The Claw Part 33

In the bleak grey dawn I unlocked the door and sought my husband.

He was sleeping, sprawled in a canvas chair beside the table frowsy now, and littered with empty tins, spilt wine, and overturned flowers. His mouth hung open, and I saw that it was weak and loose; that his dark skin was yellowed, not tanned; that his eyes were set with a sinister closeness to his handsome thin nose; that under them lay the mean lines of secret sins; that his hands were not the staunch, square hands of a man that could work for a woman and take hold of her heart and keep it for himself against all comers; they were long and cruel and womanish, and looked as though they knew only how to tear and wring and destroy.

While he snored I drank to the dregs the bitterness of my cup. I was bound to this drunkard and liar for all my days. And Anthony Kinsella was alive. I knew, that he was alive. If all the angels in Heaven had come down to tell me now that he was not living I would not have listened. I knew that he was living and breathing somewhere in this land that he loved. _I had always known it_. But I had let this man blunt my instinct and blur my soul's vision with his base lies; and he had profited by the blindness of suffering to trick me with a lie and an ear-ring dipped in mud to convince me of my lover's death! It seemed to me a shameful thing that I should have been so easily convinced. Now that my faith had come back in a great sweeping tide I convicted myself of base treason in the haste I had made to believe the false tale. But faith, reproaches, discovery--all came too late, for me. Anthony was living--somewhere; but not for me. Here was the mate I had given myself, snoring before me in drunken slumber! Lest I should strike him on his open lying mouth, I fled from the room.

In the verandah the austere, sweet air of dawn greeted my burning temples and lulled the fever of my burning cheeks and hands. The stars were paling to whiteness and falling away into lemon-tinted distance.

Shadowy hands tipped with faintest rose reached down from the skies, gathering the mists of night back into the bosom of the clouds; and the land, like some subtly tinted j.a.panese map on which was traced streams, gra.s.ses, and flying birds, swiftly unrolled itself to the eye, yard by yard, mile by mile. A line of mauve-tinted hills appeared suddenly on the horizon, as though sketched in by some rapid, skilful hand.

A strange thing about the veldt is that if you stare long at it when you are happy your eyes will fill with tears, and an indefinable sorrow surges in your veins. But go to it when you are wretched, and its beauty will lay shadowy hands on you and bless you and enfold you, and something will wing its way into your heart like a white heron of peace, and nestling there give you comfort and courage.

As I re-entered the room the man in the chair opened his eyes and regarded me stupidly. We looked at each other in silence for a while.

I was surprised to see that the eyes I had always thought to be a deep and rather beautiful brown were really as yellow as an eagle's: the effect of darkness was given by a number of brown spots scattered closely on the iris. When the eyes were opened the little mean lines disappeared, and a curious deferential expression took their place. His colouring was dusky, almost mournful, but he had beautiful teeth that lit up his face when he smiled, and the effect was that fleeting suggestion of chivalrousness that had impressed me so deeply and was so false. He was smiling now, but the chivalrous engagement was absent.

His gaze had quickly changed from stupidity to one of sneering anger.

"So you have deigned to come forth at last! Would it be troubling you too much to ask for an explanation of your charming behaviour?"

With an affectation of carelessness which his furtive glance and shaking hand denied, he took out a cigarette and lit it.

Without speaking I laid upon the table the little green jewel-case, open--with the blue stones smiling on their satin cushion.

For a few seconds there was silence, and as I watched him with disdain and hatred I could not control, I saw that he was not taken unawares.

He knew what I had found, and had his tale ready. Incredible as it may seem, he was ready to burden his soul with fresh lies. I had yet to find that this was ever his way. He never confessed a fault, but lied to cover it, and if the lies were not long enough or broad enough he lied again; and if you still did not believe he lied on and on--useless, futile lies.

What pretty ear-rings, he said. Where did I get them? They were just like a pair he had bought intending to give me; but he had remembered in time that turquoises meant unhappy memories for me, so he had kept them, and by Jove, yes! when he had found his things all over the place in his rooms he had come upon the box, too, but with only one ear-ring in it, and had thought that brute Makupi had taken it (he forgot he had told me the boy had stolen nothing). Perhaps he had the thing in his pocket now. (He, in fact, affected to make a search, feeling in all his pockets, then looked more closely at the box on the table.) Why! this was the very box--but of course I must have picked it up in the cart-- then the ear-ring had not been lost after all! At first he had thought it was a pair of my own I was showing him--a pair just like those he had bought,--for that cla.s.s of screw ear-ring was all made alike--a jeweller had told him so. _They were all made exactly in the same way--you couldn't tell one pair from another_.

Fascinated, I stood watching him weave his tangle of lies and uttering them between little puffs of smoke. If it had not been so horrible it would have been an interesting study in soul pathology. I had never met any one with an idiosyncrasy like this; never known a man who thought it worth while to lie at all, certainly not in this idle yet curiously intent way. Could he be mad, I wondered. With each new lie or portion of one his confidence increased. The last part of his statement, made with the utmost _aplomb_, was an inspiration. I saw the gleam of the creator in his eye as he propounded it. And when I still gazed at him in stony-eyed fascination he repeated it with an a.s.surance almost childish.

"All blue ear-rings are alike. Yes: that fellow in Durban told me so when we were talking about earrings once long ago. Perhaps that is why you are upset--old memories, I suppose. You are thinking of that chap Kinsella. Still, I don't see why you should treat me like a dog on that account."

His tone became injured and indignant once more. There were to be no more propitiatory inventions. He had explained the whole thing satisfactorily as far as he was concerned, and the subject was now closed. He swept it away with his tobacco smoke, and returned to his grievance against me.

"On a man's wedding night! To drive him into getting beastly drunk out of sheer misery and loneliness! I have told you before that I never drink anything, but last night,"--he waved at the empty champagne bottles--"upon my soul I think this lapse should be forgiven me."

Half unconsciously my eyes sought the wall where the packing cases stood; the case of whiskey was gone. It had been spirited away in the night to some other hut. I remembered now the shuffling sounds of some one lifting and carrying away a heavy weight.

"But I am willing to kiss and make friends if you are."

He rose to his feet and put out a hand with the frank manly air he could so easily a.s.sume while the half-modest, half-chivalrous smile that had always attracted me flitted across his face. It was an elusive expression and never stayed to be examined; but for a moment it bred in me the hope that at the bottom of this dark soul there was some spark of n.o.bility, covered heavily with great weights, perhaps, but smouldering still. I must appeal to it if there was to be any way for either of us out of this tangled wild.

"Maurice," I said almost gently, "there can be no kisses between you and me. I know now that you have lied to me and deceived me, and the knowledge is so terrible that I can hardly bear it. There was a time during the past night when I could have killed you for what you have done. I can never forget it--it is no use saying that. But because you and I are irrevocably bound together by the laws of my religion I will try to forgive you if you will give me time. I will try only to remember the promises I made to you at the altar a few hours ago. By the help of G.o.d I will keep compact with you: if you on your part will not lie to me any more, and will strive to be the honourable man I believed you when I married you."

He gazed at me with a sneering mouth.

"And what is to come of all these fine compacts, may one ask?"

What indeed! G.o.d knew best what house, if any, could be built upon the shifting sand of this man's nature and the ashes of my heart's desire!

I could not prophesy with my hope; I could only try to keep from my voice the despair that obsessed me.

"A home perhaps that you and I can live in with peace and honour, Maurice," I faltered at last. "Who knows; we may yet build some fine thing with the wreckage of our old selves. If we learn to tolerate and help and comfort each other--will not that be something? Perhaps in the end friendship may come."

He interrupted me with a fleering laugh.

"Friendship! You think that is what a man marries a beautiful girl like you for? You talk like a fool. If friendship was what I wanted I could have got it--and a jolly sight more, too--without tying myself up for life. It is not every woman who finds me so objectionable as my wife apparently does. Friendship be d.a.m.ned!"

"It is all I ever promised you," I broke out at him then. "I told you when we made our bargain that you must expect nothing from me but my presence in your house, and my help in your career. You swore you would ask nothing more of me."

"A likely story," he answered. "Who ever means those tom-fool things?"

"_I_ meant them if _you_ did not, and I mean to stand by them," I said firmly, though my soul shook at this faithlessness; this trampling under foot of solemn vows.

"We'll see about that," he said darkly.

"We will see about it now. It will be finally and definitely settled now, or I will leave this house, and you. If your promises do not bind you neither will I be bound to you."

He was moved at last, though I could not tell on what raw place of pride or personal vanity my words flicked him. His manner changed.

Consideration came into it, and some trace of humility.

"Deirdre, you would not leave me?"

"Not unless you force me to. But so sure as you forget the compact there is between us, Maurice, I will go. Understand now clearly and then let us speak of it no more. I married you believing Anthony Kinsella to be dead, and hoping to dedicate the rest of my loveless life to something which would make it worth the living. You offered me the task of helping you, and I took it with a clear bargain between us, and a hope--Ah! I know not what hope, but I thought that perhaps--life might still bear some little gentle flower. And so it may,"--I found courage to continue, looking at his whitening face: "I pray G.o.d for your sake, that it may. But you must not forget, Maurice, that things do not stand just where they were that night we made our bargain; do not forget that I gave my promise with a lie between us that made all the difference to me; that now I know the truth and believe Anthony Kinsella still alive I can no more help loving him than I can help my heart beating. You can drive me from your home if you choose, but I tell you that I love him, and I will never forswear my love for him. I cannot now ever give him my body as he has my soul; but neither will I give it to another."

My voice had sunk to a whisper. My words rustled out like leaves across my dry lips. He, too, was pallid-faced and stammering.

"This is a bitter bargain!"

"Not less for you than for me," I contended inexorably, for I was fighting for more than life. I knew that if this last appeal failed it would be the end. The ship of our marriage must founder, and we two, like broken, useless spars float apart on dangerous seas.

For me the thought of living in companionship with this man held nothing but terror and disgust. But with the fervour of a Catholic I clung to the marriage vows I had made, not only because my faith and the traditions of all the clean, pure women of my ancestry bade me do it; but, because I terribly feared for what might happen when Anthony Kinsella came riding back into my life, as now with the clear prevision of an Irishwoman I knew he would.

If I were alone--married and yet alone--and he should come for me, would I refuse to go? No, no, no! I knew the spell of my love and the strength of his will too well to suppose it! Faith and tradition would go to the winds; they would be burnt up in the fierce flame of our love.

I was fighting with Maurice Stair for my soul. I could not love him; he was an unworthy traitor and liar, but I was his wife and I wanted his home and name to shelter me from sin. Only, I would take them on no other conditions than those I had named to him.

Long, long we stayed there, fighting that fight. I cannot remember all that was said. I only know that once I sank into a chair almost fainting, that once there was a time when he wept like a child, his head on the table. At another he reviled me until my knees shook, and cursed the hour I had set foot in his life.

But at last when the sounds of broad day were all about us and the room full of leaping sunshine, the fight was over, and I knew that my will had conquered. The victory, if so it could be called, was to me! For how long I knew not. I had learned much of my husband in those dawn hours of weeping and reviling and recriminations; and one thing I knew-- this battle would be often to fight. Life with Maurice Stair, unless I was prepared to surrender my will to his, would be one long, ceaseless struggle--a struggle in which my adversary would disdain no weapon or device to bring me down.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

WHAT A GOAD PERFORMED.

"A word fitly spoken is like apples of silver in baskets of gold."

A few days after our marriage Maurice went into town, and came back to Water-lily Farm with a brief but interesting statement.

"We shall not be leaving Mashonaland. When I made you some such promise I had not reckoned with my dear uncle Alexander. It appears that he objects to my going away from Africa."

I regarded him steadfastly for a while, trying to read between the lines of this announcement.