Grit Lawless Part 14

He straightened himself and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out at the quiet night. A young moon shone like a white curved flame in the purple dome, casting its pure reflection on the misty beauty of the garden that, like a picture painted without colour, lay motionless under the starry heavens,--patches of black shadow, and splashes of white where the pale flowers showed in cl.u.s.ters in the uncertain light.

"I never thought of it touching you," he said after a pause. "I suppose... the scandal--"

"Oh! the scandal!" She looked up with a quick resentment in her eyes.

"Can't you get deeper than just the part that shows?"

"In this instance," he returned quite quietly, "it's the part that shows which matters--only the part that shows. If I were doing this thing secretly I should be reckoned decent living, and be well considered of my fellows. And it would never have offended your susceptibilities, nor disgusted other women whose feelings I have not a jot of respect for.

You simply wouldn't have known... It appears to me that it is the part that shows which means everything."

She answered nothing. She sat still, watching him, with her fine eyes clouded and disapproving, and her lips closed in a thin, determined line of scarlet that looked the more brilliant because of the set whiteness of her face. He swung round suddenly and faced her.

"I might have antic.i.p.ated this," he said. "But, oddly enough, I never took you into consideration. After all, you've a right to complain...

The same name! ... Yes, it's awkward--very... and unpleasant."

He crossed the room and stood in front of her chair, looking down at her with an almost hostile expression in his sombre eyes.

"In your opinion," he asked, a hard resentment in his voice, "is there any reason why I should especially consider you?"

She looked back at him steadily. "Have I not already acknowledged that my interference is unjustifiable?"

"True!" he allowed, and thought for a moment.

"One condition alone would give you any right to take exception at anything I do," he added--"and that is such an unlikely condition that we need not reckon it in... But, however dead I may be to all sense of honour and decency, I have still sufficient perception to realise that the situation is--uncomfortable for you. It shall cease to annoy you.

I leave Cape Town this week."

The expression of glad hopefulness that had momentarily lighted her eyes died out as suddenly as it had kindled. She understood him perfectly.

Because this thing was humiliating to her he was going to remove it from her path. That much he would concede--and that was all.

"You are going away?" she said in a low voice, leaning towards him.--"And you will take your mistress with you?"

"And I take my mistress with me," he answered firmly... "Yes."

She winced. He was standing so close to her chair that she could not rise without touching him. She sat farther back, and leant her dark head against the cus.h.i.+ons as a woman who is weary might do. This was but another of the many bitter moments she had endured on his account.

An icy coldness crept over her and seemed to grip her heart. She had battled with her pride so fiercely and persistently, setting up an ideal of duty to be followed despite every difficulty, with this man's salvation as its ultimate aim; and at the very outset she owned herself defeated. She could not plead with him; a certain intolerant hardness in her nature awoke and set a seal on her lips. If he was so lost to all fine thinking, to all sense of decent living and restraint, let him go with this woman who was a fitting companion for the ill-spent hours.

She would not undertake so futile a mission as to attempt to dissuade him.

"If that is final," she remarked at last, "there is nothing more to be said."

"It is final," he answered.

He moved away. She did not rise, but she turned her head and looked after him, the proud eyes darkened with trouble that was not caused only by distress at what he purposed doing, but by her lack of power to hold him back.

At the door he paused, and glanced quickly in her direction.

"This interview has been unsatisfactory," he said abruptly. "I have disappointed you. I regret it, because on a former occasion when I solicited an interview you were more considerate. If you didn't send for me solely with a view to improving my morals, but were content to accept me as I am, the result might be more satisfactory for both of us.

Good-night."

He went out and shut the door sharply behind him, and Mrs Lawless, sitting still where he had left her, listened to the bang of the hall door, and to the crunching of his steps upon the gravelled path as he walked past the drawing-room windows to the gate. She heard the gate open and swing to after him, and then followed silence--silence so profound, so prolonged, that to the woman seated alone in the quiet room it was an immense relief when presently the sound of a concertina floated in through the open windows from the direction of the servants'

quarters. The sound broke the tension. She moved slightly, and her eyes lost their fixed expression. She plucked at a soft fold of the silken tea-gown with nervous fingers, and listened absently to the strains that drifted towards her on the evening air. A Kaffir was singing in a rich, deep voice to his own untaught accompaniment.

"_All de world am sad an' dreary everywhere I roam_."

The haunting, familiar air with its tender pathos, its hopelessness, its strange beauty, moved her to an extraordinary degree, perhaps because she was so deeply moved already. A sob caught her throat, and the unaccustomed tears started to her eyes for the second time that evening.

As before, she put up a hand to press them back, but they pushed their way under her lids and between the restraining fingers, and coursed rapidly down her cheeks...

"_Oh! darkies, how my heart grows weary_!"

The sob was louder this time...

"_Oh! darkies, how my heart grows weary_!"

Swiftly she turned and buried her face in the cus.h.i.+on of the chair and wept unrestrainedly.

CHAPTER TEN.

Lawless made hasty preparations for leaving Cape Town. He did not give up his room at the hotel. When a man is spending other people's money there is no particular need for him to study economy. His headquarters were at Cape Town--he was merely taking a holiday while he matured his plans. On the day before he left he lunched with Van Bleit at the latter's invitation. Van Bleit was openly admiring, and not a little envious.

"Going on your honeymoon," he murmured, growing maudlin over his wine.

"You lucky devil! But the luck was always with you, Grit."

"It depends on what one reckons luck," was the dry response.

"That's just like you favoured chaps--always grudging in your thanks.

You expect the world to come to heel, and it usually does."

"Yes; and yaps at your trouser hems until it frays them. I've been out at elbow and empty in pocket... If that's luck I don't appreciate it.

I've no desire to have the world at my heels, with its sneaking hands dipping into my pockets, and its servile lips smiling while its teeth worry holes in my clothes. I like to face the enemy and have my foot on it."

"You, to talk of the world as your enemy! Why, man alive, it gives you all you ask for."

Lawless looked gloomy enough for a wealthy and successful lover. The other's envying admiration gave him no pleasure. He took up his gla.s.s and drained it. Both men had been drinking freely, but both were well seasoned, and, save for their flushed faces, there was no outward sign of the quant.i.ty of wine they had imbibed.

"I wish to G.o.d," Van Bleit said, "that I were as successful in my wooing as you. Give me your secret, Grit... I believe it's that d.a.m.ned scar on your jaw that helps you with the women--that, and a certain dash you have."

"Oh! call it swagger," growled Lawless.

"No,--d.a.m.n you!--I would if I could; but it's not that. All things considered, you're a fairly modest beast."

"I've not had so much to make me vain as you imagine," Lawless answered, and added curtly: "Look here, Karl, if you don't wish to be offensive, give over personalities. I'm sick of myself."

Van Bleit looked slightly annoyed.

"You're so devilishly unsympathetic," he complained sulkily. "I notice you take no interest in another man's affairs... You never trouble to inquire how my suit prospers."

Lawless made no immediate response. He took a cigar from a case of Van Bleit's that lay open on the table, snipped the end deliberately, and proceeded to light it. When he had had two or three whiffs at it, he took it from his mouth, leant forward with his elbows on the table and looked squarely at his host.

"I don't need to inquire," he said. "I've been observing... You are making no headway at all."

"That's true enough," Van Bleit replied, reddening. "Though, dash it all! you needn't be quite so brutally frank. I'm not making headway.