deliberately and took her stand where he had taken his, with her back to the glowing garden. Save where his foot had pressed the carpet, he had touched nothing; he had not so much as rested a hand against the window frame. She could have wished that he had touched things so that she might touch them also, and imagine in so doing that she drew near to him. Despite the firmness of her nature, despite the ugly facts of the man's past that were well known to her, she could not crush the love of him out of her heart. The woman never learns to hate the man who has once brought romance into her life. That he had brought romance into the lives of other women this woman who stood in the opening with her hands locked together knew. The knowledge was torture to her. It wrung her anew each time her thoughts dwelt on it, and they dwelt on it often. Even now, while she stood there with the remembrance of their recent interview vividly impressed on her mind, the sight of the scarred face photographed on her brain with a distinctness that was almost as though she had his image still before her eyes, the old gripping, agonising jealousy, the wounded self-esteem, were tearing her heart as with searing pincers.

This man, who had brought her romance, had come to her with a gift in either hand. While one gift was goodly, the other had been evil; and the evil had spoilt both.

CHAPTER THREE.

Mrs Lawless was dining out. She had become the fashion in Cape Town; no function was complete without her. Hostesses who wished to attract those they could never hope to capture of themselves knew that by adding Mrs Lawless to their list they could command the most exclusive. Mrs Lawless had a friend at Government House. A cousin of hers was aide-de-camp to the Governor. In addition she was wealthy, with an intellect above the average, and a beauty that was quite remarkable.

The last qualification was sufficient for the male population of Cape Town. It rallied round her like the swarm round the queen bee, and those women who wished to be well considered of their males rallied round her also, and in submitting to an obligation were forced to acknowledge that her charm was undeniable. Though she had many male admirers she made more feminine friends. She did not seek popularity with her own s.e.x from any sense of diplomacy, but because she liked, and got on better with, women. While the men considered her cold, the women found her peculiarly sympathetic.

She had made one close friend in this new country, which was to her still so strange, so alien; so careless and pleasure-seeking in its social life, so keenly self-seeking in its business methods, and withal so vivid and picturesque and stirring. This friend, brilliant in political and literary circles, and connected with one of the oldest families in the Colony, was of Dutch extraction. She had married an Englishman, named Smythe; an alliance that had uprooted an old and bitter racial prejudice, not only on her side, but on her husband's.

Smythe, the erstwhile rabid anti-Boer, had been heard warmly supporting universal tolerance.

"After all," he would blandly a.s.sert, "it is only one world, and one mother for the whole of us. There are bound to be factions in a very large family. But one needn't carry things to extremes."

His theory, however, did not include the natives.

"A n.i.g.g.e.r's a n.i.g.g.e.r," he answered, when approached on this point.

"He's not a human being; he's a link,--the one that wasn't lost. If any man chooses to call him a brother he's at liberty to do so. Personally, I'd as soon fraternise with a chimpanzee."

There was one Dutchman, however, whom the tolerant Smythe could not swallow, and that was his wife's cousin, Van Bleit. It seemed as though all his former dislike for the entire race had been concentrated into hatred of this one man. He made no attempt to conquer this aversion, because he knew it was something beyond his control, but he did his best to hide it from his wife, whose fondness for, and admiration of, her cousin was a never-ending source of wonder to him.

Van Bleit had a confident, masterful manner that won him an easy way to the hearts of certain women. By nature he was a bully: a few of the women who had fallen prey to the roystering charm of his personality had found this out. But they invariably made the discovery too late; Van Bleit squeezed his victims dry before he revealed his less amiable side.

It was usually in making the discovery that they had been drained that they discovered the other thing. If Van Bleit knew how to overcome feminine reluctance with a masterful manner, he also knew how to shout down feminine recrimination. In cases where shouting alone would not avail, he showed no hesitation whatever in having resource to physical force. The woman who pitted her strength against his came off worse than the victim who suffered in silence, knowing her case to be beyond hope of redress.

Van Bleit had carried on most of his intrigues in Europe. Because Europe, on account of the suicide of an inconsiderate widow who had really cared for him, had become for a time inconvenient as a place of residence, he had brought his handsome body and his evil mind back to the land of his birth; and was now pursuing with greater zest than he had pursued any of his former conquests the beautiful and wealthy woman who was his cousin's particular friend. And Mrs Smythe, with the best intention in the world, took every opportunity of throwing them together.

It was at the Smythes' house that Mrs Lawless was dining on the evening of the day that Lawless called upon her. Van Bleit was there also. He was her dinner partner. It was not a large gathering. Of the half-dozen guests only one was a stranger to Mrs Lawless, a tall, military-looking man, with iron-grey hair, and an awkward habit of hunching his shoulders which gave them the appearance of being round.

After dinner, the hostess, at his request, introduced him; and Mrs Lawless, as she acknowledged the presentation and met the intent gaze of the unsmiling eyes, wondered why the name should be familiar while the owner was quite unknown. Then in a flash she remembered where she had heard it before; young Hayhurst had talked of Colonel Grey in his drunken confidence on the night that the papers had been lost. She understood why he had wished to be introduced; he was curious to discover for himself something of the woman whom he believed to be his enemy.

He was summing her up even while he looked at her; and he was forced to acknowledge with considerable impatience that he too was influenced like any young hotheaded fool by her wonderful fairness and the beauty of her candid eyes. His summary was surely at fault, since, despite the proof against her, he felt that here was a woman to be trusted, a woman who would be loyal to her friends and just to her enemies. He squared his shoulders as though conscious of the awkward hunching habit, and said in his harsh voice:

"I am glad to meet you, Mrs Lawless. I have recently had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a kinsman of yours."

He observed the quick suspicion of the look that flashed from her eyes, the sudden reserve that masked her features, changing their smiling indifference to a cold displeasure, and he remembered a sentence that Lawless had uttered which the change in her manner corroborated: "The lady disapproves of me." Good taste should have prohibited his touching on the subject, but in the game he was playing he set all laws at defiance and pushed forward with but the one aim in view.

"A kinsman--of mine!" she echoed, and the soft contralto voice was a little unsteady. He watched her curiously.

"Someone of the same name," he added.