The Golden Web Part 25

"Your sister does not quite understand," Deane said, turning to him. "We have been through too many rough times in Africa together to stand upon ceremony now. You will perhaps be able to explain to her later on."

He took up his hat and turned toward the door. "I shall expect to hear from you," he said, "as soon as you have decided where to go,--either from you, Rowan," he added, shaking hands with him, "or from your sister."

"You are very kind, Deane," Rowan said. "I am sorry I have made such a mess of things."

"It was not your fault," Deane answered. "Good-day, Miss Rowan!"

She looked at him for a moment, but she did not offer to take his outstretched hand. He smiled, and withdrew it at once.

"Good-day, Mr. Deane!" she said.

The door closed behind him. Rowan was watching his sister anxiously.

"Winifred," he said, "what is the matter with you? You were scarcely civil to Mr. Deane."

"Oh! I think I was," she answered. "In any case, we don't want to take alms from him, do we?"

"It isn't exactly that," Rowan objected.

"It is."

"He can afford it," Rowan declared. "He is very rich. A thousand pounds to him is like sixpence to us."

"It doesn't alter facts," she rejoined. "I do not like Mr. Deane, Basil.

It is through him that this trouble has come upon us. You have taken enough of his money."

"And when I am gone?" he asked. "What about you then?"

"Have I ever failed to make my own way?" she asked quietly. "I shall be safe enough, Basil."

He commenced to cough, and very soon further speech was impossible. He was painfully exhausted. She sat by his side until he went off to sleep.

Of his hopeless state there could no longer be any doubt. He was wasted almost to a shadow. Even in sleep his breath came heavily, and a fever seemed upon him. She stole softly from his side, and stood for a few minutes at the window, looking out. Below, the pulse of the great world was beating with the same maddening regularity. The stream of wayfarers swept on, the roar of traffic was as inevitable as the waves of the sea.

She stood by the window with small, clenched hands. Behind her, his loud breathing seemed to beat out the time toward Death.

Deane himself was one of those wayfarers, but at least his thoughts, as he was being whirled eastward in his brougham, were fixed upon the tragedy which he had left behind him. He knew very well that it was not a question of months but of days with Basil Rowan. Was it only for that that the girl was waiting? Her whole att.i.tude towards him had about it a certain flavor of mystery which oppressed him. It was like trying to face an enemy hidden in a darkened room, listening for his footstep, not knowing whence the blow might fall. Notwithstanding the warm suns.h.i.+ne, he s.h.i.+vered a little as he descended from the carriage and entered his offices.

CHAPTER V

MUTUAL INFORMATION

The girl was sitting in the middle of a hard horsehair sofa, her elbows upon her knees, her head resting in her hands. She looked across the dreary apartment and out of the ill-cleaned windows, with dull, despairing eyes. This, then, was to be the end of her dreams. She must go back to the life which she felt to be intolerable, or she must throw herself headlong into the maelstrom.

There was one other occupant of the room, and, curiously enough, his att.i.tude appeared to be a somewhat similar one. He was a short, thick-set young man, with brown moustache, flas.h.i.+ly dressed, with a red tie, an imitation diamond, and soiled linen to further disfigure an appearance at no time particularly prepossessing. He was standing with his legs a little apart, looking out into the uninspiring street. His hands were thrust deep down into the pockets of his trousers. He had all the appearance of a man who finds the burden of life an unwelcome thing.

Presently he began to whistle, not cheerfully, but some doleful air of sentimental import. The girl upon the couch seemed irritated. She herself was in the last stage of dejection, and the sound grew maddening.

"Oh, don't do that, please!" she exclaimed at last.

He turned around in amazement, for the first time realizing that he was not alone. "I beg your pardon," he said.

The girl remembered that he was a stranger to her, but after all, what did it matter? "I asked you to stop whistling," she said.

He answered "Certainly!" and continued to look at her. She returned his gaze with a disapprobation which she scarcely attempted to conceal.

"Sort of habit I get into," he explained, "when I'm in the dumps."

"Does it do you any good?" she asked. "If so, I'll learn how to whistle myself."

"Meaning," he remarked, "that we are companions in--dumpiness?"

She shrugged her shoulders, but did not trouble to reply.

"I wish to G.o.d," he exclaimed, "I'd never left Cape Town!"

Then for the first time she looked at him with a gleam of interest, and asked, "Do you come from South Africa?"

He nodded. "I did, and I only wish I were back there. I could always keep my head above water there, but London is a rotten hole. I suppose it's because I don't know the runs," he added meditatively. "Anyhow, it's broke me."

She continued the conversation without feeling the slightest interest in it, but simply because it was an escape--a temporary escape--from her thoughts. "What did you come over for?" she asked.

"A fool's errand!" he answered. "I lent a man some money--a sort of speculation it was--and I came over to see how he was getting on."

"And I suppose he'd lost it," she remarked.

"He's lost himself," answered the man, "which is about as bad. I wish I could lay my hands upon him. I'd get a bit of my own back, one way or another."

"London is a big place," she returned. "People are not easy to find unless you know all about them."

"This man left South Africa only a month or so ago. He gave me an address here where he said I should always hear of him. I've been there nearly every day. He turned up there all right regularly after he first landed. He hasn't been there at all for two months, and they haven't the least idea where he is."

"You don't even know," she asked, "whether the speculation is successful or not?"

He shook his head gloomily. "It don't make much odds, so far as I can see," he said. "If it came off, he's bolted with the profits. If it didn't, he's hiding for fear I shall want my money back again. It's a rotten sort of show, anyway."

"What was his name?" she asked idly.

"His real name," the man answered, "was the same as your own,--that is,"

he added, "I think I heard old Mrs. Towsley call you Miss Sinclair, didn't I?"

She looked at him steadily for several moments without speaking. He was not a person of quick apprehensions, but even he could not fail to see the change in her face. Her lips were parted, her eyes were suddenly lit with an almost pa.s.sionate fire. The change in her features was illuminating. She was no longer a tired, depressed-looking young woman of ill-tempered appearance. Her good looks had rea.s.serted themselves.

Life seemed to have been breathed into her pulses.

"His real name was Sinclair," she repeated softly. "He came from South Africa. Tell me some more about him?"