The People of the Mist Part 63

"Pardon me, and I am selfish enough to add--do not forget me.

"JANE.

"P.S.--Why is it that an affection like ours, which has never borne fruit even, should in the end prove stronger than any other earthly tie?

Heaven knows, and Heaven alone, how pa.s.sionately I loved and love my dead child; and yet, now that my own hour is at hand, it is of _you_ that I think the most, you who are neither child nor husband. I suppose that I shall understand ere long, but, O Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, if, as I believe, my nature is immortal, I swear that such love as mine for you, however much it be dishonoured and betrayed, is still the most immortal part of it!--J."

Leonard put down the letter on the table, and again he covered his face with his hand to hide his emotion, for his feelings overcame him as a sense of the depth and purity of this dead woman's undying love sank into his heart.

"May I read that letter, Leonard?" asked Juanna in a quiet voice.

"Yes, I suppose so, dear, if you like," he answered, feeling dully that it was better to make a clean breast of the matter at once, and thus to prevent future misunderstandings.

Juanna took the letter and perused it twice, by which time she knew it as well as she did the Lord's Prayer, nor did she ever forget a single word of it. Then she handed it back to the lawyer, saying nothing.

"I understand," said Mr. Turner, breaking in on a silence which he felt to be painful, "that you will be able to produce the necessary proofs of ident.i.ty within the next few days, and then we can get the will proved in the usual form. Meanwhile, you must want money, which I will take the risk of advancing you," and he wrote a cheque for a hundred pounds and gave it to Leonard.

Half an hour later Leonard and Juanna were alone in a room at their hotel, but as yet scarcely a word had pa.s.sed between them since they left the lawyer's office.

"Don't you see, Leonard," his wife said almost fiercely, "it is most amusing, you made a mistake. Your brother's dying prophecy was like a Delphic oracle--it could be taken two ways, and, of course, you adopted the wrong interpretation. You left Grave Mountain a day too soon. It was by _Jane Beach's_ help that you were to recover Outram, not by mine,"

and she laughed sadly.

"Don't talk like that, dear," said Leonard in a sad voice; "it pains me."

"How else am I to talk after reading that letter?" she answered, "for what woman can hold her own against a dead rival? Now also I must be indebted to her bounty all my days. Oh! if I had not lost the jewels--if only I had not lost the jewels!"

History does not relate how Leonard dealt with this unexpected and yet natural situation.

A week had pa.s.sed and Leonard, with Juanna at his side, found himself once more in the great hall at Outram, where, on a bygone night, many years ago, he and his dead brother had sworn their oath. All was the same, for in this hall nothing had been changed--Jane had seen to that.

There chained to its stand was the Bible, upon which they had registered their vow; there were the pictures of his ancestors gazing down calmly upon him, as though they cared little for the story of his struggles and of his strange triumph over fortune "by the help of a woman." There was the painted window, with its blazoned coats of arms and its proud mottoes--"_For Heart, Home, and Honour_," and "_Per ardua ad astra_." He had won the heart and home, and he had kept his honour and his oath. He had endured the toils and dangers and the crown of stars was his.

And yet, was Leonard altogether happy as he stood looking on these familiar things? Perhaps not quite, for yonder in the churchyard there was a grave, and within the church a monument in white marble, that was wonderfully like one who had loved him and whom he had loved, though time and trouble had written a strange difference on her face. Also, he had failed: he had kept his oath indeed and fought on till the end was won, but himself he had not won it. What now was his had once belonged to his successful rival, who doubtless little dreamed of the payment that would be exacted from him by the decree of fate.

And was Juanna happy? She knew well that Leonard loved her truly; but oh! it was cruel that she who had shared the struggles should be deprived of her reward--that it should be left to another, who if not false had at least been weak, to give to her husband that which she had striven so hard to win--that which she had won--and lost. And harder still was it that in this ancient place which would henceforth be her home, by day and by night she must feel the presence of the shadow of a woman, a woman sweet and pale, who, as she believed, stood between her and that which she desired above all things--the complete and absolute possession of her husband's heart.

Doubtless she overrated the trouble; men and women do not spend their lives in brooding upon the memories of their first loves--if they did, this would be a melancholy world. But to Juanna it was real enough, and remained so for some years. And if a thing is true to the heart, it avails little that reason should give it the lie.

In short, now in the hour of their full property, Leonard and Juanna were making acquaintance with the fact that fortune never gives with both hands, as the French say, but loves to rob with one while she bestows with the other. To few is it allowed to be completely miserable, to none to be completely happy. Their good luck had been so overwhelming in many ways, that it would have partaken of the unnatural, and might well have excited their fears for the future, had its completeness been unmarred by these drawbacks which, such as they were, probably they learned to disremember as the years pa.s.sed over them bringing them new trials and added blessings.

Perhaps a peep into the future will tell us the rest of the story of Leonard and Juanna Outram better and more truly than any further chronicling of events.

Ten years or so have gone by and Sir Leonard, now a member of Parliament and the Lord-Lieutenant of his county, comes out of church on the first Sunday in May accompanied by his wife, the stateliest matron in the country-side, and some three or four children, boys and girls together, as healthy as they are handsome. After a glance at a certain grave that lies near to the chancel door, they walk homewards across the budding park in the sweet spring afternoon, till, a hundred yards or more from the door of Outram Hall, they pause at the gates of a dwelling known as "The Kraal," shaped like a beehive, fas.h.i.+oned of straw and sticks, and built by the hands of Otter alone.

Basking in the suns.h.i.+ne in front of this hut sits the dwarf himself, cutting broom-sticks with a knife out of the straightest of a bundle of ash saplings that lie beside him. He is dressed in a queer mixture of native and European costume, but otherwise time has wrought no change in him.

"Greeting, Baas," he says as Leonard comes up. "Is Baas Wallace here yet?"

"No, he will be down in time for dinner. Mind that you are there to wait, Otter."

"I shall not be late, Baas, on this day of all days."

"Otter," cries a little maid, "you should not make brown-sticks on Sunday, it is very wrong."

The dwarf grins by way of answer, then speaks to Leonard in a tongue that none but he can understand.

"What did I tell you many years ago, Baas?" he says. "Did I not tell you that by this way or by that you should win the wealth, and that the great kraal across the water should be yours again, and that the children of strangers should wander there no more? See, it has come true," and he points to the happy group of youngsters. "_Wow!_ I, otter, who am a fool in most things, have proved to be the best of prophets.

Yet I will rest content and prophesy no more, lest I should lose my name for wisdom."

A few hours later and dinner is over in the larger hall. All the servants have gone except Otter, who dressed in a white smock stands behind his master's chair. There is no company present save Mr. Wallace, who has just returned from another African expedition, and sits smiling and observant, his eyegla.s.s fixed in his eye as of yore. Juanna is arrayed in full evening dress, however, and a great star ruby blazes upon her breast.

"Why have you got the red stone on to-night, mother?" asks her eldest son Thomas, who with his two sisters has come down to desert.

"Hush, dear," she answers, as Otter advances to that stand on which the Bible is chained, holding a gla.s.s filled with port in his hand.

"Deliverer and Shepherdess," he says, speaking in Sisutu, "on this day eleven years gone Baas Tom died out yonder; I, who drink wine but once a year, drink to the memory of Baas Tom, and to our happy meeting with him in the gold House of the Great-Great"; and swallowing the port with a single gulp Otter throws the gla.s.s behind him, shattering it on the floor.

"Amen," says Leonard. "Now, love, your toast."

"I drink to the memory of Francisco who died to save me," says Juanna in a low voice.

"Amen," repeats her husband.

For a moment there is silence, for Leonard gives no toast; then the boy Thomas lifts his gla.s.s and cries,

"And I drink to Olfan, the king of the People of the Mist, and to Otter, who killed the Snake-G.o.d, and whom I love the best of all of them.

Mother, may Otter get the spear and the rope and tell us the story of how he dragged you and father up the ice-bridge?"