The Fire Trumpet Part 72

The day is overwhelmingly hot, and Payne playfully chides her for running the risk of sunstroke by standing all the morning on that dusty road, in which event he would, by the first law of nature, be compelled to spend the rest of his days speeding about the habitable and uninhabitable globe, with Claverton six hours behind him, fiercely on his trail with pistols and coffee. It is not fair of her to risk the life of a respectable father of a family, he says, even if she is tired of her own. As it is she is let down easy with a headache, whereat no one can wonder.

Poor Lilian smiles, rather faintly. Yes, she has a bit of a headache, she says; nothing much, she will go and lie down for a little while.

Once in her room, however, she does not lie down, but sits and thinks.

Then she opens a writing-case and begins a long letter to her lover.

She does not know when it may reach him, perhaps not for more than a week, the movements of the Colonial Forces are so uncertain; but still the very fact of writing it is a source of comfort to her just now. She will tell him all about her foolish fears and forebodings, and as she does so it almost seems as if the calm, tender presence on which she has learnt to lean is at her side now, and for two hours she writes on, feeling comforted and happy. She lays aside her pen at last, thinks awhile, and then begins to read over the letter. She will not send it; on second thoughts--no; she will not worry him with mere foolish and superst.i.tious fancies such as these--why should she? Has he not enough to think about up there, without having his mind troubled by such chimeras, perhaps just at the time when it should be most undisturbed to attend to the more serious game of war? As it is, she looks back to the way in which she yielded to her imaginary fears before, and will not trouble him with them now, when perhaps his life is in hourly danger.

So with a sigh, she tears up and burns the letter which has taken her hours to write. Still, the composition of it has done her good, and her spirits have in great measure returned as she goes downstairs. The house seems deserted, so quiet is it. Payne is lying fast asleep in a hammock which he has slang in the little garden at the back, and his wife is either in the same blissful state of oblivion, or has gone out; the children are at school, and, meanwhile, quiet reigns. Lilian reaches the pa.s.sage just as a man stands in the front doorway, holding the knocker in his hand as if about to knock, and, seeing her, refrains, and advances into the hall. She stops short, seeming rooted to the ground. For the man to whom she made that fatal promise which has blighted some of the best years of her life, is standing before her.

"Why, Lilian," he exclaims, taking the hand which she mechanically holds out. "You look as if you hardly knew me."

"Do I? This is--rather sudden, you know. But, come in. I'll tell Mrs Payne you're here."

"By no means," says Truscott, quickly, placing himself between her and the door--they are in the drawing-room by now. "This is the most fortunate thing in the world. Couldn't have been better if we had arranged it so. You don't suppose I want a third party present the very first moment we are together again after all this time."

This bracketing of them jars horribly on Lilian's ear; but she only answers, somewhat irrelevantly:

"I thought you knew the Paynes. You do; don't you?"

"Confound the Paynes. Here have I been searching the world for you these years and found you at last, and--hang it all, Lilian, you don't seem in the least glad to see me."

In fact, she is not. And the statement as to the comprehensiveness of his search she does not altogether believe. She cannot forget that when she was thrown upon the world, dest.i.tute almost, and alone, at a time when she most needed help, encouragement, protection, this man had held himself aloof from her, and now, when after years of desolation of spirit and of a struggle almost beyond her strength, the battle is won, and she has found happiness and rest and peace, he jauntily tells her that she doesn't seem in the least glad to see him. Her heart hardens towards him; but she checks the impulse which arises to tell him in words of withering scorn that she is not. Yet she does not contradict him, for she remembers vividly with what relief she heard that news, and how thankfully she had accepted the restfulness it brought her--a restfulness undisturbed until that morning.

"H'm, well, you don't seem very glad. And yet I've come a good way to find you, and had a narrow shave of my life, too--as narrow a shave as a man could well have and escape."

"Yes? How was that?" she asks, hardly able to restrain her eagerness.

He sees it and is gratified. The old interest is waking, he thinks; Lilian was always tender-hearted to a fault.

"Why, out in California. Fact is, I was awfully down on my luck and went wandering. Well, I got into one of these street rows and was. .h.i.t-- hit badly. For thirteen weeks I was lying in a hospital, the most awful lazar-house you could imagine, and at the end I crawled out more dead than alive. The best of the joke is that my affectionate relatives thought I was dead, and advertised me accordingly."

Lilian makes no answer. It was this advertis.e.m.e.nt that, seen haphazard two years ago, had emanc.i.p.ated her from her fatal bond.

"But didn't you hear of all this?" he asks.

"You know I have been out of the world for more than four years. When did it happen?"

"Only a year ago," is his reply. And then she knows that he is lying to her--endeavouring to play upon her sympathies--for she has the number of the newspaper containing the advertis.e.m.e.nt safely locked up in an inner drawer of her writing-table, and its date is rather more than two years previous. "Those fools Grantham, the lawyers, could tell me nothing about you, though I pestered them with inquiries, till at last I began to suspect they were telling lies just for practice, to keep their hands in. But at last I've found you?" And there is a ring of real warmth, to Lilian's ear, in his voice, which fills her with dismay. Can it be that he has not heard of her position now, that he comes upon her suddenly like this and takes possession of her in his tone, so to say?

At all risks she must tell him.

Just then a cheery voice is heard in the pa.s.sage, humming an old colonial song, and Payne walks into the room. He stops short on seeing the visitor, s.n.a.t.c.hing his pipe from his mouth with one hand, while with the other he welcomes the unexpected guest.

"How d'you do?" says Truscott, in his silkiest manner. "I was hoping to have found Mrs Payne at home this afternoon. Meanwhile, I have been fortunate enough to renew a very old acquaintance with Miss Strange here."

"So?" replies Payne, looking from one to the other. "Well, I'm glad you've found your way up. I saw you this morning, at a distance, when we were seeing those men off to the front. Good all-round lot, weren't they?"

"Yes, yes; a very fair lot indeed. I suppose there's a tidy number of men in the field by now?"

"Too many. If it depended on mere numbers, the war would be finished to-morrow; but it's the management--we always break down in that. If we were allowed to go ahead in our own way, we should do the thing properly; but there's such a tremendous lot of red-tape and despatch-writing that the forces are kept doing nothing for weeks, eating their heads off in camp. By the way, have you heard anything more about your application?"

"No, nothing. I suppose I shall in a day or two."

They talked about the war for a little longer, and criticised the Government, the tactics, and the Commandant-General, and all connected with the campaign, and then Truscott got up to leave. He was sorry, he said, but he could not wait; perhaps another day he would be more fortunate. And so, with a cordial hand-shake from his host, on whom he had made a golden impression, he took himself off.

"I like that fellow!" said Payne, returning to the room. "No nonsense about him."

"He can be very pleasant," a.s.sented Lilian, ambiguously.

Doubtless the reader is wondering how Truscott got out of durance vile, whither he had just been consigned when last we saw him. The method of his liberation is immaterial to this narrative; suffice it that he did get out--obviously, since here he is, at large in Grahamstown. And now, as he walks away from Payne's door, he is turning over in his mind the results of the speculation. So far, he is bound to admit, they are not promising. His influence with Lilian is evidently dead, and to revive it, he feels, will be no easy task; but that everything depends upon his ability to revive it he is only too fully aware. Moreover, there is an additional incentive to success which hitherto he had left entirely out of his calculations. He was prepared to find Lilian "gone off" in appearance; a number of years like that--how many he did not care to reckon--are apt to tell. But the hand of Time, so far from buffeting, had been laid caressingly on the soft but stately beauty, which had grown graver, indeed, but far more sweet and attractive than in the earlier days of girlhood; and when he met her eyes that morning in the crowd a thrill shot through him as he thought how luck might throw into his hands, at one _coup_, such loveliness combined with such a reversion. Might? It should! And now, as he walked down the street, he revolved and elaborated his plans. He had never seen this lover of hers, who, he more than feared, would be no ordinary rival; but then the fact of his absence was an immense advantage. He might be killed in action, as the light-hearted Chadwick had airily remarked; and there's many a true word spoken in jest, as we all know. But putting aside this contingency into the category of exceptional luck, he--Truscott--had other cards to play, and that warily, for he would not endanger success by any rash move. If the worst came to the worst, he could always use the double-edged weapon which chance had thrown into his hand in the shape of his scoundrelly friend, Sharkey; but win he must. Meanwhile, he would begin by sedulously ignoring Lilian's engagement. He would show her the most marked attentions--in fact, compromise her--till at length this absent lover of hers should hear of it, and hear of it, too, in such a way that a split would be inevitable. Not that he intended to do this all at once--oh, no. He would take time, and the while his rival might be removed to a better sphere by accident or--well, things could not always be helped.

So he lost no time in calling again at the Paynes'; and having, with the attractive manner that he could so well a.s.sume, won the heart of that honest frontiersman, set himself to lay siege to that of his hostess, and succeeded. Not altogether, for Annie Payne was a shrewd little woman, and though she found this new acquaintance pleasant and amusing, watched him narrowly. She remembered the look which had pa.s.sed between him and Lilian, and held her true opinion of him in reserve. Meanwhile, she waited and watched.

In his intercourse with Lilian, too, he was all that was kind and thoughtful--scarcely ever referring to the past, and only then with a half regretful, half aggrieved air that was the perfection of acting.

But somehow or other he was seldom away from her. If she went out, she was sure to meet Truscott; if she stayed at home, he was sure to call; or Payne would pick him up in the street--of course, by chance--and bring him home to lunch; and though she avoided him as much as she possibly could, without being rude, yet somehow it seemed to her that she was never seen in public without this man at her side, till at last the gossips used to say to each other, with a wink and a smile, that "it was a very convenient arrangement to have a lover away at the front, my dear, whose place could be so well supplied; and that really Miss Strange, for all her demureness, was no better than the rest," and so on. Which tattle, however, fortunately or unfortunately, never reached Lilian's ears; and the intimacy between Truscott and the house of Payne grew apace. Not that this state of things had come about all at once-- Truscott was far too cautious for that; on the contrary, it had been one of the most gradual growth--so gradual, indeed, that the plotter had been inclined to blame himself for dilatoriness; but it was a fault in the right direction. So he bided his time, and was rewarded. Things were progressing as smoothly as he could wish.

To Lilian herself, his attentions are a terrible source of annoyance, and at times she feels as if the toils were closing in about her. She has never mentioned this new trouble in her letters to Claverton, thinking--and rightly--that it would bring him to her side at once; and she does not wish that, for his sake, if it can be avoided; but for her own, oh, how she longs for it! Why should this man, whom she had thought never to see again, return to persecute her? Had he not escaped--by a hair's breadth merely--blighting her whole life, after embittering some of the best years of it? She feels that she is beginning to hate him; and it is while in this vein that she goes down to the drawing-room one afternoon to fetch a book, for she has taken to remaining in her room when the Paynes are out, as they are now. To her intense mortification, Truscott is there.

"Ah! At last!" is his greeting, in a tone which to her ear is provoking in its cool a.s.surance. "I knew I should find you here, Lilian mine.

The rest of the world has gone picnicking, hasn't it?"

She had intended to make some excuse, and to leave him at once; but that possessive alters her plan. Now, once and for all, he must be made to understand her position, and that this tacitly a.s.sertive air of ownership which he has chosen to set up over her must cease.

"I don't know why you should _know_ anything of the sort," she replies, very coldly.

"Don't be angry, Lilian. You never used to fly out about trifles. What I meant was, we've had so little opportunity for a quiet talk together of late, that when I heard you had not gone with the others I thought it would be a capital opportunity for one now."

It happened that that day a picnic in a small way had been organised; but Lilian, somewhat to the Paynes' surprise, excused herself from going. She felt she could not take part in anything approaching to a festivity at such a time as this. It might be only a silly fad of hers, she said, and no one need know of it; still, she would rather stay quietly at home.

"But Lilian, child," objected Mrs Payne. "It'll do you a world of good, and, after all, it's a very mild form of festivity--not like a ball, you know. And I'm sure Arthur wouldn't wish you to mope yourself to death just because he is away."

"It isn't because he's away, but because he's away _as_ he is," she answered. "He may be risking his life every moment, while I am enjoying myself as if no one I cared for in the world was in danger. Only think, he might be lying shot down in the bush at the very moment we are all laughing and joking," and her voice sank to an awed whisper. "No. I'd rather stay at home quietly to-day." And the good-hearted little woman had kissed her, and vowed she was perfectly right; and then they had gone, and Lilian had her way and the house to herself, instead of accompanying them to rove about the deep rocky recesses of Fern Kloof and to eat a scrambling luncheon beneath its tangled shade, looking down, as in a splendid panorama, on the sunlit plains of Lower Albany.

The consciousness of this, in conjunction with Truscott's remark, causes her face to flush with something very like anger, and she answers, icily:

"In other words, you thought I had remained at home to receive visitors in Mrs Payne's absence. Thank you. I might have remembered--were it not that our acquaintance was a matter of such a long time ago--that that would be just the interpretation Ralph Truscott might be expected to put upon my actions."

"Why will you always harp upon that string, Lilian? You know it wasn't my fault. You would run away from every one and bury yourself in this beastly country among Dutchmen, and n.i.g.g.e.rs, and all that sort of thing, where it has taken me years to find you; and now, when I have found you, you turn the cold shoulder on me. But, perhaps, you don't believe that I have done this?" he concludes, dashing his tone of sorrowful reproach with a touch of irony.

"No. I do not."

She looks him straight in the face, and there is a shade of contempt in the calm eyes. Why should the man tell her such a pitiful falsehood?

"Oh, you don't?" he says, staring at her from the arm-chair in which he is lounging, fairly startled by her straightforwardness.

"No. But why talk about that?" she answers. Her hands nervously grasp the back of a chair as she stands, speaking in a low, rapid voice. "It is past, and there is an end of it. What I have to say to you now is of the present, and it is best said frankly and without reserve. You have come here and a.s.sumed a kind of possession over me, which I must ask you to discontinue. Of course I have no actual right to request you to drop your intimacy with the Paynes, but I have a moral right as a defenceless woman appealing to a gentleman, and therefore presumably an honourable man, to ask you to discontinue those very marked attentions by which you have made me conspicuous of late. Whatever has been is past and done with, nothing can alter that, and under the circ.u.mstances there can be no question even of intimacy between us. I do not wish to say anything unkind, but it would be better for us not to meet again, much better, believe me."

All this time Truscott's countenance has been wearing an expression of blank and well-feigned amazement.

"Better not to meet again? No question of intimacy between us? Good Heavens! Why, Lilian, what _do_ you suppose I've come from one end of the world to the other for, then?"