Grit Lawless Part 46

"I brought them for him," she said simply.

"I think it would be wiser," he returned, "not to make up your mind to misfortune. It is quite possible that when we arrive we shall find Mr Lawless in perfect health. There are absolutely no grounds for supposing otherwise."

"I have a feeling that all is not well," she answered quietly. "That feeling was with me throughout the night; and in my sleep I heard him call me... My own imagination! ... Yes, I know. He wouldn't ask for me."

She turned her face away and gazed out of the window again.

"Do you think," she asked presently, after a further lengthy silence, and in her tone and manner it was apparent how great was the effort it cost her to touch upon the subject, "that she will be with him? ... that woman?"

Colonel Grey sat up suddenly as though a bomb had been flung at him. He had forgotten since his knowledge of Tottie's ident.i.ty that this thing had been an open scandal, and that she must know of it.

"Good Lord, no!" he answered. And added quickly: "There wasn't any woman."

He moved down to her end of the compartment, and leaning forward took both her hands and held them firmly.

"You haven't allowed that to come between you?" he asked gently.

The tears rose in her eyes.

"It didn't help," she whispered... "But you see--I am going to him in spite of it."

"It was a cruel thing to let you believe that," he said, and dropped her hands, and sat back against the cushions, watching her. "I'll tell you the story as I heard it myself yesterday."

And he related to her unreservedly the history of Tottie and her connection with Lawless in the recovery of the letters. When he had finished he found that she was quietly weeping with her face hidden in her gloveless hands.

He left her to herself and returning to his former seat sat stiffly upright, staring out of the window with unseeing eyes beneath their knitted brows. It would seem that those letters had more to answer for than even he had supposed. He wondered whether, could he have foreseen all that this enterprise would involve, he would have consented to its undertaking.

There was a prolonged silence. Mrs Lawless rose after a while, moved by what impulse he failed to understand, and dropped the sweet scented roses from the window. She turned round and faced him after doing so, and he felt that already she regretted the act.

"They were dying," she explained, and went nearer to him and sat down opposite. "It was a foolish thought to pick them."

"It was a kind thought," he returned.

She looked at him gravely.

"Colonel Grey," she said, "a man must hate a woman when he can let her believe--what my husband allowed me to believe. Nothing less than hate could be so cruel as that."

He looked her straight in the eyes.

"Dear lady, don't you know," he asked, "how closely love and hate are allied so that it is difficult to separate the one from the other? It is possible for a man to hate the woman who is dear to him. I've known such cases."

"I can understand," she said, and looked thoughtfully out upon the pa.s.sing country, "moments of impulsive hate. But systematic hate...

That's different."

She pulled at the strap of the window absently, and continued to gaze out at the scenery, while the shadows darkened the sun-flecked eyes, and memories stirred in their troubled depths that, far away now but still unsoftened, covered over a s.p.a.ce of hopeless years. She had loved her husband with such an intensity of pa.s.sion, and yet she had failed somehow to satisfy him. She had failed him most at the moment he particularly needed help and sympathy--at the time of his disgrace. Her love for him had had its root to a great extent in her pride in him.

The fall of her pride was tremendous. His dismissal from the Service cut her more deeply than at that time of hysterical patriotism his death could have. The blow hardened her. Instead of loving encouragement, unsympathetic silence was all she offered. And he turned from her and sought comfort elsewhere. Another woman came into his life. Zoe Lawless did not know how brief had been that interval of madness. She had refused to hear explanations, had withheld forgiveness. He had written to her, offering facilities for her release. To that she had replied that if he wished it, if he desired to give the woman the protection of his name, she would submit to the humiliation of having their affairs dragged through the courts. He had answered that he was merely considering her, that he had no wishes in the matter, and should certainly not re-marry if she divorced him.

After that there had been unbroken silence between them, and she lost sight of him for many years. During those years, in the lonely watches of the night, she had often lain awake thinking of him, wondering about him; and her conscience had reproached her for throwing that undisciplined nature back upon itself. When, unexpectedly, under the will of an eccentric relative she inherited a comfortable fortune she determined to follow after him. She had heard from her cousin in Cape Town that Lawless was in Africa; and so she came to Africa to find him, with some vague idea in her mind that they might possibly pick up the dropped strands of their lives and interwind them anew. She had earnestly desired this until she met him. When they met she realised how vain had been her hope. And now it was all over... There remained only the bitterness of the empty years.

When they reached Kraaifontein, and the Colonel got out of the train and turned to offer her a.s.sistance, she hung back, white and nervous, and caught at the luggage bracket as though to save herself from falling.

He took her by the arm and a.s.sisted her on to the platform.

"In a little while," he said, with a view to encouraging her, "you will be smiling at your fears. Come now! be brave."

He left her for a moment on the platform while he went to speak to an official. When he returned he endeavoured without success to mask his gravity behind a rea.s.suring smile.

"We'll walk," he said, "it's close here. I've arranged about the luggage."

She looked at him swiftly.

"You've heard something," she said.

"Nothing definite," he answered,--"and nothing very alarming. There is a visitor at the hotel who has met with an accident. That tells us little, but at least it proves he is not dead."

She took his arm and they started to walk.

"If he's only slightly hurt," she said, as they proceeded, "I'll go back again. It would only anger him, my being here. But if he's too ill to notice--then surely I may stay? ... You don't think that I should do him harm by staying, then?"

Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, her voice broke.

"Oh! I'm so afraid," she whispered. "Afraid most of all of his coldness."

"I think," he said gently, "you may rest a.s.sured he can only feel grateful to you for your consideration."

But notwithstanding his words of comfort she grew more nervous with every step they advanced. Death she could have faced, and faced bravely; she had had to face worse things than that; but the thought of his further coldness--his displeasure, perhaps, at being followed-- completely unnerved her.

When they reached the hotel and entered from the sunshine into the small, plainly furnished hall, she sat down on one of the chairs inside the door and left it to Colonel Grey to make inquiries. The first person he saw to put a question to was Mr Burton. It chanced to be a holiday, and Mr Burton was spending his leisure in attendance on the man whom, brief though the acquaintance was in respect of time, he had come to regard with an esteem beyond the ordinary. He crossed the hall at the moment of Mrs Lawless' entry with the Colonel on his way to the sick man's room, and seeing visitors, and one a lady, bowed with his customary courtesy as he pa.s.sed. The Colonel waylaid him, and taking him aside, stated the object of their visit. Mr Burton looked puzzled.

"His wife, you say! Strange that he did not mention her. I asked him if there was anyone he would wish informed of his condition; I was prepared to communicate with his friends; but he said no, and I knew no address to telegraph to. He probably feared to alarm her. Does Mrs Lawless realise what has happened? He's badly hurt."

"What's the damage?" the Colonel asked gruffly. "We know nothing. It is only surmise that has led us here. We've heard no details."

Mr Burton's mild eyes blinked their astonishment behind their gla.s.ses.

He had never happened across such an extraordinary sequence of remarkable incidents in all his life before. It fully bore out his oft-repeated a.s.sertion that it is not only in big cities that the great events occur.

"He has been shot in the breast," he answered gravely. "His condition is not critical, but it is sufficiently serious. It was the most dastardly attempt upon his life. I witnessed the whole affair,--indeed, Mr Lawless and I had but a few minutes previously parted company. I am not a vindictive man, I hope, sir; but I should wish the man who was responsible for that cowardly attack to suffer punishment. But I cannot persuade Mr Lawless to furnish me with a clue as to his ident.i.ty, and I was too far away to see clearly. Perhaps when Mr Lawless recovers he may speak of the matter, at present it is not wise to refer to it before him. We have orders to keep him as quiet as possible."

"Who's attending him? ... Got a decent medical man?" Colonel Grey asked, with some idea in his mind of sending to Cape Town for skilled advice and nurses.

"Oh! we have an excellent man... Out from England for his health. Mr Lawless is quite well looked after in that respect."

"And nurses?"

The little man looked surprised.

"The landlady does what is necessary," he explained. "I help a little... Yes."

"But--good Lord, man!--he wants trained nursing."