Grit Lawless Part 34

"The usual sum," he said... "And a month in arrears."

Colonel Grey nodded. Then he re-locked the desk and rose.

"I have doubted you," he said. "I admit it. But--"

"Oh! what in h.e.l.l does it matter?" Lawless interrupted roughly. "I don't know why I have grown so suddenly sensitive on the point of my honour... And what's the use of words? You would probably skirt the question as nicely as a politician, but the fact remains--you distrust me still."

Later, when he was alone, the Colonel pondered the subject for an hour while he smoked before retiring to bed. Did he absolutely distrust the man? Were not his suspicions wearing down? He had no knowledge what was wearing them--certainly not that ill-considered act on Lawless' part in throwing up the formal agreement between them. He picked up the agreement, but instead of tearing it across, he locked it away in the desk. Its repudiation had been the final struggle after the respect he had spoken of as lost to him on the part of one who had wanted above all else to stand well in this man's regard, and who felt that he had failed in that as in most things.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

It is not only in the heroic moments of life that the depth of human feeling is sounded; occasionally in the simple and seemingly commonplace incident the stress of emotion is greater than at times of a higher mental tension. Tragedy pa.s.ses often unsuspected, and the eye of the casual observer rests without recognition on many intimate crises in the destiny of the race. It is well that this is so. The heart that is wounded prefers to cover its scars, and the breast that holds a sorrow carries usually a jealous dread of discovery. For the eye of the world is unsympathetic towards what it fails to understand. As the searching light of the sun reveals not only the beauties of life but all its sordid inequalities, so the judgment of humanity rests upon the obvious and appraises and condemns with relentless indiscrimination. When Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she did not eat largely enough. We recognise Good and Evil, but we miss the liner shades.

It was but a commonplace incident that happened in the square close to Parliament buildings on the morning following Lawless' return to Cape Town, but for the two people concerned it marked a moment of intense significance,--a moment during which for them their world stood still.

Quite a number of eyes witnessed the meeting, but in the slight encounter there was nothing to excite the faintest interest or comment-- merely the swift advance of a motor-car, to allow which to pa.s.s the tall man with the scarred face, who was crossing the square at the moment, was obliged to fall back a few paces, or risk being run down. The occupant of the car looked straight into his eyes for the fraction of time occupied in pa.s.sing, and unsmiling, with white set face, slightly inclined her head. He raised his hat, his own face quite as gravely set, and standing where he was, with the dust of the road which the car had raised upon his clothes, looked after it till it whirled out of sight.

"Beastly things!" a stranger remarked to him sympathetically... "Jolly nice when you're in 'em, but spoil the roads for pedestrians."

Lawless nodded, and stepping on the pavement pursued his way. The spring sunshine poured warmly on the glaring white surface in the square, and bathed in a yellow radiance the fine facades of the block of buildings where the administrative affairs of the Colony are directed.

It was still blowing from the south-east, and little whirlpools of dust rose in unexpected places, catching in their vortex any straying sc.r.a.p of paper, whirling it giddily and then ejecting it, or subsiding with it in untidy heaps that the next gust disturbed and roused into fresh activity.

Lawless walked in aimless fashion along the street. Time, since he had nothing to do but wait, hung heavy on his hands. The men he had known before fought shy of him, less, he felt, for what he had done than the public manner of the doing. If one sin, sin secretly, was their gospel.

And what he had done had been done in the light of day before the eyes of all men. It is easy when one lives in the world to become a cynic.

He left the busier thoroughfares and turned into the road that led past the Weebers' house. There was one person in Cape Town, he knew, who viewed his failures leniently, and just then he was curiously eager to meet her. He had not sufficient effrontery to call at the house, but he pa.s.sed it slowly, and even retraced his steps and pa.s.sed it a second time, without, however, the result he had hoped for. Disappointed, he returned to his hotel.

It was a surprise encounter when eventually he met her. He was walking along the road one afternoon towards Rondebosch when she overtook him on her cycle as she had done once before, only on this occasion she was not alone. Young Bolitho was riding with her, and they both carried tennis rackets slung on the handlebars of their machines.

She did not recognise him until her machine came abreast of him. She had been unprepared for the encounter, not knowing that he was in Cape Town, and when she met his glance she flushed hotly, and losing control of her machine, swerved violently to one side. Bolitho swerved after her, but she righted herself dexterously, and smiled into his anxious face.

"I'm getting off, Teddy," she said. "Don't wait for me. I'll probably overtake you,--at any rate, I shan't be far behind... Ride on, please."

He nodded, and only dimly understanding, and greatly troubled in mind, kept on his course, while Julie slowed down her machine and alighted, and waited for Lawless to come up.

"You!" she cried, and held out her hand to him in glad surprise.

He took the hand, pressed it warmly, and relieved her of the charge of the cycle--the same old well-worn cycle he had wheeled for her before.

"I didn't know you were back in town," she said, walking along beside him with flushed, glad young face and smiling eyes. "You've come--to stay?"

"For a few days only," he replied... "I've spent three of them already.

I began to fear I should miss seeing you."

"Oh!" she said, and gasped with consternation at the mere thought. "I wish I'd known..."

"I've been past the house a few times," he said.

"And I never saw you! ... It was nice of you to take the trouble," she added, blushing.

"When a man counts his friends on the fingers of one hand--and then has fingers to spare," he returned, looking into her eyes with a grave smile, "he can't afford to overlook the truest of them."

"Not the truest," she contradicted quickly, her thoughts unconsciously reverting to a scene she was little likely to forget, when a woman with beautiful tear-filled eyes held in her hands a portrait of this man, and spoke of her wasted youth.

Julie turned her face away from his and looked along the sunlit road.

She was wondering whether she could find the courage to tell him what she knew. It was so difficult to talk to one towards whom, perhaps on account of his reserve, she had always felt a certain shyness, of such private and intimate things.

"No!" he said quietly.--"A very true friend, then... And one I value highly,--perhaps because I know that I have her regard quite independently of any merit. A man doesn't prize his fair-weather friends; it's the friends of his adversity he holds dear."

"There is someone," Julie began, and hesitated, and then gathered fresh courage and essayed again... "There is someone who--if you would let her--would be the best friend you ever had... I don't understand why you won't see it,--there are many things about you I fail to understand.

And I'm horribly afraid I'm going to annoy you. It's so impertinent to interfere in other people's lives."

"It's an impertinence a great many people are guilty of," he returned...

"I don't fancy, myself, it ever does much good."

"You aren't going to be very severe with me, are you?" she pleaded.

"I'm not in the least likely to be severe with you," he answered. "But since you feel like that about it, why not leave it alone?"

"Because," Julie replied bravely, "it's the saddest thing in all the world that you shouldn't know what I do. I'm convinced you can't know... You'd act differently if you knew."

"You are a little mystifying," he said, and looked at her uncertainly.

"It sounds rather like a grammatical conundrum to which the key may be found in the tense. I'm not good at riddles. If you want me to understand, you'll have to take the plunge, and not stand shivering on the brink."

So Julie took the plunge, but took it after a feminine method, going in by degrees with the instinctive aversion for putting her head under water.

"I'm speaking of someone," she said, "I've grown to know and to love...

I think she also loves me."

"That wouldn't be very difficult," he interposed.

"Because," Julie went on, as though there had been no interruption, "she talks to me sometimes of intimate things."

He stared at her.

"You are not going to repeat her confidence to me, surely?"

"Why, no," she answered. "But--I'm trying to explain."

"You're doing it very badly," he said; and it occurred to Julie that he was anxious to prevent her explaining more fully. But because this thing mattered to her, mattered tremendously, she persevered.

"I'm sorry for that," she said... "I so want you to understand. Please try... And be a little patient with me. Once she spoke to me about you. She didn't say much. But she had your photograph in her room, and when she looked at it the tears were in her eyes. And then--"

Julie broke off abruptly and searched about after words. He waited in silence. She had at least succeeded in gaining his attention. But his interest was not of an entirely agreeable order. A heavy frown contracted his brows, and the grey eyes sought the dust of the road in preference to her earnest face. There was that in the quality of the dust that was seemingly absorbing.

"She spoke of her wasted youth," the girl went on in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "I wish--oh! how I wish I could give you some idea of the sorrow in her voice,--the longing. She's proud. She tried to hide her emotion. But I know."

He turned towards her suddenly, making no pretence of misunderstanding, though she had mentioned no name, to whom she referred.

"You've allowed your love of romance to lead you astray," he said curtly. "I am a better judge than you are in this matter."