Grit Lawless Part 6

Lawless followed him indifferently. When he discovered that Miss Weeber was the girl of the train, the indifference gave place to a satisfaction that not even the girlish admission that she had solicited the introduction could damp. He was extraordinarily pleased.

"I knew we should meet some time," he said. "It was written... But I never pictured it like this. I have imagined you in an unconventional setting with the veld for a background... illimitable s.p.a.ce--a selfish picture--with only you--and me..."

"And we meet in the heart of a crowd," she said, and smiled. She liked the imaginative picture that he drew.

"Things are always different in life," he replied, "from what we would have. But I'll not quarrel with the occasion; we will make the most of it. Will you let me see your card?"

She handed it to him.

"It is almost empty," she explained. "We have only just arrived."

"That," he replied gravely, "is fortunate for me. I claim every waltz you have left."

"Oh no?" she returned quickly. "I couldn't allow that."

"Then every other one," he said; and duly initialled the dances and returned her her programme.

The quiet mastery of his manner, the a.s.sumption that what pleased him would be equally agreeable to her, robbed her of the power to protest.

She was glad and yet discomfited at the number of dances he had claimed; and she scribbled subsequent partners' names on the card herself, not choosing that others should see those frequently recurring initials.

She was also a little apprehensive of what her mother would think if she noticed, as she could scarcely fail to do, how often she danced with the same man. But she would not have forgone one of those dances whatever the penalty.

Lawless had acted on an impulse in initialling her programme as he had done--a recurrence, even though slight, of the old midsummer madness.

She attracted him. She was not exactly pretty, but there was the charm of youth in her favour, and an inexplicable something about her that piqued his curiosity. Also the very obvious fact that she took a romantic interest in him because of an old wound considerably amused him. It was so distinctly feminine. How shall a world in which the mothers of the nations love nothing better than the clash of arms enjoy universal peace?

He recognised that the scar was the fundamental attraction. But for it she would probably never have noticed him; because of it she singled him out from among his fellows, and through it he lived daily in her memory, figuring as greater than the race generally--a modern Achilles with the vulnerable spot in the face. The thing became an obsession. Lawless was conscious even while he danced with her of the fascination the scar held for her; her eyes seldom strayed from it, and between the dances, when he led her to the more secluded places for sitting out, she leant back in her seat and watched it with undiminished interest, while he fanned her and cynically wondered what she would make of the tale if he told her the history of the scar...

Before the evening was very far advanced he did tell her its history-- with reservations. She asked for it, a little diffidently, a little apologetically, but, as he felt, with an irresistible curiosity there was no subduing.

"I want to know so badly," she said, colouring brightly. "I've wondered about it ever since I saw you first... You must think it very rude of me. ... Of course you've noticed me staring. It's abominable, but I can't help it. It's such a grim souvenir--and splendid too in its way.

I've wanted to ask you about it a dozen times this evening, and I've been afraid of annoying you. And yet, why should curiosity annoy when it isn't unkind? ... I wish you'd tell me... Will you?"

"Better curb your curiosity. You will be disillusioned otherwise," he replied. "It was about the most unromantic moment in my life when I received that."

"Your life must have been very full of adventure," she answered with simple and unconscious flattery.

He smiled grimly.

"It hasn't lacked experience of sorts," he admitted.

She looked up into his face, and her eyes were wonderfully soft, and big with admiration. He was tempted to stoop and kiss the fresh, young, slightly parted lips. He wondered whether she would resent it if he did. But the inclination that moved him to take the liberty was hardly strong enough to cause him to put it into effect.

"Won't you let me judge?" she asked presently.

"Judge what?" he said. He had forgotten for the moment the drift of the conversation; his mind was intent upon her. Then he saw her eyes fasten on the scar again, and, remembering her curiosity, laughed. "Oh, that!

... I was forgetting... There isn't much to tell, as a matter of fact.

It represents one lurid moment, and then a blank... I received that slash over the jaw from one of my own Tommies--we were fighting on opposite sides at the time... The only satisfaction I got out of it was when later I learnt that the man next me had settled the reckoning for me."

"Oh!" the girl whispered, and her soft eyes hardened. Behind the hardness there lurked conflicting emotions of pity and horror. Naked fact seemed so much grimmer, so much more significant of the hatred and the actuality of war than her heroic imagining. She had drawn for herself a splendid elaborated picture of dash and courage and the glory of battle, and in a few words he had blotted her picture from the canvas and set up in its place the rugged and brutal reality. But the reality, though it hurt, was far more impressive, than her carefully stage-managed adaptation.

"He deserved death," she said. "How dastardly to attempt to kill his own officer! ... A deserter, too!"

"No, not a deserter," he contradicted quietly.

"But you said he was fighting on the opposite side!" She looked up at him suddenly. "Was it during the Boer war?"

"Yes."

He played with her fan, which he was holding, opening and closing it absently, bringing the sticks together with a little click. Then abruptly he shut it with a snap and laid it back in her lap.

"There are necessarily two sides to every question, and generally much to be said on both," he remarked in his sharp, incisive manner. "The man who was fighting on the Boers' side had been dismissed the Service, and I suppose, having the killing l.u.s.t in him, he gave his services where they were appreciated."

"That's treachery," she said.

He smiled at her cynically.

"I'd like your definition of treachery... I imagine you hold the popular exaggerated ideal of man's duty to the State. Fine thinking is all very well in theory, but put it to the test, and where are you? ...

This world is built for the practical, not for the sentimentalist. A thousand years hence we may be sufficiently civilised to make the ideal life possible. Then we shall be satisfied to recognise one another's good qualities, instead of overlooking them in the eagerness of our eternal search after the bad. But that will entail social and political revolution--and the abolition of war."

"You say that!" she cried, catching on to the part of his speech which she understood.--"You!--a soldier!"

"My only right to the t.i.tle now is that of soldier of fortune," he replied.

She looked a little surprised.

"Of course I knew you had left the Army," she said. "But once a soldier always a soldier."

"On the principle that the leopard cannot change his spots!"

"I've only heard that applied to vicious tendencies," she said.

"Very true," he returned with a harshness of tone and manner that she was puzzled to account for. "There is never any hope for the d.a.m.ned in this world... When a man has been evil we see to it that we keep him so."

Had it been possible for him to displease her, he knew that he would have done so then. As it was, his sentiments disappointed her. She could not understand, and therefore had no sympathy with, a cynical outlook on life. And he was lacking in self-appreciation. She was a type of womanhood who enjoys a heroic pose,--a type that is unconsciously responsible for the braggart and the egotist. He was perfectly aware that he might have made a fine story out of the scar that appealed to her so powerfully, that he could have posed as a very G.o.d in her eyes; but he was either lacking in conceit, or the desire to stand high in her regard was not sufficiently strong to incline him to be boastful. And the scar was one of the distinctions he was least proud of. It marked the most gallingly unsuccessful period in a life which, it seemed to him, had been one big futile promise. Few men had had better chances, fewer still had been hedged about as he had been by conflicting and destructive forces. His very temperament was opposed to a successful career. And yet he had all the gifts--and he knew it--that go towards the making of a successful man. He was bigger than the majority, a man who even as a failure was bound to make his mark. But a mental superiority only made him realise more certainly his inadequacy in other respects. He chafed at the knowledge of wasted powers, the perversion of ideas, and the lowering of talents to fit the altered conditions of his life. Some men adapt themselves to evil fortune, but to the man who realises his essential place in the scheme of things, to be forced to take a position on a lower plane is humiliating to the point of revolt. Time had accustomed Lawless to his downfall; but his resignation was no reconciled submission, it was at best acceptance of the irremediable.

The girl had risen at the conclusion of his trenchant speech, and stood, holding her fan loosely in both hands, looking up at him in the dim rosy glow of the Chinese lanterns. She wore white with a string of pearls round the slender throat. Lawless, looking down at her, observed how thin her shoulders were. The prettiest part of her neck was hidden--the concession to youthful modesty.

"The band is playing the next dance," she said.

"Yes," he answered. But he did not move at once. "You are dancing it, I suppose?"

She nodded. At the moment she wished that she had been less eager to fill her card. He was sitting out most of the dances. She had watched him hanging about doorways looking on with a slightly bored curiosity, and once or twice she had pa.s.sed him on her partner's arm seated alone on the stoep. His aloofness appealed to her imagination. Everything in connection with him interested her tremendously. She was even tempted to skip the next dance, and trust to her partner not finding her in this secluded and dimly lit place. It was not so much the knowledge that such conduct was unworthy, as the fear that he might think less highly of her, that kept her to her engagement.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shall look forward to our next waltz."

She smiled up at him suddenly, and stooping deliberately he held her by both arms and kissed her on the lips.

It had been an impulse, not an irresistible impulse; he had made no effort at resistance. The red young lips appealed to him,--the girlish homage appealed to him. She was altogether fresh and delightful. And she did not resent his conduct. For a moment she drew back startled, a little confused, a little undecided as to what she ought to do; the next instant self-consciousness vanished; she was pathetically proud and pleased and grateful that this hero of her imagination should feel sufficiently kindly towards her to wish to kiss her. She remained quite quiet under his hands, blushing, with eyes downcast, and a little fleeting smile playing tenderly about her mouth. He removed his hands from her shoulders, and offered her his arm.

"Your partner will be getting perfectly rabid," he said. "I suppose I must take you back now to the madding crowd, kind little friend..."