Tween Snow and Fire Part 38

The overseer, who had judiciously kept in the background, now came forward.

"Certainly, Mrs Carhayes. Better come into this room and sit down for a bit. Why, you must have been mistaken," he went on, cheerily placing a chair at the sitting room fire, and kicking up the nearly dead logs.

"n.o.body could get up at your window. Why, its about fifteen feet from the ground and there's nothing lying about for them to step on. Not even a monkey could climb up there--though--wait. I did hear once of a case where a baboon, a wild one out of the _veldt_, climbed up on to the roof of a house and swung himself right into a room. I don't say I believe it, though. It's a little too much of a Dutchman's yarn to be readily swallowed."

Thus the good-natured fellow rambled on, intent on cheering her up and diverting her thoughts. The rooms occupied by himself and his family were at the other end of the house and opened outside on the _stoep_, hence the sound of her terrified shriek had not reached them.

Eustace, on investigation intent, had slipped round the outside of the house with the stealth and rapidity of a savage. But, as he had expected, there was no sign of the presence of any living thing. He put his ear to the ground and listened long and intently. Not a sound. No stealthy footfall broke the silence of the night.

But as he crouched there in the darkness, with every nerve, every faculty at the highest tension, a horrible thought came upon him. What if Carhayes had really escaped--was really alive? Why should he not avow himself openly--why come prowling around like a midnight a.s.sa.s.sin?

And then the answer suggested itself. Might it not be that his mind, unhinged by the experiences of his captivity, was filled with the one idea--to exact a deadly vengeance upon the wife who had so soon forgotten him? Such things had been, and to this man, watching there in the darkness, the idea was horrible enough.

Stay! There was one way of placing the matter beyond all doubt. He remembered that the soil beneath Eanswyth's window was loose dust--a trifle scratched about by the fowls, but would give forth the print of a human foot with almost the distinctness of snow.

Quickly he moved to the spot. Striking a wax vesta, and then another, he peered eagerly at the ground. The atmosphere was quite still, and the matches flamed like a torch. His heart beat and his pulses quickened as he carefully examined the ground--then a feeling of intense relief came upon him. _There was no sign of a human footprint_.

No living thing could have stood under that window, much less climbed up to it, without leaving its traces. There were no traces; ergo, no living thing had been there, and he did not believe in ghosts. The whole affair had been a hallucination on the part of Eanswyth. This was bad, in that it seemed to point to a weak state of health or an overloaded mind. But it was nothing like so bad as the awful misfortune involved by the reality would have been--at any rate, to him.

He did not believe in ghosts, but the idea crossed his mind that so far as from allaying Eanswyth's fears, the utter impossibility of any living being having approached her window without leaving spoor in the sandy, impressionable soil, would have rather the opposite tendency. Once the idea got firmly rooted in her mind that the dead had appeared to her there was no foreseeing the limits of the gravity of the results. And she had been rather depressed of late. Very anxiously he re-entered the house to report the utter futility of his search.

"At all events we'll soon make it impossible for you to get another _schrek_ in the same way, Mrs Carhayes," said the overseer cheerily.

"We'll fasten the shutters up."

It was long before the distressed, scared look faded from her eyes.

"Eustace," she said--Bentley having judiciously left them together for a while--"When _you_ were--when I thought you dead--I wearied Heaven with prayers to allow me one glimpse of you again. I had no fear then, but now--O G.o.d! it is _his_ spirit that I have seen."

He tried to soothe her, to rea.s.sure her, and in a measure succeeded. At last, to the surprise of himself and the overseer, she seemed to shake off her terror as suddenly as it had a.s.sailed her. She was very foolish, she declared. She would go to bed now, and not keep them up all night in that selfish manner. And she actually did--refusing all offers on the part of Eustace or the overseer to remain in the sitting room in order to be within call, or to patrol around the house for the rest of the night.

"No," she said, "I am ashamed of myself already. The shutters are fastened up and I shall keep plenty of light burning. I feel quite safe now."

It was late next morning when Eanswyth appeared. Thoroughly refreshed by a long, sound sleep, she had quite forgotten her fears. Only as darkness drew on again a restless uneasiness came over her, but again she seemed to throw it off with an effort. She seemed to have the faculty of pulling herself together by an effort of will--even as she had done that night beside the broken-down buggy, while listening for the approaching footsteps of their savage enemies in the darkness. To Eustace's relief, however, nothing occurred to revive her uneasiness.

But he himself, in his turn, was destined to receive a rude shock.

CHAPTER FORTY.

A LETTER FROM HOSTE.

There was no postal delivery at Swaanepoel's Hoek, nor was there any regular day for sending for the mails. If anybody was driving or riding into Somerset East on business or pleasure, they would call at the post office and bring out whatever there was; or, if anything of greater or less importance was expected, a native servant would be despatched with a note to the postmaster.

Bentley had just returned from the towns.h.i.+p, bringing with him a batch of letters. Several fell to Eustace's share, all, more or less, of a business nature. All, save one--and before he opened this he recognised Hoste's handwriting:

My Dear Milne (it began): This is going to be an important communication. So, before you go any further, you had better get into some sequestered corner by yourself to read it, for it's going to knock you out of time some, or I'm a Dutchman.

"That's a shrewd idea on the part of Hoste putting in that caution," he said to himself. "I should never have credited the chap with so much gumption."

He was alone in the shearing-house when the overseer had handed him his letters. His coat was off, and he was doing one or two odd carpentering jobs. The time was about midday. n.o.body was likely to interrupt him here.

Something has come to my knowledge [went on the letter] which you, of all men, ought to be the one to investigate. To come to the point, there is some reason to suppose that poor Tom Carhayes may still be alive.

You remember that Kafir on whose behalf you interfered when Jackson and a lot of fellows were giving him beans? He is my informant. He began by inquiring for you, and when I told him you were far away, and not likely to be up here again, he seemed disappointed, and said he wanted to do you a good turn for standing his friend on that occasion.

He said he now knew who you were, and thought he could tell you something you would like to know.

Well, I told him he had better unburden himself to me, and if his information seemed likely to be of use, he might depend upon me pa.s.sing it on to you. This, at first, he didn't seem to see--you know what a suspicious dog our black brother habitually is--and took himself off. But the secret seemed to weigh upon him, for, in a day or two, he turned up again, and then, in the course of a good deal of "dark talking," he gave me to understand that Tom Carhayes was still alive; and, in fact, he knew where he was.

Milne, you may just bet your boots I felt knocked all out of time. I hadn't the least suspicion what the fellow was driving at, at first.

Thought he was going to let out that he knew where old Kreli was hiding, or Hlangani, perhaps. So, you see, you must come up here at once, and look into the matter. I've arranged to send word to Xalasa--that's the fellow's name--to meet us at Anta's Kloof directly you arrive.

Don't lose any time. Start the moment you get this. Of course I've kept the thing as dark as pitch; but there's no knowing when an affair of this kind may not leak out and get into all the papers.

Kind regards to Mrs Carhayes--and keep this from her at present.

Yours ever, Percy F. Hoste.

Carefully Eustace read through every word of this communication; then, beginning again, he read it through a second time.

"This requires some thinking out," he said to himself. Then taking up the letter he went out in search of some retired spot where it would be absolutely impossible that he should be interrupted.

Wandering mechanically he found himself on the very spot where they had investigated the silver box together. That would do. No one would think of looking for him there.

He took out the letter and again studied every word of it carefully.

There was no getting behind its contents: they were too plain in their fatal simplicity. And there was an inherent probability about the potentiality hinted at. He would certainly start at once to investigate the affair. Better to know the worst at any rate. And then how heartily he cursed the Kafir's obtrusive grat.i.tude, wis.h.i.+ng a thousand-fold that he had left that sable bird of ill-omen at the mercy of his chastisers. However, if there was any truth in the story, it was bound to have come to light sooner or later in any case--perhaps better now, before the mischief wrought was irreparable. But if it should turn out to be true--what then? Good-bye to this beautiful and idyllic dream in which they two had been living during all these months past.

Good-bye to a life's happiness: to the bright golden vista they had been gazing into together. Why had he not closed with Hlangani's hideous proposal long ago? Was it too late even now?

The man suffered agonies as he sat there, realising his shattered hopes--the fair and priceless structure of his life's happiness levelled to the earth like a house of cards. Like Lucifer fallen from Paradise he felt ready for anything.

Great was Eanswyth's consternation and astonishment when he announced the necessity of making a start that afternoon.

"The time will soon pa.s.s," he said. "It is a horrible nuisance, darling, but there is no help for it. The thing is too important. The fact is, something has come to light--something which may settle that delayed administration business at once."

It might, indeed, but in a way very different to that which he intended to convey. But she was satisfied.

"Do not remain away from me a moment longer than you can help, Eustace, my life!" she had whispered to him during the last farewell, she having walked a few hundred yards with him in order to see the last of him.

"Remember, I shall only exist--not live--during these next few days.

This is the first time you have been away from me since--since that awful time."

Then had come the sweet, clinging, agonising tenderness of parting.

Eanswyth, having watched him out of sight, returned slowly to the house, while he, starting upon his strange venture, was thinking in the bitterness of his soul how--when--they would meet again. His heart was heavy with a sense of coming evil, and as he rode along his thoughts would recur again and again to the apparition which had so terrified Eanswyth a few nights ago. Was it the product of a hallucination on her part after all, or was it the manifestation of some strange and dual phase of Nature, warning of the ill that was to come? He felt almost inclined to admit the latter.

CHAPTER FORTY ONE.

XALASA'S REVELATION.

"You ought to consider yourself uncommonly fortunate, Milne," said Hoste, as the two men drew near Anta's Kloof. "You are the only one of the lot of us not burnt out."