Grit Lawless Part 47

Colonel Grey turned round and spoke to Mrs Lawless, and she rose from her seat and approached them. The pathos of her expression, her pallor, and her great personal charm, made a direct appeal to Mr Burton's kindly nature. Her singular beauty impressed him vividly. While sympathising strongly with her anxiety, he was none the less glad that she had come; it would be such an agreeable piece of news to break to the sufferer.

"Tell me," she said. "I have watched you talking till I am half afraid to ask. He's ill... He's very ill... I know he is. You are not going to tell me that he will die?"

"G.o.d forbid!" Mr Burton cried, and was slightly ashamed of his excitement. "He is badly hurt, Mrs Lawless. But he has a wonderful spirit. He will get over this all right. And with you here to nurse him, why, bless me! he'll enjoy being ill."

She smiled, but so wanly that it was in his idea infinitely sadder than tears.

"What do you think?" she said, and looked inquiringly at Colonel Grey...

"Ought I to let him know that I am here?"

"Well, he's got to know some time, I suppose," he answered, and appealed to the schoolmaster. "He isn't so ill but that he can stand a little excitement, eh?"

"Excitement of that nature would not be likely to hurt him," Mr Burton answered confidently out of his profound ignorance. "I was just about to visit him. I'm sitting with him to-day. If it is agreeable to you I will break it to him that you are here."

He left them and went upon his errand cheerfully, pleasantly antic.i.p.ating Lawless' satisfaction in the news. The patient's reception of his wonderful intelligence was an added astonishment to the many surprises of that day. It chilled his gladness as completely as cold water flung upon a cheerful blaze. There was a little spluttering, and the blaze was finally extinguished.

"Help me into my clothes, Burton," the man in the bed said querulously.

"No," Mr Burton refused. "It would be the death of you."

"Then, get out of this, and I'll dress myself."

The schoolmaster deliberately approached the bed, and looked down kindly into the tormented eyes that stared up at him out of the pallid face upon the pillow. He put out a restraining hand as the patient pushed the bedclothes fretfully aside and attempted to sit up.

"You can't do it. Lawless," he said, endeavouring to soothe him, fearing that he had been over hasty with his news. Delirium alone could account in his opinion for this rash determination to get up.

"Lie still," he entreated. "They will come to you."

"They will do nothing of the sort," Lawless replied, with a lucidity only to be equalled by his determination. "You're an old fool, Burton, and you don't understand. Hand me my clothes, there's a good chap, and so make this matter easier for me."

In response Mr Burton gathered up the garments and made for the door.

"Very well," Lawless answered grimly, "then I must make my appearance as I am."

The other came back and stood, perplexed and troubled, with the clothes bundled together in his arms, and a guilty look in his eyes as though he had been surprised in the act of stealing.

"You don't mean it?" he said.--"Not seriously?"

"I'm perfectly serious, and entirely rational," Lawless replied quietly.

"If you are really anxious that I shouldn't overtax my strength you'll stay and help me dress."

And so it was that the Colonel and Mrs Lawless were kept waiting for the expected summons.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

Colonel Grey led Mrs Lawless into a room on the right of the hall and rang the bell. He ordered wine, which he insisted on his companion drinking. He also requested that two bedrooms should be in readiness and a meal prepared. The ordinary affairs of life could not be neglected even if the issues at stake were distressingly serious. The Colonel was feeling more settled in mind since he was in possession of the facts. There was no immediate cause for alarm, he decided; and sought to hearten Mrs Lawless with his sanguine views. But though she appeared to listen she was too obviously nervous to attend to what he said. She sipped her wine, sitting by the fluttering curtains near the open window, looking out at the suns.h.i.+ne.

"Perhaps I ought not to have come," she said once, and appeared while looking at nothing in particular to be watching the road with grave intentness. "I don't think he'll consent to see me."

She was remembering how recently he had said to her that if she sent for him again he would not come. She had not sent, but her presence there amounted to the same thing.

And then after a while the door opened and he came in. The Colonel uttered a sudden exclamation.

"My dear fellow!" he cried in astonishment, his manner charged with grave solicitude. "My dear fellow! Is this wise?"

Mrs Lawless sprang up from her chair, but he put out a hand and motioned her back, and with her startled eyes on his leaden face, she sank down again without speaking. Lawless took a seat.

"I don't know how you came to hear of this," he said. "I didn't intend it should get about. They're making more of it than they need. In a few days I should have been back in Cape Town."

He looked inquiringly at the Colonel.

"You've seen Hayhurst, I suppose?"

"Yes. He delivered the letters safely." He sat forward and stared at the ghastly suffering face. "He gave me a fairly graphic history of their recovery. The whole circ.u.mstances were a huge surprise,--huge.

It was a masterly undertaking. The service you have rendered is incalculable. When the time comes we shall know how to thank you more adequately, in the meanwhile you have our very earnest grat.i.tude; and I can only express my sincere regret that the result should be so disastrous for you."

Colonel Grey advanced his hand. To his surprise Lawless refused to take it.

"Disastrous! Yes," he answered. "Letters that are of a nature to lend themselves to blackmailing purposes are not worth the risk of a man's life--and character. I suppose you might argue that I've boasted I hold life cheaply, and you doubtless consider I have no character to lose.

Confess now," he added, in response to the other's hastily uttered protest, "that until those letters were safe in your hands you entertained a suspicion that I might misuse them?"

The Colonel sought for words and sought vainly. He was far too ruggedly honest to deny the charge. After a moment or two of silence he tacitly admitted it.

"Most men are liable to mistakes," he said. "And... I suppose I was prejudiced."

The man lying back in the easy-chair smiled drily.

"I am so unfortunate as to prejudice most people unfavourably. A profligate adventurer can scarcely expect to do otherwise."

An almost inaudible sound broke from Zoe Lawless' lips. He did not look at her but continued in the same bitter strain to the pain and embarra.s.sment of both his hearers.

"For every offence of which I've been guilty I've had to pay to the uttermost farthing. On appearance I've been convicted of sins I haven't committed. It's the luck, I suppose, of the man who is marked for failure from the beginning of things."

"I can understand," Colonel Grey said, making ready allowance for his mood, "your resentment of certain injuries. I offer you my frank apologies for the very unworthy suspicions I have entertained. But if I have harboured doubts of you, I have also had moments when I have felt that those doubts were unjustified. I a.s.sert, in spite of your morbid imagining, that you more readily inspire confidence than distrust."

"Then how comes it that I failed in inspiring you with confidence?"

"It was probably," Colonel Grey began, and stopped, looking with some pity at the haggard face. "Really, my dear fellow," he said, "is it wise to continue this painful subject?"

"Why not?" The man in the chair sat straighter and pulled himself together with an effort. "I've a fancy somehow," he said, "for having the matter out... You've had a down on me ever since you knew I fought against my own side in the Boer war. It's natural, of course--most people would feel as you do about it. And yet I don't regret it--even now."

"That's an old story," the Colonel said. "Why revive it?"

"I've a feeling I should like to speak of it. I've never explained my motive--no one would understand, or sympathise with it, if I did. In your place, reversing the circ.u.mstances, I should feel as you do about it. But when a man has been kicked out of the Service for cowardice, there's something he owes to himself as well as to his country. I had to prove my nature for my own satisfaction. If they'd given me a chance in the ranks I shouldn't have fought for the Boers. But I had to face the bullets again... I had to disprove for my personal satisfaction that quality of unaccountable fear that forced me to retreat in a dangerous and important crisis. G.o.d knows what sudden and uncontrolled impulse governed me on that occasion! ... I experienced that same cold terror once again when, unarmed, I faced one of my own Tommies with a fixed bayonet in his hand. I can feel the horror of that terror now-- the mad and well-nigh uncontrollable impulse to turn my back and run.

But the motive that had led me to join the fighting proved stronger than my fear. I went for him with my hands; and the horror left me, as a nightmare terror leaves a sleeper when he wakes... That is the history of this scar on my face."

He paused, pressed his hand to his brow as if weary, and then resumed with a sort of dogged determination to justify himself,--to make these two people, who both in their hearts he knew condemned utterly what he had felt to be a legitimate means of correcting a base tendency before it became confirmed in him as an incorrigible fault, understand in a sense,--see and feel with him. It mattered to him so tremendously, the opinion of these two silent listeners, the one who sat with crossed knees, watching him intently, the other with her troubled eyes downcast, looking upon the ground. And both, he felt, judging him,--condemning him.

"You'll think it at one with the rest, no doubt," he said; "but I don't regret the thing I did which all Englishmen abhor. I know now that I can face death without flinching. I conquered fear. The knowledge gives me all the satisfaction necessary to qualify the odium of the term traitor. It's not the right way to look at the matter, perhaps; but that's how it is."