The Claw Part 38

I arranged a good _menu_ with Mango, decorated the table, and was ready to receive his guest. Dinner pa.s.sed as smoothly and pleasantly as a deep river may glide over dark unthinkable things.

Just as the boys were putting the dessert upon the table I felt something against my skirt. I pushed back my chair and looked down.

Snowie had come home.

With a cry I caught her up and put her on the table before me. The next cry came from the guest.

"My G.o.d!--the fiend who did that ought to be--hanged!"

There was a silence that the kitten tried to break. She essayed to mew, almost as if she had something to tell; but no sound came from the broken jaws gummed together with matter and dried blood. One blue eye gazed dully round, the other was battered into her head like a crushed turquoise. Every paw but one was broken; they trailed behind her, and her body waggled strangely from an injured spine. I was afraid to take the little mangled body to my breast for fear of what fresh pain I might cause it. I thought I heard it moaning like a woman: yet its mouth did not move.

"Hanging would be too good for the brute--brandy, Stair--your wife is fainting."

"No--no; milk--bring warm milk for my baby--it has Anthony's eyes--my poor little white baby--all broken--"

The moaning that did not come from Snowie filled the room.

"No use giving the poor little beggar milk, Mrs Stair--it is dying-- better to put it out of its misery at once--drink this brandy, will you--got any poison in the house, Stair?"

"Yes."

The man took the kitten from me and went from the room, and I followed; but as I pa.s.sed Maurice Stair I whispered three words at him, with terrible eyes:

"_Take it then_!"

I had suffered too much.

As I entered my hut the silver travelling-clock that had come with me to Africa struck three clear notes from my dressing-table.

Of all the strange hours of my life it had knelled none more desperate than this! I came in with the dew of the night on my face, dust and dead leaves hanging to my white satin gown, some little stains of blood upon the bodice, an ashen-blue flower in my hand. My nails were full of earth. I had dug a grave with my hands for Snowie, and buried her among the zinias.

The hut seemed strange to me. I found myself looking round it as if I had never seen it before--or should never see it again. On the little altar the _veilleuse_ flickered upwards to the silver crucifix; and from above, the Mother of Consolation regarded me with grave, sad eyes that made me afraid of my purpose. I turned away and opened a dispatch-box on my dressing-table, and took from it the revolver I had brought to Rhodesia.

One little bullet lay snug, waiting to be sent on its message.

I stared at it, pondering on the power of such a tiny thing to force open the great sealed gates of Death! So small and insignificant, yet with surer, swifter power than anything that lived or breathed to send one swiftly beyond the stars, beyond the dawn, beyond the eternal hills!

I should know at last what fate was Anthony Kinsella's--but I dared not look behind me to where the _veilleuse_ gleamed on the drooping head of Christ who died for sinners.

A shadow fell across my hands as they mused upon the polished barrels, and in a moment the room seemed darker; the air grew bitter to breathe when I knew that Maurice Stair was sharing it with me. I looked in the mirror and saw his face.

"What do you want--murderer?"

"I want to die, Deirdre--I am not fit to live--kill me."

"There is rat poison in the house," I said, and saw my lips curving in the bitter gleaming smile of a Medusa as he blenched and shook under my words.

"My G.o.d!--you are cruel--crueller than death. It costs more to stand here and face you than to go and die like a rat in a hole. You are right, it _is_ the only death I am fit for--but speak to me first, Deirdre--give me one kind word--just one word."

"_Words_!--what do they do for you? A hundredth part of the words I have flung at you in my misery would have put manhood into a baboon, and driven a _real_ man mad with shame--but _you_!"

"I know--I am a coward, a skunk, a liar, a drunkard. I will die to-night if it will please you."

"_Nothing you can do will please me_."

"My G.o.d.--let me tell you how it happened,--she scratched my hand trying to get away to you, and I went mad for a few moments--for a few moments I saw red--before G.o.d I did not know what I was doing--afterwards I saw her lying on the ground all battered to bits, and found the b.l.o.o.d.y boot-jack in my hand--"

"_Ah_!"

"Oh, G.o.d! don't look at me like that--I never meant it, Deirdre--I swear I never meant it--I put her outside--she must have crept away into the bush to die."

"She lay there three days suffering the h.e.l.ls of hunger and thirst and wounds--too broken to crawl home--while you whistled, and lied! Maurice Stair you are an unspeakable brute. Be very sure you will answer to G.o.d for this."

I threw down my revolver, and turned on him the implacable Medusa face of the stone image in the mirror.

"If you are going to die to-night, then I will not. Your presence would poison the very valley of death for me."

"You meant to die--_you_? Deirdre, have I brought you to such a pa.s.s?

Forgive me--forgive me." He grovelled on the floor clutching at my skirt, kissing my feet, but I thrust him away.

"Forgive me--I did not mean to do it--some madness entered into me--I loved the little thing, Deirdre--I loved it--I used to lie in the dark with it against my face, and think it was a little child--_your child_."

Black vultures flew into the room then; the air was darkened with their wings. They filled the hut rustling and beating. They flapped about me, with cruel beaks plucking at my heart. Through the trailing of their dusky wings I saw the tortured face of the man on the floor. And across the room the great eyes of Mary accused not him, but me.

"Get up, Maurice," I said to him at last. Now that I knew that the sweet rest and peace of death were not for me a great weariness crept over my spirit. "Get up! Do not kneel to me. You make me ashamed."

"Give me another chance, Deirdre. May G.o.d curse and afflict me root and branch, if I do not change from what I am. Give me one more chance."

I held out my hand to him, while the floor swayed under my feet.

"This is a deep, terrible pit--we are in--Maurice." I stammered, hardly having strength to speak. "We must try and help each other--to climb out of it--together."

Looking past him out through the open door, into the grey weeping morning I saw a vista of long weary years.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

WHAT THE KNUCKLE-BONE OF A SHEEP DID.

"The senses no less than the soul have their spiritual mysteries to reveal."

We were sitting under a mimosa tree outside the drawing-room hut, elbows on the tea-table, enjoying the sunset lights and the extraordinary content that nothing so well bestows as a day's work well done.

It was almost the end of a February day, and everywhere around us bloomed and flaunted the radiant tints of summer at the full. In a tree close by a little green-breasted bird was singing a pa.s.sionate song.

The sea of zinias still swayed its multi-coloured waves below us, but boundaries had been set, and full-tide now only reached to the foot of the kopje. Above high-water mark Mgatweli Police Camp and the home of its commanding officer, picturesque still, but no longer disreputable, rose like a Phoenix from its ashes.