Grit Lawless Part 20

"Not much. I'm a lazy person. But I have thought I should like to get a few young people out for a game occasionally. I enjoy looking on. If you would bring Mr Bolitho, I could manage to make up the numbers."

Julie did not answer immediately. She sat looking out into the garden with heightened colour and vaguely perplexed eyes. She wondered why Mrs Lawless should have singled out Teddy Bolitho from the host of young men who would all have been willing to come. She wished that she had mentioned any name rather than his.

"You don't like my plan?" Mrs Lawless said quietly.

Julie looked up.

"Yes... Yes, I do," she said. "I was only--thinking. Of course Teddy Bolitho would come--anybody would, if you asked them. And it's heavenly playing on a gra.s.s court; there are so few in the Colony. It'll spoil it, though."

"I would rather it were spoilt with use than wasted," Mrs Lawless said... "We waste so much."

She had risen, and now, moving nearer to the girl, she laid a strong, well-shaped hand upon her shoulder.

"Don't you make waste too," she added gently. "I did when I was young... and it leaves me full of vain regrets. Some people think that youth is the best gift of the G.o.ds: but it is far from a perfect gift; for the proper appreciation of it is withheld. It is only when the gift is withdrawn that we realise all that it meant. If one could have one's youth a second time, one would get the full value of the hours. You've got it now--that priceless gift; and you are inclined to be careless of it."

"I wonder why you say this to me?" Julie murmured.

"Because I've been looking on. You say you have observed me...

Interest is usually mutual. I have certainly felt interested in you."

Julie coloured awkwardly, and looked down. She wondered whether Mrs Lawless had observed her friends.h.i.+p for the man whose name was the same as her own, and if she disapproved of it.

"I don't think it altogether depends on oneself what one makes of one's youth," she said.

"There is much to be said for that argument," Mrs Lawless answered.

"But I could wish you had not found it out so soon."

Julie looked up quickly.

"You mustn't pity me," she said. "I wouldn't retrace one step of the past... It's the future I would alter, if I could."

"And how can you tell," Mrs Lawless inquired, "what the future holds?"

The girl smiled drearily.

"I know very well what it doesn't hold," she answered. "That's as far as I care to go."

And then suddenly her wandering gaze fell on a photograph that stood in a silver frame on the piano, and she became silent, regarding it with an intensity that drew Mrs Lawless' eyes to the object that excited her interest.

"You recognise it?" she said, and there was a quality in her voice such as Julie had never heard in any voice before. "That was taken before-- he left the Army."

It was a portrait of Lawless in regimentals, younger and handsomer than the man Julie knew; but there was lacking in the younger face something which the older face possessed. Julie could not determine what that something was.

"Yes, I recognise it... But I miss--the scar," she said.

She blushed violently. It was the scar that had appealed so strongly to her youthful imagination. And then, raising her glance furtively to see whether her embarra.s.sment were observed, she was profoundly disconcerted at the sight of the tears that were standing in the other woman's eyes.

Mrs Lawless moved away.

"I don't know," she said, "why I put that portrait there to-day...

There's a connection, I suppose, between it and one's wasted youth. The portrait stands for waste... It is the sight of it that has set me thinking back."

She crossed to the piano and lifted the frame as though her purpose were to remove it. Then, changing her mind, she set it again in its place, and came slowly back.

"I wonder what you think of my getting you here and depressing you with my reminiscences," she said in a lighter tone. "It wasn't my intention.

I suppose it's due to reaction following the shock of recent events.

We'll flee from gloomy subjects, shall we? ... Come out with me. I want to show you my garden..."

Whether it was owing to Mrs Lawless' display of emotion, or the unexpected sight of the photograph in her room, or to both reasons combined, added to the strange new quality in her voice when she spoke of the portrait's original, Julie conceived the idea that she too loved this man with the dominating personality,--the strangely aloof manner,-- the air of quiet detachment that made him at once a figure attractive and unapproachable, so that women, while desirous of knowing him, hesitated to solicit an introduction. It was not strange that she should love him--that to Julie was a natural, almost an inevitable, consequence of knowing him--but it was incredible that he could remain indifferent to her regard. The only explanation she could arrive at was that he was ignorant of it. Julie understood at last the tragedy that occasionally looked out from Mrs Lawless' beautiful eyes; and in her sympathy with her the pain at her own heart grew less. She had no thought of competing against this peerlessly lovely woman. It was unaccountable to her by the light of her new understanding that Lawless should have troubled to show any interest in her at all. She wondered whether, if she ever saw him again, she would find the courage to tell him the secret she had surprised...

That evening, after Julie had left her, Mrs Lawless took the portrait of Lawless from the piano, and sat with it in her hands examining it closely. She was wondering whether the woman he had gone away with now was the same woman he had wrecked his happiness for eight years ago-- wondering in a quite impersonal, dulled sort of way. The thing was past remedying and altogether beyond her control. She remembered that in the past it had been the wound to her self-esteem she had felt the most bitterly. Her feelings had changed during the long years. She experienced little of the grief, the anger, the disgust that had moved her then. Her present sorrow was less a selfish emotion than sorrow for the man because of the waste he was making of life. She scarcely considered the woman outside her connection with Lawless, save, after the tragedy of the previous night, to be relieved that, since she was to influence him, she had removed him from other influences of a more actively dangerous nature. She was glad that he was out of Cape Town, otherwise she knew he would have been concerned in the affair that had cost one life and might yet cost another.

And while she sat there musing on these matters with the photograph in her hands, the door of the room opened, and to her astonishment Colonel Grey was announced. He followed quickly on his name, as though antic.i.p.ating and anxious to prevent a refusal on her part to receive him, offering an apology for intruding on her as he entered.

Mrs Lawless laid the photograph face downwards on the sofa and rose to greet him. Her face expressed her surprise; his was grey and tired and haggard, and his blood-shot eyes looked like the eyes of a man who has not slept.

"I fear I have disturbed you," he said. "I'm sorry to intrude, but I wish to see you."

"You have disturbed me doing nothing," she answered composedly. "I was wearied of my thoughts. Sit down and tell me what you wanted to see me for... Will you take anything?" she added, on a sudden thought, as he dropped wearily into a chair. "You look tired."

"Thank you, no," he answered. "I am less tired than worried. But I won't distress you by going into that. I quite understand that the subject is painful to you, and for that reason I regret to inflict my company on you."

Mrs Lawless looked slightly impatient. This man too! ... Was everyone she met to say the same thing to her, only in different words?

"Please disabuse your mind of any such impression," she said. "Of course I feel sympathy with the trouble of my friends, but your presence cannot possibly increase my distress. Why should it?"

"I feared you might hold me responsible for what has occurred," he said simply. "And the sight of me cannot fail to call up painful thoughts.

I do not profess to be other than an enemy of the man you regard as a friend. You know too much of the matter for me to impose on you--even if I wished to do so. I can only say that I regret that our interests are opposed."

She smiled faintly.

"You take rather much for granted, I think," she said. "Why should you suppose I am interested in the matter at all? Women do not usually meddle in such dangerous and discreditable enterprises--you will forgive me for speaking of this as I feel... I cannot see that it is creditable to be concerned in this business of yours."

"Perhaps not," he said. "But then, again, perhaps you don't fully understand. And aren't you judging a little by results?"

"I think it is reasonable to draw conclusions from results in most instances," she answered.

"From final results," he returned... "But not at this stage."

"I had hoped this was the last stage," she said.

"I had hoped it might be," he returned with some grimness of manner...

"But we haven't won yet."

"Nor lost?"

"We can't lose, Mrs Lawless. It has to be a fight to the finish."

He regarded her fixedly. As was usual when in her presence, the distrust which he entertained for her at other times vanished to yield to a liking and confidence which he admitted with some reluctance, but which he was unable to subdue. Hers was a magnetic personality, and this in conjunction with her beauty robbed a man of his wits. At his age he should be impervious to the charm of women. But man is never too old to be influenced by the s.e.x.