The White Hand and the Black Part 40

"No--but I shall to-morrow."

"Then promise me you won't--until you've rewritten it. If you don't I shall make Hyland, and anyone else who's likely to be of any use, blazon the whole thing out in every paper in the Colony, and in all South Africa too. Now promise me you won't."

The colour had come into her cheeks, emphasising the clearness of the dilated blue eyes. She looked lovely. As she stood there, drawn up erect, again came back to him that vision of her on that exciting occasion of their first meeting. He felt a trifle unsteadied, a trifle thrown off his balance.

"It's of no use belittling the thing," she went on, her words tripping over each other's heels, as it were. "You men who _do_ things are too fond of doing that--"

"Are--_they_?" rejoined Elvesdon, with a touch of humour. "I've sometimes noticed it's rather the other way on." And then a sudden whirlwind of feeling seemed to sweep him off his feet. "Edala, when your father and I were in that very tight fix together--I mean just before either of us knew that we were going to have the feeblest chance of escape--I put a question to him. Would you like to know what it was?"

"Yes."

"Then you shall. I asked him whether, in the event of us ever getting away again, he would have any objection to my trying to win your love."

"What did he answer?"

"He answered by another question. Did I think I could do it?"

"Well--and do you?"

She stood--the lovely flower-like face transformed with sweetness. He had already taken a couple of steps towards her, in his uncontrollable tension, and then--

"Yes, I think you can--darling," she whispered, into his shoulder a few moments later. "In fact--you have."

"This is a strange sort of surrounding for such a climax--my own," he murmured--after an interval. "A fusty, dusty old office."

"Well, and what could be more appropriate,"--she returned--"under the circ.u.mstances."

The while Prior had sent at least two d.a.m.ning Government transport-- riders away, using dreadful language because being _after office hours_ they could not get their way-bills checked, and wondering what was the _blanked_ use of blanked Resident Magistrates or blanked _blanked_ Civil servants _blanked_ anyhow.

Evelyn Carden got up in obedience to the summons, to go to her relative.

"You don't mind, do you, dear?" she said, with her usual tactful consideration.

"No--no. Of course not," answered Edala, yet still conscious of that faint remaining twinge of jealousy. But the two had become drawn to each other like sisters now. They had been through strange experiences together, and each had come fully to rate the other at her own worth.

The room was cool and restful if not luxurious. Thornhill's tall form lay there under the coverlet, a pathetic embodiment of strength laid low. Even the bandages round his head, unsightly as all bandages are, did not detract from the reposeful dignity of that calm strong face.

Evelyn stooped and kissed him on the cheek, taking, in her cool grasp, the hand which was searching for hers.

"Well Inqoto, and you are much better now?" she said, and there was a sort of cooing softness about the tone.

"No--I am not particularly--by the way, you seem to have got your tongue round that d.i.c.k at last."

"Practice," she answered smilingly.

"I'm not better, and I don't want to be. I've run out my time. Who cares how soon I'm dead? I don't, for one." The pathos in the naturalness of the voice brought something of a lump into the listener's throat.

"Who cares?" she echoed after a moment of suspicious pause. "What about Hyland for instance?"

"Hyland? Ah! Dear boy, he always believed in me."

"So does Edala," said the other boldly.

There was no answer. What was she to say? thought Evelyn.

"She does now," she went on. The wounded man opened his eyes wide.

"Does now? Rather late in the day. But," as if it had suddenly dawned upon him, "what do you--I've had a whack on the head you know, and it's left me rather stupid--what do you--know about things?"

"Nothing. Because there's nothing to know," came the cheerful confident rejoinder. "Listen Inqoto--I believe it's useless, and worse, any beating about the bush between you and me. Shall I speak plainly?"

Thornhill looked at her long and earnestly. As he did so a whole world of rea.s.surance came into his eyes. "Yes, of course," he said. "Talk as plainly as you like."

"Well, I overheard a couple of silly cackling geese under the window the other day, but the subject of their cackle was too farcical for words-- about you of course. Edala heard it too."

"Edala heard it?"

"Yes. Then we talked it out, and she said she didn't believe it either."

There seemed no necessity on the part of Thornhill--perhaps from force of mental habit no such occurred to him--to ask what the said 'it' might be.

"She has believed it up till now, anyhow," he said.

"And if you could have seen the awful agony of self-reproach she was in that day!" urged the other. "It seemed almost like someone blind restored to sight when I put the whole thing to her in a few words.

Under any other circ.u.mstances it would have been laughable--the quick transformation, I mean."

"Yet they had something to go upon--something to go upon," repeated the wounded man slowly. "I may as well tell you all about it, though there's not much to tell."

Evelyn's clasp of the hand she held, tightened.

"You know I was under arrest years ago on suspicion of doing away with my--legal partner in life?"

Evelyn nodded. Since she had overheard the two women's gossip she had gone straight to Hyland and got the whole story out of him. Thornhill went on.

"The strange part of the whole thing is that I didn't do it."

"I never for one fraction of a second supposed _you_ did."

"You stand pretty well alone there," answered Thornhill with a pressure of the hand. "To cut a long story--and a very unpleasant one, for even now the taste comes back--short, the party to whom I had given my name, when I was young and foolish, and who, incidentally, gained far more by the transaction than I did, led me a most shocking life. No--it wasn't owing to drink, it was sheer innate devilishness. This went on for years--by the bye you can still see some of its results in the way Edala has turned against me ever since. That process, however, had begun before, and not only with this child but with all of them. Well let's get to the end of the abominable rotten episode, for the bare telling of it makes me sick."

"Then don't tell it, Inqoto. Why should you?" adjured Evelyn earnestly, and very uneasily as she remembered the doctor's injunctions that the wounded man was not to be allowed to excite himself in the least degree.

Yet, now, his face was flushed and he was moving restlessly in the bed.

"I'd better get it over. Fact is I haven't mentioned the matter to anybody--since--since it happened. You are the first. One night--after raising a particularly shameful and scandalous scene--good Lord! it's lucky the walls at Sipazi can't talk--she rushed out of the house swearing that she was going to put an end to herself. Candidly I didn't in the least care if she did, to such a pa.s.s had things come; however I thought I should probably be suspected of murder if such a thing happened. So I started to follow her, and didn't overtake her all of a sudden either. When I did she had got among the rocks and crevices-- never mind what part of the farm or even if on it at all. I tell you then, she was just like one possessed. I thought the devil must be standing there before me, but I tried to warn her that she was ramping dangerously near an ugly crevice that might be any depth. She answered she didn't care. She was going to jump into it if only to get me hanged for her murder. Well hardly were the words uttered than she tripped on something and hurtled bang into the crack. I could do nothing, you know. I was fully twenty yards off. Horrible, isn't it?"

The listener bent her head gravely.

"You were not to blame," she said. "The thing was sheer accident."