The Fire Trumpet Part 96

The colour comes and goes in her ashy face, and she sinks into a chair, faint and giddy beneath the shock. He is safe, and she will see him again. But then flashes in the thought of that other barrier--Truscott and his fatal knowledge. Was it not in this man's power to part them again? Ah, surely not. Whatever dreadful mystery there is, she feels sure somehow that it will be cleared up. She will see him again--her one heart's love--whom she sent forth to a cruel death. She will explain all, and he will forgive her--though it is the second time she has driven him from her--yes, she knows that, even if that last hurried note, which he had sent back to her on the eve of his awful peril, and which is now all blurred from the tears which have rained upon it--that last precious relic--had not been what it was.

And Annie Payne, entering at this moment--having the while been at the back of the house, where she could neither see nor hear the telegraph boy--started and stared in amazement, for Lilian broke into a radiant smile as she held out the despatch, and then burst into a flood of happy, grateful tears.

"There, Lilian darling. Didn't I tell you while there was life there was hope? And now you'll see that everything will come right," said her warm-hearted friend, going over to kiss her. And then out of sheer sympathy, she began to cry, too.

"Please, missis," said the Hottentot servant-girl, bursting into the room in great trepidation, "there's a lady at the gate who's very ill.

She seems hardly able to stand."

"Goodness gracious!" cried kind-hearted Annie Payne. "Who can she be?

We must get her in--Come, Lilian!"

The sun beat fiercely down into the wide dusty street, which was silent and deserted in the broiling forenoon. Not a soul was visible, save one. Leaning unsteadily against the garden railings, as if for support, stood a figure clothed in black conventual garb.

"Why, Lilian, it's a nun," whispered Annie Payne. Then aloud, as they reached the stranger's side: "Now, do please come in at once and have a good long rest, and a gla.s.s of wine. The heat has been too much for you. Here, take my arm. No, don't try and talk yet."

The nun looked up with a faint smile, at the kindly, impulsive tones.

"You are very good," she began, speaking with a foreign accent. "The sun is so hot, but I shall soon be better."

"Of course you will," was the cheery reply; and in a moment the sufferer found herself on a comfortable sofa in a cool, half-darkened room, so refreshing after the glare of the street, while her hostess and Lilian set to work to administer restoratives.

Their charge was a striking-looking woman, still quite young. Of foreign aspect, her face, though deathly pale, was very handsome, and lighted by a pair of large dark eyes. An uncommon face withal, and one which interested her entertainers keenly.

"Who is she, Lilian?" whispered Annie Payne, hurriedly beckoning the other from the room. "Roman Catholic, or one of your High Church Sisters? You know all about that sort of thing."

"She must be from the convent. There are no Anglican Sisters here.

Besides, she's foreign, evidently."

They returned to the nun, who, professing herself quite restored by her short rest, declared she must return home.

"Not to be thought of, for some hours at least," replied her hostess, decisively. "You have narrowly escaped a sunstroke as it is. I'll send round to the convent immediately, and let them know you're here, and that I'm not going to allow you to move before the evening. At least, I'll go myself, that'll be better than sending. Lilian, take her to your room, it's quieter there, and away from the children's noise, and make her lie down for at least three hours. By the way, I was nearly forgetting. Who shall I say?"

"I am known as Sister Cecilia. G.o.d will bless you for your kindness to me, and--"

"There, there, you are not well enough to talk," interrupted Annie, with good-humoured brusqueness, as she hurried away to prepare for her errand.

Of a certainty the sufferer could have been left in no better hands, and just then such a work of mercy was doubly grateful to Lilian, whose own hopes had been so miraculously fulfilled. Her charge having sunk into a deep, refreshing sleep, Lilian moved noiselessly to a seat in the window, and there, with her eyes fixed upon the outside world, she let her busy thoughts have free scope. Something in the stillness of the day took her memory back to that fatal afternoon when Truscott had come in and dashed the cup of happiness from her lips. She remembered the terrible shock the discovery of his reappearance had been, and then the ruthless manner in which he had seared her heartstrings as with a red-hot iron, and a reaction overtook her. If there was anything in his knowledge, why, his terrible threats were all-powerful for evil still.

Yet her lover's life was safe for the present. He had been s.n.a.t.c.hed almost miraculously from the cruel hands of his savage enemies. Let her be thankful for that, at any rate. Perhaps Heaven might be even yet more merciful to her--to them both--and the other dark mystery might be cleared up. Ah, that only it would!

For a couple of hours her reverie had run on, when a sudden e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n and a few words, muttered hurriedly in a foreign language sounding like Spanish or Italian, recalled her.

"Are you feeling better, Sister?" she began, softly, rising at once, and going over to her charge.

The latter hardly seemed to hear. With gaze set and rigid, her attention was fixed on something opposite the bed, and Lilian noticed that her lips were livid and trembling.

"Who is that?" she gasped. "Am I dreaming? What is he--to you?"

Lilian's face flushed softly, as she followed the other's glance. It was riveted on two lifelike cabinet portraits of her lover, which stood framed upon the table.

"What is Lidwell to you?" went on the sufferer, half raising herself, while her burning eyes sought Lilian's with a feverish glow. "Ah, I see--I need not ask. But where is he? Here? _No_--not here!"

It was now Lilian's turn to grow deathly pale. She pressed her hand to her heart to still its beatings, and felt as if she must faint.

Lidwell! Only once before had she heard that name--only from one other.

Who was this woman, and what did she know? There must be truth in Truscott's sinister allegations, then. Better to know the whole truth, whatever it might he, than walk blindfold any longer. Her impulse found vent in a despairing cry.

"Oh, Sister, I am in sore trouble. For the love of the good G.o.d, whom you are vowed to serve, tell me all you know about him you call Lidwell."

The nun lay back for a moment as if to recover her self-command. Then she said in a firmer tone, but hurriedly, and with a foreign accent:

"If I tell you all I know about him, I need only tell you that you are the happiest woman in the whole world."

"But he is in great danger. He has an enemy; a ruthless, unscrupulous enemy who is determined on his ruin--to take his life even."

"Who is this enemy? What is his name?" asked the nun, with awakening interest.

"Truscott--Ralph Truscott."

"I never heard of him. He is an Englishman. I do not know any Englishman that knew Lidwell. But now tell me--how does this Truscott threaten him? Tell me all--then I can possibly help you. Do not fear, I shall keep your secret as closely as the grave. I am dead to the world, remember."

Lilian needed no further persuasion. She poured forth the whole of her woeful and heart-breaking story into this stranger's ear; the first, in fact, to hear it. At one point in her narrative the listener's pale face flushed, and her eyes burned, but mastering herself, she preserved her impa.s.sibility to the end.

"You did well indeed to tell me all," she said, when Lilian ceased. "It was indeed the finger of Heaven that directed me here to-day. The man, Truscott, has told you infamous lies, and his threats are powerless. He cannot harm your lover, about whom at that time no one knows more than I. But--guess. Who do you think I am--or was?"

A light seemed to dawn upon Lilian, but the other antic.i.p.ated her.

"Before I entered religion my name was Anita de Castro."

Lilian was too overcome to make any reply. The nun continued:

"As I said, I am dead to the world, and such matters can hurt me little now; but the man need not have slandered my poor name. It is perfectly above slander, thanks to Lidwell. I tell you he was the saving of me.

I dare not think of what and where I should be now but for his influence and the remembrance of him. My father was taken prisoner, with three others, by a British vessel, and hanged, and I was adrift in Zanzibar without a friend. I need not have been an hour dest.i.tute of mere creature necessaries; but that influence saved me. For _you_ will understand me when I tell you how I loved him; yet he never cared for me. He liked me as a something to amuse him--a plaything--a child--but no more."

She paused, and Lilian sat holding her hand, but did not interrupt.

"Your lover is safe," went on Sister Cecilia. "All that was told you is untrue. He never fought against the English flag, or against any one but the tribes in the far interior. The affair with the _Sea Foam_ took place a year before he came among us; I remember it well. And now tell me about this spy of Truscott's. What was he like?"

Lilian remembered the man only too well, and described him minutely.

"I know him. He was shot by Lidwell in self-defence, and left as dead.

He reappeared again, though, but after Lidwell had fled--to save his own life, for there was a plot to murder him. The man Truscott must have got the whole story from this other man, for neither of them have the slightest idea of my whereabouts. I only arrived here the day before yesterday, and to-morrow I am to leave with three others to join a mission in the Transvaal."

Her quick Southern nature enabled her to master the whole plot at a glance. Truscott was a bold player at the game of intrigue, she thought; for to throw in her own name in the way he had done was a skilful stroke indeed.

"To think that I should be held as a sword over Lidwell," she went on; "I, who would not harm a hair of his head, even if I had, as that slanderer said, anything to revenge, which I have not--quite the reverse. But show me the portrait. I shall never see _him_ again; nor do I wish to--I have done with such desires. Yes, it is a splendid likeness; I can look at it calmly now. And, listen! He was as a demiG.o.d in that horrible slave settlement. I do not know why he came there, but many and many a time has he mitigated the sufferings of those poor tortured creatures, often at the risk of his life. At last, when he was obliged to fly, I helped him to get away. I, all unaided, delayed his murderers many hours, and enabled him to get safely beyond their reach. I do not boast; it is only that the recollection is sweet to dwell on. And now listen," interrupting Lilian's fervent utterance of admiration and grat.i.tude. "His last words to me were these: 'You are made for something better than this kind of life; leave it as soon as you are able.' Then I hurried him away, for I heard them coming. He left that horrible place for ever, and I--well, I only prayed that I might die. But I lived--lived that I might remember those last words, and obey them to the letter."

Lilian was crying. There was something inexpressibly touching in the narrative to which she listened; to her something grandly heroic in the way in which this girl--for the ageing effects of her Southern nationality and conventual dress notwithstanding, she was little more than a girl--had shunned the ease and luxury of evil to devote her whole life to the fulfilment of the last injunction of one whom she would never see again. This, too, was the daughter of a slave-dealer--reared among ruffians--whose father had met a felon's death. And this protecting influence which had hallowed another's pathway, was that of her own lover.

"You have, indeed, obeyed them," she said at length. "And you are happy now, Sister?"