The Claw Part 42

I put my hand to my heart.

"What was it you wanted to say to me?" I asked. I felt that I could not bear too much.

"Why did you marry Maurice Stair?"

The unexpected question bewildered me. But she was too ill to be told that my reason was one I would discuss with no one. I said at last, for I had a part to play in life, and meant to play it to the end:

"He is a good fellow. We are very happy."

"So I hear--and I want to know how you dare be happy--you whom Tony loved--with a knave like Maurice Stair?"

My heart hurt. Oh! how my heart hurt. I wanted to get away from this cruel dying woman whose pale hands dug up old bones from their graves and strewed them in the path. I wished to go, but I could not. I had to stand there listening.

"You won't tell me why, but I know--it was because he persuaded you with a blue ear-ring that Tony Kinsella was dead. Well! I want to tell you now that--that tale and that proof were both false. He never found the ear-ring, but had it made in Durban from a design with which I supplied him. I have waited until you were happy to tell you this. It is my revenge on you for taking Tony Kinsella from me."

Her hand picked at the pale blue stripes of her quilt. I stood appalled at the strength of hatred that could reach out at me from a death-bed.

"Ask your husband--ask your reformed character whom you have made a Sunday-school boy of--and see what he has to say."

I had an instinct to rush from the room, but I overcame it.

"Shall I go now?" I asked presently. She was staring at me with her haunting eyes.

"You are well-masked--or can it be possible that you don't care!--I misjudged you, then. I thought you honoured honour in men and women above all things--Tony thought so too--he said, 'she is like a clear stream of water--and I am thirsty for clean water.' Tell me if those were cruel words to hear from the lips of a man I had loved and given all to, Deirdre Saurin."

Given all to! Was this what I had come to hear from the arid lips of this cruel woman! Was my faith to be shattered at last! But my heart rejected the thought even before she spoke again.

"Given all that was best in me. He was no saint, but because in long past days on the Rand he was Claude Valetta's friend he would not steal Claude Valetta's wife--charmed that wife never so sweetly, and loved he never so deeply. For he did love me--as he never loved any of the others--and in the end I should have won--I saw the day coming--felt it close--when he would have taken me from my wretched life to some other land. Then he went to Ireland--and came back a changed man."

This again found me gazing at her amazed and bewildered.

"Ah!" she mocked. "You think you were the first girl he loved--it is not so. There was a girl in Ireland--a girl at a ball, who first dragged him from me."

"_A girl at a ball_--"

"She took him back to old dreams, he said--her beauty and her purity-- but he was married, and she was not--so he came away quick--he went back to his dreams on the veldt for many months after that. Poor Tony! how he loved a woman he could put in a shrine!--his trouble was that they wouldn't stay there when he was about. And the women out of shrines had their call for him too.--After the girl in Ireland Rhodes got him for awhile with his dreams of Empire--but he was coming straight, straight back to me--I knew it from his letters, when he met you--where did he meet you?--Oh! what brought _your_ feet straying out to Africa to trample on my hopes!"

What could I say? I was bitterly sorry for her and glad for myself--and broken-hearted for myself! What could I say? I was silent.

She was lying back against her pillows now, deadly pale, eyes closed. I made a step to the door to call her nurse, but she detained me with a few more words like shrivelled-up dry leaves blowing through the room.

"His wife died about six months before you came to Africa." Ah! That was something. Spikenard in that to lay upon an old wound. A streak of gold to embroider in a banner of belief I had always waved in the faces of those who cried him down. I would not even thank her for confirming my faith. She looked in my face and read my thought.

"Oh! yes--your faith was great enough to remove the mountains he had piled up round himself. You weren't like Anna Cleeve who thought she adored him, yet at the first word of doubt failed. When I told her of his marriage I did not know of his wife's death--he never told me until _you_ were in Fort George. He came straight to me when he returned from the Transvaal, and told me, and thanked me then, for my 'kindly offices'

with Anna. Cleeve--for saving him from a woman who had so tawdry a belief in the inherent decency of a man--but, he told me too he would have no more interference--he had found 'a stream of crystal clear water'--he needed no more 'friendly offices' of me. I understood very well what it meant when I saw him looking at you on the tennis-court.

Good-bye, Deirdre Saurin. You and I will not meet again."

I don't know how I came to be on my knees beside her bed. Perhaps my thought was to cry some prayer for her and myself and for all women who love; but though many words were in my heart none came to my lips. And presently an unexpected thing happened. I felt a hand on my hair, and a voice most subtly different to that I had been listening to, said brokenly, and softly, some words that sounded almost like a blessing.

"Why should I mind that he loved you best? If I had ever had a son I should have wished him to love a girl like you."

Mr Valetta was waiting for me in the verandah. He said:

"I think I must insist on seeing you home, Mrs Stair. There seems to be some disturbance in the town."

"What is it?"

"I don't exactly know--but I have seen men running about in an excited way, and there has been some cheering. I fancy I heard your husband's name. Is he in the town to-night? At any rate all the ruction has moved over in the direction of the camp. Look at the lights flashing in your huts."

I looked and saw: and even as we stood there, another wild burst of cheering came echoing across the open. Then I knew.

Gathering up with shaking hands the draperies of my cloak and gown I prepared to speed my way home and to my share of the terror and beauty of life waiting there. But before I went I said to the husband of Nonie Valetta:

"Is it true that she is so near death?"

"The doctor holds out no hope. It is not so much the actual fever, as the complications that have set in. And her heart is all to pieces."

"Well--let her depart in peace. Do not allow any news to reach her that will disturb her at the last. I want you to promise me that."

"I promise, Mrs Stair, solemnly. Shall I come with you?"

"No, no. Go to her," I said, and sped away on swift feet.

Long before I reached the camp the cheering and all sounds of exultation had ceased, and a strange stillness supervened. At the foot of the kopje, trampling on the tennis-court and among the zinias, were many men, their faces all turned towards the huts, talking among themselves in low voices. As I pa.s.sed by a m.u.f.fled silent figure, I caught a word or two.

"By G.o.d! That dirty brute of an _Umlimo_... Keeping a man like Kinsella--all these months! Nearly two years!"

"The trouble with the natives won't be long coming now... Stair ought to get the V.C. Who would have thought he had it in him!"

There was no mistake then--Maurice had been successful! But why were these men standing out in the inhospitable night? What was going on in the silent brilliantly lighted huts? What subtle note of regret had my ears caught in the low spoken words?

Dimly, amidst the press of overpowering emotions that surged upon me, I apprehended that something was wrong. Fear crept into me, numbing my limits and detaining my feet: but still I stumbled on up the winding path.

There were lights in all the huts, as though some one had been searching in each. Doubtless Maurice had gone from one to the other looking for me. What an ironical trick of Fate that, after awaiting him every moment of every hour since he left, in the very moment of his triumph I should be absent!

There were men in the dining-room hut; but some instinct guided my feet to the drawing-room, through whose half-closed doors I heard the murmur of voices--and again, in the _timbre_ of those voices, came the suggestion of trouble--pain--loss. I knew full well now that something was wrong. Something had gone hideously awry: and I feared, I feared!

At last I found courage to press open the door.

The heavy odour of a drug came out like a presence to meet me, and mingling with it, piercing through it to my inmost senses, was some other scent that brought terror and dismay. A dimness came over my eyes, so that I could not distinguish any of the faces about me. I saw only the p.r.o.ne figure lying against pillows on the couch that had been dragged to the middle of the room.

It seemed to me there were many red flowers spread about that couch, and on the doctor's hands, and on his shirt sleeves. It was the scent of them that had met me at the door, piercing my senses--the strange pungent scent of the red flowers of death. Around me in the quiet room I heard some curt words gently spoken.

"It is Mrs Stair... just in time... clear the room... nothing more can be done."

"Deirdre,"--a faint whisper dragged my leaden feet forward, and I went blindly towards the couch, my arms outstretched. The crimson roses of my cloak joined all the other crimson roses spread everywhere.