Part 52 (1/2)
Alone? Payne, while he stood holding the door open, could not see the piano at the far end of the room, and now as he closed it, the graceful figure of a lady, who had apparently been occupied in looking through a pile of music in the corner, rose to greet the new arrival. His back was to the light as she first saw him.
”Have you ridden far to-day?” she began, in a pleasant conversational voice. Then with a faint, gasping cry as if she had been stabbed, she reeled back and leaned against the piano, her face ashy white, and trembling in every limb.
”Arthur!”
”Lilian!”
He made three steps towards her, and stopped short. No, he dared not even touch her. She belonged to another, now. She was the wife of his host and friend, the man whose life he had just saved. Why had _he_, of all others, been sent there only just in time to rescue that life, and then have been brought on to this house to witness what the saving of that life involved? What power of evil had sent him to this fiery torment--this pang which was worse than h.e.l.l--as he stood there looking upon the woman who possessed the love of his whole nature, and whose pure-souled, beautiful face had ever been before his mental gaze, night and day, during three years and a half of lonely wanderings? What had he done to deserve this torture? Like a lightning flash these reflections pierced through his brain as he stood gazing, with a terrible agonised stare, upon the delicate beauty of face and form which had taken all the suns.h.i.+ne and gladness out of his existence, and now stood before him owned by another, and that other the man whose life he had just saved.
Something in his look froze her where she stood. Was she thinking much the same as himself? With hands clasped tightly before her, and eyes fixed upon his with a despairing fear, she whispered hoa.r.s.ely:
”I thought I should never see you again. I thought--Oh, G.o.d--I thought--that you were--dead!”
The last ray of the sinking son shot from over the western hills, entering the window and flooding with a golden and then a ruddy halo the pale, anguish-stricken face and the wealth of dusky hair. And there they stood, those two who had been parted three long weary years and twice that number of months. There they stood--suddenly thrown together, as it were, by the hand of Fate--facing each other, yet speechless. Three years and a half of parting, and now to meet again-- thus.
”I knew it must be you,” he said at length, slowly. ”When I heard those words I knew they could be sung by no one else--like that.”
For it was the same ballad which she had sung on that night at Seringa Vale, when he was betrayed into the first avowal of his love, nearly four years ago; and the first words which had thrilled upon his ear now, as he recovered from his sudden attack of faintness, was the conclusion of the sad and mournful refrain.
And then this man, whose death she had mourned long and in secret, suddenly stood before her.
When last we saw Claverton lying fever-racked in the Matabili hut, he was certainly as near to death's door as ever man was without actually pa.s.sing that grim portal; and when the uncivilised bystanders, with bated breath, whispered their verdict, it was only the one which would have been returned by any onlooker. Falling back, he had lain to all appearance dead; but that very swoon had been the means of saving his life, at least, such was the unhesitating opinion of one or two to whom he afterwards told the circ.u.mstances, though of course not what had caused the swoon, and who, from their training and practice, were qualified to judge. His life must have been saved by a miracle, said they. What that miracle was he did not feel called upon to tell them.
The sight--sudden and vivid in its distinctness--of a face the dying man had longed, with a terrible hopeless longing, to see; death had no terrors for him, his whole soul was concentrated on this one agonising desire, and it had been fulfilled. The sight of that loved face, momentary as it was, had calmed him into a peaceful, death-like sleep, and the crisis was past. Had it been that in some mysterious manner, triumphing over nature, spirit had gone to meet spirit on that dark winter night? Who can tell? The end effected would have sufficed to justify such a departure from the law of nature, for it is certain that the apparition, whether due to the imagination of a fever-distorted brain, or to whatever cause, was the saving of Claverton's life.
Then, almost too soon after his recovery, he had wandered on. He had come through the Transvaal, and past the gold fields of the great Dutch Republic, and now he pushed on beyond the haunts of man striving after gain, farther and farther into the interior, where the gnu and quagga roamed the vast plains in countless herds; where the giraffe browsed in the green mimosa dales, and the elephant and rhinoceros crushed through the tangled jungle--at night terrific with the resounding roar of the forest king. On--ever on--alone, save for three or four native followers to look after his waggon and aid in the chase.
And he had borne a charmed life. He it was who had shot the huge lion in mid-air as it leaped right over him to seize one of the oxen tied fast for the night in the strong brushwood enclosure, the mighty frame falling nearly upon him as it bit and ramped in the agonies of death.
He it was who had confronted the hostile Matabili chief and his six hundred men, when that truculent potentate had demanded the person of one of his followers in satisfaction for some trifling larceny committed by the hapless lad upon their mealie gardens, and dared the barbarian and his armed warriors so much as to lay a finger upon him or his; and the fierce savage, in admiring awe of his sublime indifference to death or danger, had suddenly become his fast friend, though a moment before, the chances were a hundred to one against his leaving the spot alive.
He it was who had swum out into the river swarming with crocodiles, and rescued this very follower, none other than the same, the Natal boy, Sam--who had watched him through his illness at the Matabili kraal--who, carried off his feet by the force of the current, was being borne away down the river, and the other natives had given him up as lost. And many and many a hair-breadth escape had he, by field and flood, until the natives began to look upon him as a sort of G.o.d, and his own body servants felt safer in his service from danger or sickness than they would have done surrounded by British regiments in the former contingency, or protected by all the ”charms” of their most renowned _iza.n.u.si_ [wizards] in the latter. For he was absolutely indifferent to death, and consequently death was indifferent to him.
And ever before him, whether amid all the rapturous excitement of the chase, in the glowing noonday, or in the awesome solitude of the midnight camp far in the heart of the wilderness, hundreds of miles from the nearest haunt of civilised man, with the roar of the lion and the howl of the hyaena echoing along the reedy bank of some turbid lagoon; while he watched the scintillating eyes of savage beasts glowing like live coals out of the surrounding gloom as they prowled around his encampment, haply waiting for the sinking watch-fire to fade altogether--amid all this, and ever before him, there was one beautiful face present to his mind's eye, as he had seen it, looking smilingly at him in the soft moonlight, or set and despairing as he had last gazed upon it that day in the golden noontide, beneath the old pear-tree. And as years went on they brought with them no solace, and now he had returned to civilisation, intending shortly to leave for ever the land which had made only to mar the successes of his life.
He had changed slightly--and changed for the better--for his years of wandering in the wilderness. He was in splendid condition, broader of chest and firmer-looking, though not one whit less active than in the old days; but the impatient, restless expression had departed from his eyes, leaving one of settled calm, the imperturbability of a man who feels that he has lived his life, and that his past is a far-away state--a vista, fair and lovely, perhaps, to look back upon, as the traveller looks back in memory upon some beautiful tract he has left behind--but still another and a different state of being. Such was Arthur Claverton, as brought there by a marvellous freak of the hand of Fate, he stood once more face to face with his first and only love.
Suddenly the voice of his host on the _stoep_ recalled him to himself; recalled both of them, and, with a sigh, Lilian turned round as if to resume what she had been doing, in reality to collect herself, and Payne entered.
”Hallo,” he said. ”You here, Miss Strange? Let me introduce my friend; or have you already been making acquaintance?”
Claverton started as if he had been shot, and the room seemed to go round with him. ”Miss Strange!” She was not this man's wife, then, or anybody's. He hardly heard what was said after that; though outwardly cool and collected. Then the revulsion of feeling was succeeded by a relapse almost as overwhelming as the first. For was it likely, he argued, that she would listen to him now, any more than that morning three years and a half ago--when for the second time she refused his love? And his reason answered, No. Still it was a weight lifted, the discovery that she was not married to his host, as he had at first thought. He had never seen Payne's wife, nor had that genial-hearted soul ever touched upon the subject of his spouse in such way as to enable him to form any idea of her personal appearance. Nor had Payne mentioned the fact of there being a guest in his house. And then Lilian's own words--”_I_ thought that I should never see you again--I thought that you were dead,” spoken as if in explanation of her own circ.u.mstances. No wonder he had jumped to that conclusion. Well, it did not matter either way, he told himself. He would importune her no more--he could follow the only course open to him--he would go. She might tolerate his presence just this one evening, and on the morrow he could depart before any of the household were astir, even as he had done once before.
It may be wondered what Payne had been about all this time, after unconsciously leaving these two together. On going to the back of the house, the first sight that met his gaze was a troop of young cattle plunging over a fence and careering madly about one of his cultivated strips destined to become a model kitchen garden. To dash off then and there, and eject the intruders before damage, widespread and sore, was done, became at once the object of his life, and forgetting for the moment the very existence of his guest--or, indeed, of anybody--away he started; but the work of reparation was also one of time, and not until all possibility of a recurrence of the damage had been practically guarded against, did he so much as begin to think of returning to the house.
Fortunately the darkness of the room, as the shades of evening deepened, kept Payne from noticing Lilian's deathly paleness, and he chatted on in high good-humour, till the sound of voices and laughter in the pa.s.sage proclaimed the advent of his wife and olive-branches--the latter, Lilian's charges; for she was still plying that delightfully remunerative and much appreciated craft--teaching the young idea.
”Well, Lilian,” cried Mrs Payne, a bright, cheery little woman of about her own age, or perhaps a year or two older. ”You'd much better have come out with me instead of moping indoors, on this lovely afternoon, over that wretched music. Why, who's this?” Then a due introduction having been effected, she shook hands cordially with the new arrival.
”Ah, Mr Claverton, I'm so glad to see you. I'm always at that dear, stupid old George for not bringing you here, after saving his life that time; but I'm so glad you've found us out at last.”
”That dear, stupid old George,” the while, was winking at Claverton over his spouse's shoulder, his satirical nature hugely tickled by the flutter which the news of the other's opportune aid a second time rendered would cast her into. He would tell her some day, but not just yet.