Chapter Twenty Five.
“Jealousy is Cruel as the Grave.”
Warren was seated in his office at Gydisdorp, and his whole power of mind and thought was concentrated on a letter.
It lay on the table before him. It was not externally a pleasing object. It was covered with thumb marks; the writing was in a laboured, unformed hand; the spelling and grammar were vile and the contents cryptic. Yet to him who now sat dwelling upon it the communication was of so jubilant a nature that his only misgiving was that it might be premature or not true. This was strange, for the gist of the document was to announce the death of one who had been his friend.
“Jealousy is cruel as the grave,” sings the Wise Man. Warren was not familiar with the quotation but he instinctively, if unconsciously, realised its purport as he sat there conning the greasy, ill-spelt missive whose contents he knew by heart. And yet so paradoxically logical was his own particular temperament that side by side with the wild jubilation that thrilled his whole being over the certainty that the one obstacle in his way was in it no longer, never would be in it again, ran a vein of real regret for the man for whom under any other circumstances he would have felt a genuine friendship. That he, Gilbert Warren, sat there, in intent, at any rate, a murderer, was the last thing in the world to occur to him. In intent only, as it happened, for the main substance of the communication lay in one sentence, penned in an utterly uneducated style. To be exact it ran thus:
“Wivern and jo fletwood have bin kild by the Usootos.”
And then followed further particulars.
Warren had little doubt as to the genuineness of the missive. It was matter of common report that there had been serious disturbances in the remoter parts of Zululand between the faction which cleaved to the captive and exiled King, and that which did not, to wit that influenced by most of the thirteen kinglets appointed under the Wolseley settlement. Wyvern and his friend had somehow got mixed up in one of these ructions, and – there was an end of them.
Unlocking a drawer he got out the portrait of Lalanté, and set it upright before him. She was his now; not all at once of course, but when she began to get over her loss, when the first sense of it began to be bluntened. He was far too cautious in his knowledge of human nature to hurry matters; to seem to “rush” her in any way. His was the part of earnest sympathiser. He would sound the dead man’s praises in every way, and on every available opportunity. He would make himself necessary to her by doing this when other people had practically forgotten that any such person had ever existed. In time she would turn to him, not for a long time it might be – Warren was shrewd enough to realise this – but time was nothing and he could afford to wait, even as he had waited already, and he knew full well that next to Wyvern there was no man living of whom Lalanté held a higher opinion than himself.
The river incident had had much to do with cementing this. Fervently Warren blessed that incident, and had done his best to make the most of it; not by dwelling on it in any way, on the contrary if it was ever mentioned he would pooh-pooh it and change the subject. But he was more than ever welcome at Le Sage’s, and made a good deal of his welcome by being frequently there. Moreover he knew that in Le Sage himself he had a powerful and steadfast ally.
All this ran through his busy mind as he gazed at the portrait in a perfect ecstasy of love and passion; taking in the splendid outlines of the form, the straight glance of the fearless wide-opened eyes, the seductive attractiveness of the face, firm, yet so sweet and tender. His! his at last I and yet he would need all his patience. Then a tap at the door brought him back to the practicalities of the hard, business world again. Drawing some papers over the portrait, he sung out:
“Come in.”
A clerk entered.
“There’s a party downstairs wants to see you, sir. Roughish looking customer too.”
“Is he sober?”
“I think so, sir. At least he seems pretty steady on his pins.”
“Name?”
“Bexley. Jim Bexley. Said you knew him, sir, and would be sure to see him.”
“Right. Show him up when I ring, not before.”
When the clerk had gone out Warren replaced the portrait in the drawer, even as we saw him do on a former occasion. He was in no hurry to interview his caller, on the contrary he sat, thinking profoundly, for quite a while. Then he banged on his handbell.
There was a creaking of heavy footsteps on the wooden stairs, and the clerk reappeared, ushering in the visitor. Even as the clerk had said he was a roughish looking customer, and he was sober. Him we have seen before, for it was no less a personage than our old friend Bully Rawson.
But the “bully” side of him seemed to have departed. His manner was positively cringing as the door closed behind him, leaving him alone with Warren. The latter gazed at him fixedly for a moment. Then he said:
“Sit down.”
Rawson obeyed. But the expression of his face as he stared at Warren was that of a cornered animal, cowed as well, or of one in a trap.
“Have you been keeping sober?”
“Yes, Mr Warren. But Lord love ye, if I was never so ‘on’ I wouldn’t blab.”
“No, you wouldn’t, because you’ve nothing to blab about.”
The tone was absolutely cool and unmoved. With one hand Warren was playing with a paper weight which lay on the table. Rawson fidgetted uneasily.
“I’ve taken care of him,” he said at last. “Oh three times I ‘took care of him,’ but it were no go. That blanked Fleetwood come in the way twice, the third time I turned it over to a nigger of mine and he got ‘took care of’ instead. Haw-haw-haw!”
“Howling joke, isn’t it?”
“Rather. Them blanked Usutus rushed my kraal, and I just took ’em on to Wyvern and Fleetwood’s camp and – well, they took care of ’em.”
“You saw it done?”
“Didn’t I! And while they was doing it I lit out, slid up a big baobab which looked hollow, and sure enough it was; and there I lay snug while they was huntin’ around in every direction for me. Ho-ho! There was a nest of red ants in the hole though, and I jolly well got nearly eaten.”
“Yes? Well, you stay around here a little longer – where, I don’t mind one way or the other. Only – keep sober. D’you hear? Keep sober. I may want you at any minute. Meanwhile I’ll just take down all particulars of your yarn.”
He got a sheet of foolscap and put the other through his statement, taking down the details in a concise, business-like way. The only thing on which Rawson seemed hazy was the exact date. He had no call to bother about that sort of thing up-country, he explained apologetically, in fact he hardly knew one day of the week from another, so completely had he got out of the way of reckoning by time.
This done, Rawson shuffled a little uneasily, then said:
“All my things were looted, Mr Warren. I’m a beggar as I stand here, so help me. Couldn’t you let us have something to start me afresh?”
“Not a rix-dollar.”
“You’re a hard ’un to serve,” grunted Rawson.
“You’ll find me a harder one still if you don’t watch it. I’ve no further use for you that I know of, but there’s one Jonathan Baldock that certain judicial authorities in this colony might turn to a very unpleasant use – for Jonathan Baldock. So mind your way about, especially where I am concerned.”
The cowed look upon the ruffianly countenance gave way to the ferocity of desperation. Warren had goaded this savage beast to a point past endurance. As Fleetwood had said, Bully Rawson’s pluck was beyond question, but even it paled before the vision of a beam and a swinging noose. Now, beside himself with fear and rage, he turned on Warren, and reviled him with epithets that we cannot reproduce here. The whole aspect of the man was rather terrific, especially to one who knew his character and repute. But Warren sat calmly through the outburst, turning over a paper here and there.
“Now that you’ve done you may go – and be hanged,” he said at last, when the other had stopped exhausted.
“Yes, but I’ll be hanged for something, hell take me if I don’t,” he roared. “I’ll send you there first, you blasted, snivelling, white-livered liar.”
Warren found himself gazing at the muzzle of a wicked-looking six-shooter, and that in the hand of a desperate and exasperated ruffian. But he did not move, nor did his face change colour in the slightest degree.
“Put up that thing,” he said, coolly. “And stop kicking up that infernal row, unless you want everyone else to know what no one knows at present but me.”
The hard, cold eyes of the lawyer held the savage, bloodshot ones of the border desperado, and triumphed.
“I’m sorry, Mr Warren,” said the latter, shamefacedly, replacing the weapon in his pocket. “My temper’s a bit short these days. I sort of forgot myself.”
“I should rather think you did. Well, as you have the decency to own it here’s something to go on with. Only because you’re hard up, mind, not on account of anything you may or may not have done for me,” and he opened a drawer, and taking out some notes chucked them across to the other. “Well Jim Bexley, you can go now. Keep me up to where you’re to be found in case I want you, and, above all, keep sober. So long.”
He banged the handbell and the same clerk came up; and Bully Rawson found himself shown out, while wondering if he had done the right thing, and whether there was anything more to be got out of Warren, also whether the latter had been really as cool as he seemed or whether his coolness was forced “side.” As to this Warren was thinking the same thing himself; and came to the conclusion that he had been for one moment in desperate peril. Then he ceased to give the matter another thought.
For some time after his visitor’s departure he sat thinking. How would Lalanté take the news? This was the worst side of it. Who was to break it to her? Not he himself – with all his nerve and self-possession this was a task from which Warren shrank. Who better qualified for it than her own father. Le Sage must be the man. He would write to Le Sage, giving the facts.
The facts? A sudden and unaccountable misgiving leaped into his mind, striking him as it were, between the eyes. What if Rawson had invented the story, or had simply escaped and left the other two in the lurch? In that case the chances were ten to one that they turned up again, since the Zulus were only fighting among themselves and not against the whites. How could he have pinned his faith to the word of an utterly irredeemable scoundrel such as Bully Rawson? Thinking now of his former jubilation Warren felt perfectly sick at the thought that it might have been wholly premature. However he would put the matter beyond all doubt. He would wire his agents in Natal to leave no stone unturned; to spare no trouble or expense; to hire a whole army of native spies, if necessary, to collect every scrap of information throughout the whole of the disturbed country. This need arouse no curiosity; his friendship with Wyvern would account for it.
What was this thing called love, that it should upset reason, and possess the brain to the exclusion of all other things. In the travail of his soul Warren recognised that he was standing on the brink of a pit. By just the exceptional strength of his mind and will did this obsession become the more dangerous should his new-found hopes melt into air, and, realising this, he realised also that it might soon be time to “set his house in order.” For the fate of his former friend he felt no compunction whatever, for “jealousy is cruel as the grave.”
Chapter Twenty Six.
Warren’s News
“But when will the Baas be back,
Klein Missis
? Whenever will the Baas be back?”
“Oh, how I wish I knew, Old Sanna,” answered Lalanté with a sad smile. Her smile had been growing rather sad of late, since week had been following upon week, and still bringing no word from the absent one. Could it mean that he was on his way back? She dared not hope so.
“And these Zulu
menschen, Klein Missis
– are they more
schelm
than our Kafirs here? No but, that could never be. There’s Sixpence, he who
slaag-ed
the sheep. The Baas ought to have had him flogged or taken to the
tronk
, yet he does neither, but lets him go as if nothing had happened
Oh goieje
!”
“And Sixpence has been a very good boy ever since, Old Sanna.”
The old woman grunted, then went on:
“That was the last day you were here, Miss Lalanté; with the
Baas
I mean.”
The sadness of the smile deepened, and the wide eyes gazing forth over the panorama of rolling plain and distant rock as seen from the stoep at Seven Kloofs, grew misty. Did she not remember that day, the last perfect one before the final rupture! Now Seven Kloofs was the property of her father, his only bad bargain, as we have said elsewhere. He had wanted to turn off old Sanna, if only that she formed a link between Lalanté and the former owner, whose memory he by no means wished kept green; but Lalanté had pleaded so hard against this that he had given way, and the old woman remained on in charge of the unoccupied house.
Hither Lalanté would sometimes ride over, even as to-day, to dwell, in imagination, among the past again. Now she turned from the stoep and entered the living room. The same, and yet not. Bare walls and floor, and yet how replete with memories. Here was where the dear old untidy table – with its litter heap shoved as much off one end as possible – had stood – there the low chair in
his
favourite corner – even the mark on the wall, where her portrait had hung, showed plain. All so familiar in the memories it brought that it almost seemed as though his tall figure should suddenly darken the doorway, or that some inexplicable replica of his presence should enter the room. Oh if she could but obtain some news, read but one line that his hand had traced!
It is a truism to insist on the associations which this or that particular spot, sometime occupied in common with a presence – gone, it may be, for ever – calls back to the mind, because even the most unimaginative must, in their heart of hearts, own to a consciousness of having at sometime in their lives gone through this feeling. Lalanté of course, was not unimaginative, and the associations which every stick and stone of the place conjured up were overwhelming in their sense of utter desolation. It seemed that every word that had passed between them sounded again in her ears, this jest here and on such an occasion, that light banter or grave discussion there, each and all at such a time and on such a spot. Within doors, outside on the stoep, or in the open veldt it was all the same, that awful, intense craving for the presence which was no longer there.
The patter of running feet and the light laughter of child voices – then her two small brothers came round from the back of the house.
“Time to go back Lala, hey? Oh!”
There was that in their sister’s look which turned both of them suddenly grave. A small hand – hot and of course not over clean – stole into each of Lalanté’s, and two untidy heads nestled against her, one on each side. These two had long since gained an inkling of the real state of affairs. Now they meant to be consolatory, but of course didn’t know what to say, so they said nothing.
“You darlings, yes it is,” she answered. “Go and tell Sixpence to bring round the horses.”
The former unreliable herd had been given the post of general out-door caretaker of the place – owing again to Lalanté’s pleading. Now he appeared, leading the three horses, a grin of cordiality making a white stripe across his broad face. He, again launched forth into inquiry as to when the
Baas
would return.
“
Ou
! but he hoped it would be soon,” he went on, when he got his answer. “That was a
Baas
to serve, none like him in the land. He was great, he was a chief indeed. He was his – Sixpence’s – father, and his heart was sore until his father’s presence was over him once more.”
Lalanté smiled, still sadly as she gave the Kafir the length of tobacco which she had brought over for him. Even this raw savage had an affection for the absent one, who had forgiven him what time he had incurred the most severe penalties.
During the homeward ride she was still rather silent. The two small boys, Charlie and Frank, dropped behind and kept up their own chatter, but even it was rather subdued, rather laboured. The sun flamed down in all the glory of the cloudless afternoon. Two little steinbok rushed, startled, from the roadside, and scampering a couple of score yards halted to gaze at them curiously. It brought back just such another incident when he had been with her, and jumping off, had turned over one of them with a neat rifle shot. The shrill grating cackle of a troop of wild guinea-fowl rose from a clump of prickly pear down towards the river, and, shading her eyes, she could see the long lines of dust rising against the sun as the wary birds ran. Here too, he had bagged quite a goodly number while she waited for him, and under exactly the same circumstances. Every sight and sound of the sunlit veldt, recalled him with a vividness more than ordinary to-day, which is dealing in superlatives. Yet – why?
There was the spot on which they had made their last farewell on that memorable evening. Lalanté had passed over it several times since, but now, to-day, such an overpowering feeling came upon her, as nearly impelled her there and then to dismount and kiss the very dust his feet had pressed. Yet – why?
“Man – Frank,” exclaimed Charlie, as they were descending the last slope opposite the homestead. “There’s somebody with father. Wonder who it is.”
Lalanté started, and strained her eyes. The distance was over great for identification purposes, but whoever it was she was pretty sure who it wasn’t.
“Why it’s Mr Warren,” went on the first speaker. “
Ja
– but I’m glad. He’s no end of a jolly chap.”
Again Lalanté’s heart tightened, as she remembered a similar eulogium, more than once uttered, with regard to another. Otherwise, as to Warren she was rather glad of his presence than not. He was good company and would somehow draw her on to talk of Wyvern, whose praises he would deftly sound; moreover he never lost a chance of trying to soften her father’s resentment against the absent one. Then, too, there was his daring feat in the flooded Kunaga on that dreadful afternoon. But, for any other consideration, if he had only known it, Warren was nowhere. There was only one in the world for her; one who was totally unlike any other she had ever seen or could form any possible idea of. Ah, if it were only that one! Yet, on the whole, she was glad to see Warren. He might even have brought her some news, he who seemed in touch with everybody.
Le Sage and his guest were standing at the gate.
“Take round the horses, kiddies,” said the former, shortly, as they dismounted. “And – don’t come back here until you’re sent for. D’you hear?”
The small boys obeyed without question. There was that in their father’s tone which precluded anything of the kind.
“What is it?” Lalanté managed to get out, in a catching sort of gasp, her great eyes fixed upon their faces, her own cold and white. The two men looked at each other.
“Oh, you tell her, Le Sage, for God’s sake,” muttered Warren. “I can’t.” And turning, he went indoors.
“What is it, father?” repeated the girl, the lividness of her face truly awful as she pressed her hands convulsively on her heaving heart. “Don’t beat about the bush. Tell me.”
“For Heaven’s sake, child, keep up,” he answered jerkily. “It’s about Wyvern. Disturbances in Zululand. He’s – ”
“Dead?”
Le Sage nodded. He could trust himself for no further words, in the face of that fearful stony-eyed grief. Viewing this, at the moment he would have given much to have seen Wyvern standing there alive and well. He had obtained his bitter, oft repeated, but secret wish, and now he would have given half he possessed had he not, as he read the effect of the shock in Lalanté’s face.
“Keep up, child. For God’s sake keep up. You’ll get over it,” he jerked forth, as the tall, fine figure of the girl swayed for a moment, then leaned against one of the gate posts for support. Was she going to faint? No, she was made of stronger stuff.
“Get over it?” The words seemed almost demoniacal in their mockery. “Get over it!” Why the world had come to an end for her from that moment. “Get over it?” Something of a wan smile came to her lips, at the bare irony suggested by the idea, as she stood, still grasping the gate post as in an iron grip. The face was white as marble, and the lips were set and blue. Only the great eyes moved, roaming listlessly here and there, but resting on nobody.
“And you – sent – him – to – his – death.”
Le Sage shivered beneath the words as beneath the cutting of a lash. The one awful fear then in his mind was that Lalanté might lose her reason. In a rush of penitential tenderness, surprising in a man of his hard and calculating nature, he poured forth a torrent of adjurations to her to pull herself together, and muster up all her courage and listen to what there was to tell; and at length he prevailed.
“Let me hear all,” she said, in a dull voice, sitting back in a low cane chair on the stoep, one in which
he
had often sat. “No. I don’t want anything,” as her father besought her to let him fetch something in the shape of a restorative. “It’s deeper than that. Only, my heart is broken at this moment. Well, tell me everything.”
Le Sage was gulping with his own voice – in fact, could not command it.
“Tell me. Tell me,” she went on. “How much longer am I to wait?”
“It’s this way, Miss Lalanté,” struck in Warren, who having pulled himself together, now judged it high time to come to the rescue. “There was a scrimmage up there between the King’s party – the Usutus – those who favour Cetywayo’s restoration, you know – and the other faction – those who don’t. Somehow Wyvern and his friend – Fleetwood the other man’s name was – got between the two and were – killed. I have it from an eye-witness, another up-country trader, who, however, managed to escape.”
“Who is he?”
“A man named Bexley – Jim Bexley. He’s a rough customer but a reliable one. I’m afraid, in this case, too reliable.”
“And he saw it done?”
Warren nodded.
“Could I see him?”
“Certainly. But – had you better? It will take a few days to get hold of him, but it shall be done if it would give you the smallest atom of comfort, as indeed what should not?”
“Did he see them killed?”
Again Warren nodded.
“Then how did he escape himself?”
There was an uncomfortable directness about this cross-examination which Warren didn’